Psy-ops

Remember that “brave Russian journalist” who raised an anti-war poster on the Russian news?

Here’s an update:

This is one of the simplest, most primitive psy-ops in existence. A fake dissident is created and then used to promote the official viewpoint to people who wouldn’t be taken in by the standard government propaganda.

For instance, in Russia there’s a “dissident TV channel” called Rain. Most people don’t know that it’s owned almost entirely by the natural gas oligarchy. This channel is allowed to sound like it’s anti-government to attract the small dissident minority. It still transmits the party line but in a smarter way than other channels. It’s the “yes, Putin is bad but” kind of stuff. People are attracted by the “bad Putin” part and swallow the rest without even noticing that they’ve been had.