Some time ago, the Tibetan Dalai Lama visited Tallinn. He has been here a couple of times before, always drawing ire from the Chinese government. This time, the reaction was to drop a minister’s planned visit to China, something else may be in reserve yet. But this is not the point that I wanted to write about. Rather, today’s Postimees (a major newspaper in Estonia) featured an 8-page inlay portion “purchased by China”.
Felt like 1982 or so. As a child, I started to read early and took on newspapers early as well. Growing up on Soviet-time literature kept me believing the Commie stuff for quite a while (honest!) – on the other hand, the Soviet newspapers were partially responsible for bringing me back to reality. They were just far too stuffed with unreal propaganda to be believed. Having grown into a full-fledged anti-Communist since, the today’s experience was like having an old nightmare suddenly come back. It was a book example of red propaganda in all its exaggeration.
Looking back to the days in the early 80s, I need to give some praise to Estonian media of the times. They occasionally found ways to put some twist into it, to be found by those willing to read between the lines. One of the classic examples was the famous “Sitta kah!” cartoon during the 80s phosphorite war (the Soviets planned to start mining phosphorite in Eastern Estonia, the result was estimated to have turned 1/3 of the country into waste; this was the first large-scale, national protest movement which contributed heavily to the larger events following soon after – see the Wikipedia article for more). The cartoon featured a farmer shoveling dung to his field – with the biggest chunk looking like the silhouette of Estonia. “Sitta kah!” can be literally translated as “let’s add some shit” (to the field), but the common meaning of the phrase is rather “f… it!” or “to hell with that!” (I think the Wikipedia translation – “just shit” – does not convey the full meaning). The cartoon caused a huge scandal, some ‘comrades’ were reprimanded, but the damage was done.
Among other things, this was the time of a kind of revelation – many Estonians who had been sedated by Soviet propaganda suddenly saw through it. And even if 25 years have passed, many of them are still alive and active. The today’s uproar in Estonian media proved that they largely shared the same “WTF???” moment with me.
I’m afraid that the Chinese government could not have picked a more inappropriate place in Europe to publish a paper like that. If some people were indifferent or … er, pragmatic (in political context, this usually means cynical cowardice) before that, they were convinced towards a totally different set of opinions from what the Chinese wanted to achieve. More than likely, the publication of the paper did more harm to the Chinese governmental interests than the visit of Dalai Lama. And Postimees has been hit by a far worse amount of virtual manure than what was featured in the cartoon (some critics ask if they would also be willing to publish stories purchased by the Kremlin – like how the mass deportations of 1941 and 1949 were actually tourist events…). If this is not a blatant example of journalism for sale, then what it is?
