President William Ruto’s fight with Standard Media Group has now reached that funny political stage where the government side is no longer trying to persuade anyone, but is simply shouting at the public and hoping volume can replace trust.

The attacks on Standard, Gideon Moi and the media house’s coverage have become so loud, so coordinated, so bitter and so easy to read that even Joseph Goebbels, the evil Nazi propagandist whose name remains tied to some of the darkest political messaging in history, would probably wake up, look at the hashtags, slap the table and order the whole operation disbanded.

Not because Goebbels was a good man, since he was not, but because even wicked propagandists understood one basic rule that Ruto’s online attack dogs seem to have missed completely.

Propaganda is not supposed to arrive in gumboots, carrying a loudspeaker, sweating badly, shouting government talking points and begging people to believe that it is just an ordinary citizen with a patriotic concern.

Good propaganda hides the hand that is feeding it, while bad propaganda comes with fingerprints, smell, birth certificate, village elder, pastor, auntie and the full State House choir humming loudly in the background.

That is where the Ruto side is failing badly, because the attacks on Standard Media Group do not look like independent public anger, they look like men who were given a message, given a hashtag, given a target and then released online without even being taught how to pretend.

It is like having sex with a woman without foreplay, because you cannot just jump into the room, remove your shoes badly, start making noise and then wonder why the whole thing has become a disaster before it even begins.

Political persuasion needs mood, timing, patience, small lies mixed with believable truths, emotional entry points and enough distance between the politician and the attack so that the public can at least pretend the message came from somewhere natural.

Ruto’s people have skipped all that and gone straight into raw shouting, which is why the whole campaign against Standard looks less like a clean political operation and more like a WhatsApp group assignment that leaked into broad daylight.

The first mistake is that the government already has a trust problem, and when a government with a trust problem starts telling people which media house not to trust, many citizens instinctively trust the media house more.

That is not because Standard Media Group is perfect, because no media house is perfect, and the issue of delayed salaries at media houses is a real labour question that deserves serious scrutiny without being turned into a State House weapon.

The point is that when the President himself starts wrestling a media house in public, then sends or inspires an army of online loyalists to push the same anger, the public does not see truth, they see panic.

A confident government does not spend days fighting headlines unless the headlines have landed somewhere painful, and a trusted government does not need hashtag boys to explain why a newspaper should not be believed.

The funniest part is that the more they attack Standard, the more they advertise Standard, because every hashtag, every insult, every bitter post and every recycled talking point tells Kenyans that something in those pages is making power uncomfortable.

This is where propaganda collapses, because the aim was to damage Standard, yet the effect is to make Standard look like the one media house annoying the government enough to force the President and his choir into open war.

Goebbels would look at this mess and ask why the messenger is louder than the message, why the campaign is more visible than the accusation, why the public can smell coordination from miles away and why every attack sounds like it was typed from the same political kitchen.

He would ask why the propaganda team forgot that citizens are not goats waiting near a fence, because Kenyans have seen too many government tricks, too many influencer campaigns, too many fake trends, too many planted narratives and too many sudden patriotic hashtags that appear exactly when power is under pressure.

A hashtag is not public opinion just because it is trending, and a government attack does not become truth just because many small accounts repeat it with different punctuation and the same emotional constipation.

That is the danger Ruto’s side does not understand, because once citizens start laughing at your propaganda, the propaganda is already dead and the only thing left is burial arrangements.

People know when a campaign is too clean, too synchronized, too angry in one direction and too desperate to shift attention from the real issue. They know when a politician is not answering questions but attacking the person asking them, and they know when a government wants media freedom only when the media is clapping like invited guests at a state function.

The smarter move would have been simple, because if Standard published falsehoods, the government could answer calmly with facts, documents, numbers, dates and corrections that citizens could judge for themselves.

Instead, the attack became personal, noisy and emotional, which made the fight look less like a correction of bad journalism and more like a wounded presidency trying to punish a media house for refusing to behave.

That is why the whole operation is funny, because the people attacking Standard keep behaving like men who think shouting “propaganda” loudly enough will make citizens forget that they are also doing propaganda.

You cannot accuse a media house of propaganda while running a visible propaganda campaign against it, because that is like accusing someone of stealing your shoes while walking away wearing them.

You cannot tell Kenyans that Standard is being used for political interests while your own side is pushing hashtags, insults and copied anger that look like they were assembled by a committee with low blood sugar.

You cannot ask people to distrust Gideon Moi’s media house while expecting them to blindly trust a government that has already lost public confidence among many citizens through taxes, police actions, broken promises and daily arrogance from people near power.

At some point, the government must understand that credibility is not recovered by fighting newspapers, because credibility is recovered by behaving in a way that makes newspapers look unfair when they attack you.

That is the part Ruto’s propaganda wing seems unable to grasp, because they want to win a trust war without first earning trust, and they want Kenyans to believe them while they behave exactly like people who should not be believed.

Goebbels would probably tell them to go home, sleep, bathe, delete the group instructions, stop using the same emotional template and come back only after learning that propaganda is supposed to enter the mind quietly.

Right now it is entering like a drunk uncle at a funeral, shouting, stumbling, touching the microphone, blaming everyone and then wondering why even relatives are pretending not to know him.

The campaign against Standard Media Group may excite the usual praise singers, but outside that small choir, it is doing the opposite of what propaganda is supposed to do.

It is making the government look rattled, making Standard look important, making Gideon Moi look like he has touched a nerve and making Ruto’s online loyalists look like men sent to hide a fire while carrying petrol in transparent bottles.

That is not a strategy.

That is not persuasion.

That is not even serious propaganda.

That is a political bedroom disaster without foreplay, without rhythm, without patience and without shame, then the same man comes out asking why nobody is impressed.