They Want You To Know They're Lying
The art of Vranyo
On August 10, 2011, a rookie scuba diver dove into Taman Bay near the ruins of the ancient Greek city Phangoria. Within minutes, at a depth of just 2 meters, he discovered two 6th-century urns. Once out of the water, he posed for a photo op proudly holding his remarkably silt-free, bisque-smooth amphorae. The diver was then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Bloggers and independent media mocked it for what it was—a farcical stunt to promote a presidential run. Phangoria was the largest Greek colony in the Black Sea region. Archaeologists surveying the area for years only found shards. Putin denied it was staged, claiming the urns had been waiting for him since the 6th century, as if predestined. State media used the discovery to depict Putin as a brave explorer capable of unearthing greatness in Russia. Two months later, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted it was a setup. It was obvious—how could anyone believe otherwise? It was done for a “good cause,” to promote Russian archaeology, tourism, and history. Peskov portrayed critics as cynical and unpatriotic, scolding them for obsessing over “insignificant details.”
If there’s a kernel of truth in every lie, as the idiom goes, what do you call it when there is not? Dostoevsky called it Vranyo. The goal is not to deceive. Vranyo is intentionally and blatantly untrue. The liar knows he’s lying, and he knows the audience knows he knows.
This is nothing new for Russians. Putin simply updated it for the 21st century. When troops lacking insignia invaded Crimea, Putin denied they were Russians despite the fact that they were speaking Russian, driving Russian vehicles, and carrying Russian-made munitions. For a decade, Putin and his officials, including Sergei Lavrov, denied any connection to the Wagner Group. After all, private military companies are illegal under Russian law. Peskov said it was total “madness” to even speculate Russia would invade Ukraine. On all accounts, Putin and his officials eventually, and matter-of-factly, claimed responsibility.
Well before his first term, Trump embraced vranyo. It started with birtherism. Once elected, the blatant falsehoods snowballed. There was Sean Spicer debasing himself over the inauguration crowd size, Sharpiegate, Trump’s “perfect call” shaking down President Zelensky, the 2020 claim Covid was “going to disappear”, and the “Big Lie” that he won the 2020 election, just to name a few.
In Trump’s second term, he was “elected by a landslide.” As with Putin, the vranyo began with petty ego-inflating fictions. With a cabinet of loyalists, it was weaponized as “justification” for policy, such as Trump’s tariffs. It spread over the body politic like gangrene. Soon, funds appropriated by Congress were denied by the executive in clear violation of the Constitution. ICE became a masked secret police, given the power of warrantless search and seizure. The vranyo expanded militarization. Lies about crime rates and protests, contradicting mountains of photos and videos, were used to deploy the National Guard and Marines to cities, against mayors’ and governors’ wishes.
With the recent public murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE, the administration told Americans not to believe what they can see with their own eyes in multiple videos from multiple angles.
Ashli Babbitt, who violently stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election, was given full military funeral honors. Good, unarmed, and sitting in her car, was gunned down and called a “fucking bitch,” by an ICE officer, outrightly ignoring protocol. Less than 2 hours after the shooting, Kristi Noem began the spin. The administration framed her as a “domestic terrorist.” J.D. Vance took to defaming Good, something he told the public to report to people’s employers if they did so about Charlie Kirk after he was murdered. The subtext is that there are different laws for those who accept the administration’s “truths” and those who do not. If you are not one of them, they can kill all of yours.
The absurdity has entered the world stage. We were told the U.S. was bombing Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean because of drug trafficking to the U.S., despite no evidence. If there were drugs on the vessels, it would most likely be cocaine headed for Europe. When the strikes were accused of being illegal in accordance with both domestic and international law, Trump invoked the laws of war. If it had been an act of “law enforcement,” then killing 123 people without due process might be illegal. But since it involved war and national security, he claimed it fell under executive authority. When the U.S. led an assault on Venezuela and captured Maduro without congressional approval, let alone consulting them, he claimed it was an act of law enforcement. It didn’t matter that these claims were incompatible.
Once Maduro was removed, he stated that the real goal of U.S. intervention was the imperialist seizure of oil. Although Venezuela has the largest oil reserves in the world, its oil is heavy crude, requiring extensive refining. Tens of billions would need to be invested in new infrastructure, and it could take at least a decade of stability before seeing any return on investment (ROI). It’s possible the administration is making claims about oil, just as it forced Ukraine to make a “deal” for rare earth minerals (which would also require a stable nation and years before any ROI), simply to create an illusion of economic gain where there is none.
Trump has claimed we need to take control of Greenland for national security. While other administrations have expressed concern about the potential threat posed by Chinese and Russian ships transiting through the region, Greenland is a Danish territory and a member of NATO. It hosts a U.S. base. It’s already a secured area without the U.S. “owning” the state of Greenland. If the U.S. wanted to pursue other security options to keep Russia and China from “Taking Greenland,” it could. The real threat may be the opposite. If Greenland were a post-NATO U.S. province, who would stop the Trump administration, which has sided with Russia even over its own intelligence agencies, from allowing Russian ships to pass through?
Examples of U.S. Vranyo are plentiful. But what’s the advantage for leaders to construct a culture of verifiably false narratives? Some people will believe the lies. But that’s a bonus, not the intention. Officials taking to the podium and parroting obvious falsehoods demonstrate loyalty. Without it, the regime would fall. People with a greater loyalty to verifiable truth out themselves as the enemy. That polarization is fuel for autocracy. At this stage, they want the opposition to loudly voice how mind-boggling and outrageous their claims are. It’s a necessary first step towards silencing them. The algorithms rejoice in the fear and anxiety. Tech billionaires and crypto bros rake in the Benjamins. The White House ballroom gets funded. Loyal citizens get further radicalized. In a world where facts are reduced to picking a side, the more aggressive the oppositional response, the easier it’s dismissed by loyalists as emotional, irrational, unpatriotic, and deranged. That’s ambrosia for trolls. The lies waste journalists’ time and energy by forcing them to address the nonsense. The more time journalists spend debunking a firehose of falsehoods, the more newsworthy topics go unmentioned. In response to the accusation of lying, the administration engages in “I know you are, but what am I?” antics, making claims that the critics are just the “fake news,” suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome. The truth gets fuzzier and less sticky under the parade of gaslighting, even for those striving to reveal it.
Then there are those who know the lies aren’t true, but are willing to play along. They’re the model citizens of illiberal states. In the USSR, Khrushchev would announce to the world that they had surpassed U.S. agriculture production by wildly absurd numbers. Taking his orders, central planners would demand that farmers meet the impossible production targets. While standing in food lines, malnourished farmers would lie to reporters with tales of their abundant crops. Leadership would claim victory. Rinse, wash, repeat. This very cycle played out in Maoist China, leading to the Great Famine, in which estimates of 30 million Chinese starved to death. Authoritarians know they have a lock on the population when they play along.
Most significantly, Vranyo gives the administration an illusion of everything Stephen Miller champions: strength, force, & power. Bending the perception of reality can make weak, unpopular leaders appear stronger than they are. It’s a show of power. The administration may even appear to have the upper hand, at least in our mind’s eye. That’s far more real to the vrun-in-chief than what your eyes see.
I think this is an astute analysis of creation of alternate reality by aspiring autocrats, cult leaders, or other sociopaths.
The question is, how do you fight it?
It will eventually run it's course once reality plays his cards, but how do you stop it before a lot of people die?