Journalist and blogger Tetiana Mykytenko: Ukraine needs a ministry of information, not a ministry of truth

She also believes it is better to spend one's energy on people who understand what you are doing and why.

In a new episode of the Antipody program on the Iceland TV channel, Ukrainian journalist, blogger and TV presenter Tetiana Mykytenko spoke about Ukraine's main TV regulators, Ukrainian propaganda and bullying on social media.

Who is Ukraine's main TV regulator, or regulatrix?

I'm just thinking over the results of the year. Gordon really makes me very interested in presenting him as a TV regulator. Because in terms of what he says, how often he appears, how much of him there is, and that it is a mental pyramid forever, he is one of the candidates. I don't walk around with a constant card file of everyone I write about.

Come on, a shortlist of three.

Oh Lord, everyone is now on "Ukraine 24", on "Rukraine 24". Well, who is there: Vasya Golovanov, who keeps pretending he is a "durnalist", well, actually he is a "durnalist", because he sits there purely as a stand for everyone who comes there. Gordon. Well, Gordon is a bigger figure. And then, listen. Ah, Maksimka Nazarov. The "Inshyi" TV channel.

That is the leading channel of "Nash", or rather "Ikhniy".

Yes, the "Ikhniy" channel. Well, if we take TV media figures, you could also stuff Yevgeny Murayev in there somewhere. Oktyabrenok. We call him the "intergalactic Oktyabrenok", because he has very big ambitions. And you somehow come up with a nickname for him, and they try to fully live up to it. And now he is in the process.

What are the signs of a regulator? By what criteria do you count them as such?

I can tell you. We started talking about not being indifferent, and I probably didn't say that for no reason. First, I say in every interview that we are all regulators to one degree or another. I don't separate myself from this process. Because everyone for some reason thinks I am so regulatory, like I am above everyone, taking and sorting people on the principle of regulator or not regulator.

Each of us has a heap of regulatory traits that we constantly show in one way or another. I can say that this is precisely indifference to what your life is made of, and an unwillingness to evolve and work on yourself. So if you are satisfied with the hole you are in and simply reproduce this pattern, that is regulatorship.

And roughly speaking, if you apply this to Maksim Nazarov, more precisely Nazar Diordiitsa, or to Gordon, I can pick out some of their regulatory traits. For example, in Diordiitsa this is an absolute rejection of his own identity. He even changed his name so as not to look like a nie-russkiy. There, Nazarov. There, Nazarov, you understand.

And what is his name?

Diordiitsa. Nazar. He sort of outplayed it and created something like that for himself.

Is that something Romanian, Moldovan, maybe?

You reject your name and create a name for yourself. I am just sitting here with Sergei Ivanov... Well, it is a typical name, which seems to not stand you out from anywhere. Although in fact, you already have the opportunity at birth to stand out, but he refuses it. He hides his origin and imitates some kind of great Russian thinker. I don't know.

Well, in short, he imitates everything badly, so you cannot call him that. Again, he is simple as a macaque, or rather as a cockatoo, macaques don't talk, he reproduces a certain pattern that is demanded of him, and he, well, there is such an expression in English, one trick pony, a pony that performs one trick, learned it and repeats it. And he is stuck in this pattern.

The same is happening with Gordon. He is also a pony that imitates being something more. But in fact, what he was selling as pyramids, what he is now selling Akhmetov, roughly along one pattern, he learned this one trick and no evolution happens there. Despite the fact that Gucci sweaters have appeared on him. Because this pays more than those pyramids. But in principle nothing new happens in their lives.

You mentioned the surname, Ivanov is like the Malvina jeans of 1987, everyone had them.

Well listen, here in Iceland you have everything: Ivanov, Petrov. But what I mean is this. You understand that the question is not even about the name. Take Nazar Diordiitsa: you have such a name, and you take and replace it with something that completely changes your identity and, for me, in a strange direction.

Well, I understand, if you had moved to America, it would have been hard there.

Yes. And I have no complaints about the surname Ivanov, the surname Petrov, the surname Mykytenko, or the surname Diordiitsa, but it is still a choice when a person undergoes such a transformation with their name and chooses to be present in public space precisely under such a name.

This is a conscious rejection of mental roots. And in fact one can say that this rejection, perhaps, at first was not voluntary, say, like when people were moved from western Ukraine to the East. I quite often recall the fact that the top of these traitors in Donbas, they all come from families who were relocated from western Ukraine to the East. People were torn away, and then, in fact, they were carried away, excuse me, like a turd in an ice hole.

This is precisely one of the topics I will examine on my new channel, which will be somewhat conceptual. What you are talking about is directly linked to identification with the enemy, when people identify with the one who destroys them, and they take his side and start destroying themselves. That traumatic experience is so strong in you. And that is exactly what you are talking about.

These people are deeply, very severely traumatized, and our society, unfortunately, is very little aware of the drama that has befallen us at all. The catastrophe that has happened to us. And very few think about it at all. And about how this victim behavior, Stockholm syndrome, whatever you like, but for me it is easiest to define it as identification with the one who wanted to destroy you.

And you are like: he wants to destroy me, I have become so absorbed in all this that I will destroy myself to please him. That is a terrible transformation that happens to many who were victims of this horrifying process of destroying Ukrainians.

Well, that is the character of Samuel L. Jackson in "Django". A dark-skinned man who became whiter...

Does a state need propaganda?

Listen, I don't like the word "propaganda".

As an institution. We do understand that propaganda is an institution. It is not talking heads who come out and say things from notes. It is an institution that includes, among other things, some forms of information resistance.

Then I will say we need to rebrand propaganda, come up with some concept that is clearer for people, move away from the word itself, which carries too many negative connotations, because it is tied exclusively to imposition. Because propaganda is perceived as imposing something bad, and people most often do not see a positive connotation here.

Although there is both positive and negative propaganda. To do a rebrand and then, through this rebrand, enter with a new product, offer, create. Roughly speaking, Ukraine needs a ministry of information, not a ministry of truth.

So a ministry of information should conditionally be the one doing it?

Yes, a ministry of information. Roughly speaking, a ministry of information presupposes that we are dealing with information. A ministry of truth presupposes that we are dealing with a certain truth that everyone is absolutely forced to accept, regardless of whether a thinking process is involved or not.

Among the existing figures in the Ukrainian media or political market, could you name a person who could, say, head this direction?

Hardly.

Not politicians. Just bloggers. Anyone.

I could not. Answers to such questions require long thought. When they ask: "What is your favorite book" or "who do you consider such-and-such a person" or "who is the modern Ukrainian elite" and so on. And such questions always put me in a dead end, because you have to sit down, remember, and think about it, so I cannot recall it just like that.

I can recall, for example, that Dmytro Kuleba wrote a book on how to counter disinformation. Maybe he can or cannot... He already counters disinformation for us as foreign minister. This is me showing you a piece of my thinking on this topic. Actually, as soon as I start... And Semesyuk, maybe Semesyuk? He would show this, he does it very well, he knows how to analyze.

Or Oleksa Man, God, I like so much how Oleksa Man on Facebook dissects people on the topics that interest him, and how he deconstructs them and easily unfolds a certain landscape for his viewer, explaining complex things on his fingers. I like that. But first of all, these are only three names that came to mind.

And if I keep recalling further and further, the list will grow, and one has to think whether this person should be considered at all. There are very many factors. You asked me a question, and I am already seriously going to put a person in a ministerial chair. So it is hard. It is hard for me to give an answer just like that.

When you invite someone for an interview and want to hear the actual name of that person, you have to ask well in advance, so that the one who comes thinks and arrives with a ready answer.

Well, you know, I don't dig up news here. For me, for example, your logic and your thinking process are much more interesting than hearing this name itself. I understood the direction of your thought on this, and for me that is already enough. But again. Yes, we are talking about people, specific ones, who you like.

Ukrainians in general really like to bully each other. This is something we have. Very often bullying happens for the sake of bullying, and even its content, its aim, its reason fade into the background, meaning the process itself takes over.

