Potemkin Politics

Fake actors cast as real people to manipulate the public's perception.

“Evildoers and imposters go from bad to worse, deceiving others and only fooling themselves.” II Timothy 3:13

General Grigory Potemkin deceived Catherine the Great by creating fake, prosperous Russian villages to make the Queen think Russia was prosperous.

“Those who know don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” - George Santayana

A Potemkin Village (pronounced ‘puh·tem·kin’) is a phrase German writer Georg von Helbig coined in his biography of Russian general Grigory Potemkin (AD 1739-1791).

Grigory Potemkin wished to impress his Queen, Catherine the Great. He sought to fool Catherine into thinking that an area of Russia over which Potemkin was responsible was far more prosperous than it was.

Thousands of peasants were stage-managed for this purpose. Potemkin gave the peasants better clothes and told them to wash themselves. He painted hundreds of facades in front of peasant wooden homes and shacks to cover the reality of poverty.

Since then, the phrase “Potemkin Village” has been use…