WORLD WAR II AS VIEWED BY GERMAN MASS-MEDIA
Introduction. The paper explores the articles in the German mass-media describing the events of World War II. Material and methods. The articles published in the German newspapers Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Welt and the Russian translation of these articles from the site ИноСМИ.ru serve as the material for the analysis. The following methods were used: content-analysis as a kind of content and semantic direction, linguistic and stylistic method in two of its variations - lexical and stylistic and lexical and semantic analysis, linguistic and pragmatic and cognitive and discursive methods. Results and discussion. Confabulated character of the articles which aim to revise the history is represented through the concepts DECEPTION and PROPAGANDA. The damaging character of the revisionist materials is intensified through the usage of the negative tactic of accusation which in the intercultural political area may not be explicitly depicted on the lexical level but be rendered from the stylistics and rhetoric of this or that genre. The destructive character of the publications is determined by the conceptual opposition of the political discourse ‘friendfoe’ and is manifested in the discussion of the events not only belonging to the past but inherent to the modern geopolitical situation. In the materials of this kind all features of the fake (deepfake) message are present which let us interpret them as functioning in the framework of the post-truth phenomenon. Conclusion. One of the most powerful weapons of the information and psychological warfare are the attempts to “deconfabulate” the history. The repertoire of information and psychological warfare’s means embraces the past events and the modern geopolitical situation. The media-discourse in general and mass-media particularly is a great instrument of forming a public opinion and transmitting these or those axiological priorities. In the context of modern information confrontation it is important to prevent the situation when the journalism of facts is substituted by the journalism of opinions. In this respect the analysis of the revisionist publications plays a great role in terms of studying the linguistic and extra-linguistic mechanisms of discrediting the past.