oppression AND tyranny

RIGA, Latvia — There was a message to all Russians in the first cases under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hunt for what he calls “scum and traitors.”

That message is that no one is too small to escape notice.

Authorities arrested an Interior Ministry technician for talking privately on the phone. They also nabbed people holding blank placards inferring opposition to the war; a woman wearing a hat in Ukraine’s yellow-and blue colors, and a Siberian carpenter in Tomsk named Stanislav Karmakskikh who was holding a poster of an 1871 Vasily Vereshchagin artwork called “The Apotheosis of War.”

A popular food blogger, Nika Belotserkovskaya, was among the first three to face charges under Russia’s law against “fake” war news after her Instagram feed went from truffles and rosé to posts about Ukraine refugee children. (She is outside Russia.)

The speed of Russia’s transformation to Soviet-style “self-purification” has been astonishing. When Russia invaded Ukraine last month, state TV went to wall-to-wall propaganda blaming Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” and “nationalists.” Now, shadowy pro-Putin figures are daubing the words “traitor to the motherland” on the doors of peace activists and others.

A pile of animal excrement was left outside the door of St. Petersburg activist Daria Kheikinen on Friday, and a severed pig’s head and an anti-Semitic slogan was left Thursday at the door of Alexei Venediktov, editor in chief of the now-disbanded liberal radio station Echo of Moscow. The station was forced to close earlier this month by state-owned Gazprom, which controlled its board.

Websites with names have sprung up encouraging Russians to denounce “traitors,” “enemies,” “cowards” and “fugitives” who oppose the war.

One of the first three people charged Russia’s tough wartime censorship law was Marina Novikova, a 63-year-old pensioner with 170 Telegram followers. A day after the invasion, she fixed her gaze on the camera, a lock of red hair flopped over one eye. “Those who want to think and can think will be able to get out of darkness,” she said from the closed Russian nuclear city Seversk (formerly Tomsk-7).

In what she called a “shock psychotherapy” session, she said Russians “all approved the war in Ukraine. This is our silent, total agreement.”

Others have headed from the borders. Actors, celebrities, business executives, singers, dancers, writers. IT workers and independent journalists are among those who have left Russia.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/03/26/russia-media-putin-ukraine/
 
Kirill Martynov, political editor of Novaya Gazeta, was denounced as a traitor and dismissed recently by two universities where he taught two philosophy courses. A parent had heard him tell students that civilians were being killed in Ukraine.

Martynov, who later left Russia, fears the purges are just getting started, amid deepening social tensions over the war.

“Russian authorities and people who support the war need to find someone who is guilty, because when society and the economy is collapsing, you have to find some enemy to take responsibility,” he said.

“There will be a kind of hunt for traitors in the next months and we’ll see a lot of criminal prosecutions, because they need some explanation of what is happening in Russia and, if Russia is so great and Putin is such a wise person, why is life in Russia so bad now,” he added.
 
But there is a thread of messianic rhetoric from top Russian officials, pro-Kremlin journalists, religious figures and academics, laying out the mission to revive Russian greatness. They revile Western liberalism and applaud conservative, authoritarian orthodoxy.

A prominently featured article on state-owned RIA Novosti news site by conservative commentator Pyotr Akopov bore the headline” “Russia of the future: Forward to the USSR.” He wrote that “the spirit of Russian history, the spirit of our ancestors gives us a chance not just to atone for the collapse of the Soviet Union. It gives us a chance to fix it through creation, through the rebirth of the great Russia.”

Calling for new Russocentric thinking, he argued that Russian intellectuals and oligarchs were mental slaves of the West, who wanted to copy it and reform Russia.
 
“What does this mean?” tweeted historian Ian Garner, who specializes in the study of Russian propaganda. “In sum: a rooting out of anyone accused of being ‘un-Russian’ in thinking or culture.”

Olga Irisova, editor in chief of independent media outlet Riddle, said that Putin’s call for Russia’s self-purification marked an ominous turning point, making it dangerous to oppose the war. (Irisova is outside Russia, and the Riddle website is still operating.)

“Even my acquaintances who are still in Russia are scared to speak out now,” Irisova said. They’re scared even to talk to people about the war because they believe that other people might report them to the authorities or just might call them traitors.”
 
But one protester, Valetin Belayev, sees a sliver of hope from his home in Kazan, 510 miles east of Moscow. “Now Russia is at a crossroads,” he said. “Either we will sink into the abyss of a hopeless nightmare, or we will be able to avoid this scenario.”

“We’re at a point where history could go in completely different directions,” he continued, “and all of us now have a personal responsibility for what the future of our country and the world will be like.”
 
btw Australia AND Canada are wonderful countries

neither oppressive NOR tyrannical

it's a shame that posters around here are too obtuse or blinded by ideology to see this
 
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R.5c529f24ae9c48a22d82e11e4dbae39e
 
btw Australia AND Canada are wonderful countries

neither oppressive NOR tyrannical

it's a shame that posters around here are too obtuse or blinded by ideology to see this

Australian put up literal camps and would not let their citizens travel beyond 7 I'm of their house

Canada wouldn't allow non compliers to leave their country, while arresting, assaulting, and freezing the bank accounts of peaceful protesters.

You are a fool of epic proportions
 
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