Modern Fascism Looks Like
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And I think in the case of "To put it simply, [Russia]'s going full fascist." with a couple of grains more.
After reading it again I have to say: The thread is remarkably shallow.
Its length seems overwhelming but upon further inspection makes a lot of detours into individuals then circles back to the "grand scheme of things" and (thus) in each spot takes things out of context (e.g. Putin's "I only have Ivans and Marias in my family" quote - what the Author leaves out: what was said before and thereafter, and why it was said at all: In response to some alledgedly heoric act in this war by a young boy from an ethnic minority).
I mean, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that there is some portion, even a sizable portion, of the Russian populace that supports the invasion of Ukraine. But, suppose the support is on the order of 5-10% (I have no idea what it is - more on that below). In the days before telecommunications, if you all had to go out to the town square, or heck just gossip with your neighbors, it would be easy to see that the invasion has so little support most people would just discount it entirely.
With the Internet, though, that 5-10% represents millions of people, which would make it easy to find video after video of people supporting the invasion. Worse, if you were someone on the fence about this issue (or any issue really), it's very easy to go down "the YouTube rabbit hole", see video after video of people telling you how noble the fight to "deNazify Ukraine" is, and convince yourself that all the sane people must be pro-invasion.
When it comes to present-day Russia, Putin obviously has a huge base of real support, but is it a majority? Hard to say given how opaque Russia's institutions are.
It doesn't provide a lowe bound on anything.
The methodology is a bit a of a mystery, perhaps I'm wrong to assume this poll was conducted on an unaffiliated internet property, so no connection to the opposition leader would be evident.
In any case these are the most anti-war numbers of any poll out there, and still over 50 % put the blame on Ukraine and the West.
But it does feel a little silly and betrays the point that they target Durov; a person who has had nearly all his assets seized by the Russian government and has lost his company (VK) to government control.
Telegram was his “fuck you” to the Russian authorities and they tried to ban it a bunch of times (which caused chaos for a lot of people using the cloud during those times).
I don’t think he’s some kind of Russian asset, bowing to your government does not make him complicit, Zuck is not responsible for Iraq because Facebook complies with court orders for example, and it’s hard for me not to think he’s against Russia; especially not when he’s in exile.
There are few scandals from his past that draw at least a controversial picture of Durov's morals (throwing paper money from the top of the building in the center of the city, working quietly with the FSB during the protest, deleting messages from the Telegram account of his opponent who accused his brother in firing him over a girl, and so on). He persistently keeps throwing out loosely supported accusations towards the rival messengers like Signal, Whatsapp and so on.
There was a great article in The Wired lately and following discussion on Hacker News [0]
Ahh nothing like BLACK to trigger that warm i'm-here-to-liberate-you-from-nazis-over-there feeling.
Good luck with that Putin.