The popular American think tank Atlantic Council published a report on May 3, which touches upon a #SutNikol action initiated by the Armenian public activists Narek Malyan, Narek Samsonyan, Arthur Danielyan and Konstantin Ter-Nakalyan.
The DRFLab of the Atlantic Council does not often refer to the processes taking place in Armenia, the previous publication was written more than a year ago, during the first days of the revolution. The attention to this very action, which has not been a matter of hot discussions in Armenia, is surprising, but more surprising are, the manipulative tools that were used by writers to come the conclusions they needed.
The article states that these four public and media activists have been making unilateral, false, and splitting statements about political developments in order to mislead the public. It is noteworthy that this statement itself is groundless and there is no evidence for such a claim.
Instead, in order to make publication seem serious and have scientific similarity, statistical studies, infographics are used, which are incompatible with the event. There is an impression that experts have had difficulties when trying to find the IP address of the websites managed by these public figures.
Finally, two facts stand out from the rest and are worth taking into consideration: Arthur Danielyan stands for the prohibition of Gardasil use in Armenia, which according to the authors, is nothing but a Russian trend and Narek Samsonyan’s website domain was registered in Russia. Based on these two facts, Atlantic Council experts concluded that the #SutNikol movement is guided by Russia, which is simply not logical.
There is no established political opposition in Armenia, based on this, there are no obstacles for Atlantic Council experts to overestimate the restricted actions of these four activists and serve as a major influence on society and represent them as a main opposition.
According to the logic of this article, readers should come to the main conclusion. Nikol Pashinyan’s opposition is guided by Russia.
The article can be considered a successful attempt to make Nikol Pashinyan pro-western, especially in the case of these instruments the West neither provides Armenia with a guarantee of security, nor with economic or other impetus, but rather a manipulative article is being published in a popular periodical. It is necessary to follow this process to see whether it will be continuous, that is, whether it was an experimental shots or a component of political development.
Aghasi Yenokyan
Source: 168.am
