Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I'm really not so sure JM, at least for a large enough percentage of the Russian population. Put it another way here in the West throughout our lives we all have access to many different political, historical and social narratives and information and yet we have large chunks of people who fervently believe in their Truth and Side, whether that be Fox news or the Guardian. Hell, we have people and not just Americans who believe trump was robbed of his second term, others that believe that vaccines give you hair cancer, new world orders, world economic forum lizards, too many facists around or not enough. And it's not only on the Right either, the Left are just as bad, though both are convinced the Other Side is worse. There will be enough Westerners out there who either believe putin and Russia or at least want to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Now imagine you grew up in a society where things on the belief side were far more sure, where you only heard one narrative, one politic, one history. Going against that will be significantly more difficult, when the very idea of going against it is a "sin".

It can be even simpler than that. The vast majority of people want the same very basic things. To have a life, settle down, have kids, some comfort and a little left over for a few luxuries and no stress. Promise them that and you have them. Promise them that you will defend that and you have them. Promise you will destroy those who would take those things away and you have enough who will kill to support you.

It didnt require Russian propaganda and given how clumsy and amateur hour their propaganda is I'd be surprised if they had that much influence. During the Cold War Marxism was a lot more popular beyond the Soviet Union and backed by same, yet didn't lead to the both sides/whataboutism we see today.

IMHO the majority of this echo chamber divide in the West is coming almost entirely from within, from our post colonial post WW2 history and focus, the 60's counterculture, with a large side order of human nature massively amplified by the rise of social media and commercial vested interests that want to divide and label people to make more profits. EG Facebook having a couple of dozen genders/sexualities has eff all to do with "progressiveness" and everything to do with getting an ever finer demographic focus for advertisers. "I'm a cisgender Queer two spirit they/them meat eater hillwalker and I buy more crap I don't need from Alibaba than Amazon!". We can sell that...

The "post modernism" stuff that originated in French philosophy and really kicked off in US campuses(as did identity politics as the US tried to come to terms with her stained past in race relations) in the 90's where many of the media content producers of today hailed from added to this nothing is really objectively True nihilism in much of Western thought and much of it went mainstream. A position Russia and the rest of the world outside the West never got on board with. The Islamic world doesn't think like this, the Asian world doesn't, neither does Africa and areas like South America are a mashup of both positions, but mostly the non Western.

Then we had the aftermath of WW2 and The fall of European overseas empires and the bad hangover from that. Nationalism, even national pride started to get short shrift, first in Germany for obvious reasons, but from the 60's onward that spread further to the other ex colonists and as part of the multicultural politic coming out of that colonisation, even in the face of its obvious failures*. Ireland came very late to this party as we hadn't been obvious colonisers, were very traditional and conservative and multiculturalism only came to us in the last 25 years. Russia never came to the party. It was already an empire and one that had grown out of WW2 and even with communism remained true to the past and conservatism in one way and very "modernist" in another. Until that came down with the Wall. Their confidence took a wobble and putin saw at as a calamity and many Russians similarly, but they never really lost their empire and conservatism(and their religion) came back in double quick time.

Outside of the basic human level found in people everywhere of wanting you and yours to be safe and get on in life, there are fundamental differences between the the psyche of the West and that of pretty much everywhere outside of it and that includes Russia. They don't need to prepare the ground among their own people and see ours as weak and indecisive and "decadent"(putin uses that word a lot in his dialogue against the West).

*Russia/ The USSR was and is multicultural but in very different ways to the Western form of the last fifty years. Much more like the multiculturalism of the Caliphate or Rome. IE you can be different ethnically/racially and that's fine, but you are Russian/Soviet first. You have to speak Russian in officialdom and business, are ruled from Moscow, have to follow our laws, mores and interests and there is a pecking order and any criticism and resistance to these rules and you're in trouble.