Osmanthus Cordial reviewed This is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsev
One clever but unoriginal* observation loosing its value over too much incoherent storytelling
2 stars
Being unoriginal is not the problem (as it rarely is), yet I mention it to emphasize how fundamental the theme of the book is. The problem’s with the rendition of this theme, of course. There are thematic chapters that bring different stories together, but it progresses from being connected by a question (or two) to more and more elaborate free rants. “Populism? Here’s everything I associate with populism in our perishing context!” I understand that storytelling can be a good way of communicating ideas—but it’s not the sole one. Pomeranstev is right in his method: not any single story could explain the complexity of the post-Truth landscape, so there’s no point in telling them thoroughly (as he decided to end the very first storyline—by directly telling readers to go see what it resolved into), but in telling them that poorly (as with the tragedy of Syrian civil war told in …
Being unoriginal is not the problem (as it rarely is), yet I mention it to emphasize how fundamental the theme of the book is. The problem’s with the rendition of this theme, of course. There are thematic chapters that bring different stories together, but it progresses from being connected by a question (or two) to more and more elaborate free rants. “Populism? Here’s everything I associate with populism in our perishing context!” I understand that storytelling can be a good way of communicating ideas—but it’s not the sole one. Pomeranstev is right in his method: not any single story could explain the complexity of the post-Truth landscape, so there’s no point in telling them thoroughly (as he decided to end the very first storyline—by directly telling readers to go see what it resolved into), but in telling them that poorly (as with the tragedy of Syrian civil war told in such broad strokes)—this do a disservice to the whole enterprise. This could be a lot more theoretic, and it’s not.