Recently someone wrote on Facebook, I don't remember the author now, that despite all this, bullying remains perhaps the most effective tool of a conscious and civic society in Ukraine. I am trying to phrase this thought as carefully as possible.

First, because I myself consider finished those people who then pose for photos with IV drips instead of thinking beforehand. But doesn't it seem to you that with such aggressive mass reactions, which in form and content are in principle very reminiscent of bullying, we in fact encourage this phenomenon, and then, when this bullying spreads to some other social groups, your contribution is also part of this general hate.

First, if you are so strongly worried about bullying on social networks, it is very simple. You can delete your channel for 10 days or simply turn them off, log out, not go there and not read all the comments. And not lie under an IV drip and run a live broadcast from under the IV drip.

But they cannot exist without social networks, they simply don't exist.

They don't exist. The question here is that this is one of the ways of existing. Second, very often here the word "bullying" is used to describe things that cannot be called bullying at all. For example, when people talk about my content, they say that my content is bullying. That I simply sit down and start handing out diagnoses, verdicts and generally acting as a judge.

In fact, though, people who bother to watch my broadcasts have a formed view of me as Tanya, who talks about dresses. So people do not delve into what these broadcasts are about. And the issue is that very often, without even trying to hear the opinion, it is called bullying. I have seen a great many responses to this story, which I by no means can call bullying.

And the desire of every person who saw this situation and reacted to it is to reflect on this experience. This is reflection on experience. And most often this reflection is not an experience addressed to this guy, but simply a post for your own group of people who are subscribed to you. When you write and explain that I did not like this, because of this and that.

I have seen a great many texts that analyzed this phenomenon, analyzed some reactions, and the reflection was not at the level of wanting to crush this guy, but at the level of asking: let's look at what is happening with our society, why I don't like this. That is not bullying. That is reflection. That is the ability to defend one's boundaries.

I do not want to exist in a society where some boy, roughly speaking, absolutely scorns our traumatic, deep, tragic experience and starts parasitizing on it. Until the moment when they began taking away his contracts, he recorded some appeals that were mocking.

I do not want to live in a society where such a boy can think that he can broadcast such behavior without consequences for himself. When you are an adult and you choose a certain position and broadcast it, you must be ready for any reaction to it and responsibility for this position. If you cross four lanes on Victory Avenue and a car hits you, the driver is not to blame.

You made a decision and ran across this avenue. Blaming the driver for hitting you is strange. Because you yourself decided to put yourself in these circumstances. So this is not bullying, it is simply rebuilding these boundaries, and Ukrainians are very much lacking this.

But for very many people this is a sport. Because when someone starts being harassed, regardless of the topic, whether over love for Poroshenko or dislike of Zelensky, it does not matter, whether from any trend that appears every day and disappears the same day.

Here they come, I call them hydrangeas, these little ladies. When they come, they write: yes, bitch, may you die, may all your relatives die, carrion, everything there in profanity. Then you go to her page just to see what it is. And there is a recipe for cheese fritters.

Next: an astrologer predicts unprecedented sexual activity for Taurus. Well, like that, you understand. This is about how very often the reasons, goals and meanings are far behind.

It becomes a sport at those moments when you understand that you won't get hit for it because of your anonymity, or because you are hidden in a crowd. If you get into a crowd, it is easier for you to broadcast what you were broadcasting, you are like on the same wavelength with them. The question is that when I ran into someone, especially after my deletion of YouTube and my return to YouTube.

Earlier, when some completely riled up and detached people wrote, I would say: let it be. But actually now I just press the "ban" button and see fewer such people. Especially since I cannot spend my life checking whether these people are real or whether it is a created bot. This again may simply be a flood of people or a flood of mechanisms that will automatically write to you and create such an illusion.

No, well, I studied it for artistic, creative purposes.

Well, if you have some such experience, then of course it appears through a certain impunity. But such people, in fact, I cannot say there are an enormous number of them. When we talked about boundaries, about bullying and about these aggressive people, then they are of very great use. We very often like to stop any aggressive position, because aggression is branded negatively.

We once were at a bloggers' festival together and there we clashed a little. When you start opposing what you don't like, they immediately call you aggressive, riled up, frayed. But the point is that defending your comfort zone and defending your interests is not bad aggression, it is awesome aggression, which must be pumped up and always kept at the ready.

And now society is being shaped in such a way that it does not broadcast anything hostile, is not aggressive, but is simply wonderful, filled with violets and unicorns. And accordingly, no threat is created for anyone. But the point is that if we create such a society, threats will not exist not because we know how to repel them and put in their place a person who somehow infringes on your interests, but because everyone imitates goodwill and everyone has created this conditional aquarium, which sooner or later will explode.

And who is imitating goodwill? I don't encounter that at all.

I am now talking about the desire to create a society that will exist according to certain characteristics, where you cannot even express any sharp judgment, because this judgment is not accepted in society. Everything is heading that way right now. The creation of this virtual Eden will lead to the creation of a new population of people who do not know how to respond worthily to aggression.

And accordingly, once they are accustomed to these hothouse conditions, any minimally expert person in aggression will knock them down. And the point is that we do not need to teach everyone to be polite, to express themselves as carefully as possible, and under no circumstances to be argumentative little brawlers, treating everyone very attentively. No. We need such people to exist, but all these people must remember that you will get hit.

That for your actions and the choice you make, there will be responsibility. Moreover, those who think their interests have been somehow affected must not live in hothouse conditions, where their interests are not touched. They must go through this school and repel such attacks and put those who offend them in their place effectively. And this can only be done by being tempered in battles.

So it is wonderful that battles are happening with us. Because those who fall under such an attack pump up their muscles and are tempered in battles. Those who dislike the Vatniks, if they do not exclude the Vatniks from their space and temper themselves with them in battles, will later stop the Vatniks with three or four phrases, not with hysterical "you don't understand me". It is important for us that we are in battles.

We cannot create this inert society of unicorns. And, oh God, under no circumstances may we be aggressive. We must be aggressive, because that is how we will pump everything up. And then a Russian aggressive uncle will come and bring us peace, and we will be like: well, we were taught how to talk with the polite ones, and you are impolite, so we don't know how to deal with you.

Okay, that is one situation. You have just drawn some sort of linear situation, and I will tell you how it works with us. A hydrangea comes to you, writes what I said above, all the Egyptian plagues and so on. You say: "Go f*** yourself, you old scum." Then the musketeers come and write to you how ashamed you should be, a woman, an elderly one.

You say: "And you go f*** yourselves, shitty cherts." And then a screenshot appears, some komsomol member from the internet komsomol comes. Then another screenshot appears and it says, like, friends, I have long said that Ivanov is a f***ing Luhansk prosecutor, and look, he sends a 65-year-old woman, who has 10 grandchildren and who worked her whole life, to f*** off.

He despises her because he is a Luhansk rich kid. And then you look, and somewhere a video blog of a popular blogger appears, and he says: "Friends, hello, today we will talk about the Luhansk rich kid Sergei Ivanov, who told a 65-year-old woman to f*** off." You seem to respond symmetrically, and then the f**k-ups run up with a new ethics.

You tell me all this, and I am like, thinking, like, so what, live by hypothetically planning such situations? You hold your hands over the keyboard like: "No, now this will start, someone will come to the comments and write that you can't do this." And you subordinate your life and your existence to this pattern, which may unfold further, or may not unfold.

I mean that if you do something, you must be ready to bear responsibility for it.

Yes. I think you absolutely cannot subordinate your choice. You must not be intimidated, you must understand what you are doing. But subordinating a conditional comment with a reference by someone on social networks, because it may have some kind of consequence for you. Well, okay. It may have consequences for me. But for me it is more important to write what I want to write.

And in general, all these stories with bullying, with those attacks, with some kind of group flogging of people in certain chats. I run into such things from time to time. Especially when, after my new channel, there were many posts saying that this is what she deserved, she earned all of it. And my first reaction was: "I did not deserve this."

And I thought: "Now I will prove to them that I did not deserve it." And then I think, why the hell would I prove to someone that I did not deserve something, I'd rather spend this energy on those who understand what I am doing and why I am doing it.