The State of Affairs in Russia

[Syt]

On RT.com, Nemtsov has already disappeared from the front page, except for Op-Edge: "'Nemtsov killing godsend for anybody against a strong Russia'", "Western media reaction to Nemtsov's murder is 'absolutely outrageous'".

And there's a picture of the memorial march, but the only caption reads: "Photo of the Day: Police say at least 21,000 people attended the event. Opposition member Sergey Davidis said nearly 50,000 people participated in the march."

[KRonn]

Putin has said he's going to do all he can to find the killer. So he should be meeting with OJ Simpson for advice.

[Berkut]

WEll, on the plus side Putin is almost certainly uniquely capable of finding the killer quickly...

[Archy]

Putin has said he's going to do all he can to find the killer. So he should be meeting with OJ Simpson for advice.

He'll do  all to find the killer to congratulate him.

[Valmy]

He might be able to turn it into a totalitarian state, but that takes an enormous amount of energy. 

Is an old school totalitarian state possible in this day and age?  I mean besides North Korea which had the advantage of being set up before the Internet.

Maybe in the future once governments get a firmer grip on electronic communications.

Seems to me Putin, and his imitators, are just doing the best they can under the circumstances.

[Syt]

http://tass.ru/en/russia/780676

Russian lawmaker says pro-American opposition in Russia is weak

The chairman of the Russian State Duma foreign policy committee claims existence of Russian Maidan scenario

MOSCOW, March 3. /TASS/. Scarcely any mass movement in Russia is ready to turn into a mouthpiece of the US, believes Alexey Pushkov, the chairman of the Russian State Duma foreign policy committee.

He said in an interview published by the Izvestia daily Tuesday that several scenarios of an 'orange revolution' in Russia had been drafted. Among them he named a scenario of the Russian Maidan, with Moscow's Bolotnaya square regarded as a stand-in for Kiev's Independence Square.

"Participants in the Bolotnaya square protests (organized by Russia's off-parliament political opposition - TASS) were viewed as a promising movement that needed informational and political support," Dr. Pushkov said.

"Today the US maintains close contacts with the radical pro-American opposition personified by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garri Kasparov, Mikhail Kasyanov and others," he said. "Their political prospects in Russia are dismal but the US simply doesn't have a better choice."

"Not a single mass movement in Russia is prepared to take on the role of a US mouthpiece," Dr. