The very fact that propagandists of war criminal regimes are as responsible for the crimes as the leaders of these regimes requires international prosecution and punishment of those who are involved in fueling wars and encouraging people to war crimes.
In September, The Hague Tribunal started hearing the case of Felicien Kabuga, the owner of the Thousand Hills radio station, acting as the primary financier of the militia and political groups that perpetrated the genocide of the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda in 1994 The radio station equated people with cockroaches, fueled ethnic hatred and bears full responsibility for the massacre in Rwanda. The radio station’s guilt is proved by the fact the number of killed Tutsis was much less in the bad radio-covered areas.
Kabuga had been hiding for 26 years and living under a false name in France before he was arrested two years ago.
The trial of Félicien Kabuga could open criminal proceedings against Russian propagandists who are responsible for Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
The regular war and anti-Ukraine information propaganda, used by the Kremlin to satisfy its ambitions such as territorial expansion, conquest and ethnic cleansing, ensured the overwhelming public support of the war. Russian propaganda worked out the technologies developed and used by Goebbels in the Third Reich to guarantee the Nazi regime expansion.
Such propagandists as Olga Skabeeva and the Russian Ministry of Defense-linked Magarita Simonyan can be compared with Gala al-Misrati, a Libyan journalist, the favorite TV-host of the dictator Muammar Gaddafi. During the revolution in Libya, waving a gun on air al-Misrati promised to fight personally for the Libyan leader and kill anyone who will try to break into the Tripoli television center building. Saddam Hussein-era Iraqi propagandist Tariq Aziz was also sentenced to death after being found guilty of war crimes.
The tragic fate of al-Misrati and Goebels shows the inevitable responsibility of the totalitarian regime propagandists. No dictator can wage war without the full public support and the readiness of its soldiers to fight and die on his orders.
Julius Streicher, a German politician, journalist and publisher, known as one of the main ideologists of anti-Semitism, was the only one among the Nuremberg Tribunal defendants sentenced for propaganda, rather than for making war or genocide decisions, or participating in the crimes by himself.
Since 1923, Streicher published his own anti-Semitic newspaper, Der Stürmer, a central element of the Nazi propaganda machine.
The Nuremberg Tribunal conclusions regarding the Streicher case determine the legal reasons for the responsibility of propagandists of totalitarian regimes: in the materials of the Nuremberg Tribunal of January 10, 1946, it is written that ‘Streicher devoted himself to educate the people, cultivate murderers, feed and poison them with hatred; for 25 years he tirelessly continued this education – poisoning of mind of the people and youth of Germany’.
Significantly, his crime is probably more serious and more far-reaching than the crimes of any other accused. The consequences of this man’s crime, the effect of the poison ‘injected’ into the minds of millions and millions of young boys and girls, young men and women, can be seen even now. As a legacy he leaves nearly the whole nation, poisoned by hatred, sadism, and homicidal tendencies.
Despite the Russian propagandists’ regular calls to physically destroy the West by demonstrating failures and defects of American and European society, and emphasizing Russia’s superiority, some of them buy real estate and have vacation in Europe. Obviously, while covering these expenses they used budget money given to them either for the information propaganda or as a bribe. Thus, they should be roughly sanctioned as well in the form of confiscating property on the territory of the EU countries, banning on entering these countries and depriving the citizenship.
