This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality

by Peter Pomerantsev

Russia, with its social media squadrons, haunts these maps. Not because it is the force that can still move earth and heaven as it could in the Cold War, but because the Kremlin’s rulers are particularly adept at gaming elements of this new age, or at the very least are good at getting everyone to talk about how good they are, which could be the most important trick of all.

And then there’s England. I used to think the English were different: that if anyone in the world knew who they were, it was them, a people defined so precisely by class, accent, schools, postcodes, counties, parties and sports teams it could be hard to know, for an immigrant like myself, how to fit in. But something has shifted. An air of uncertainty underlies everything.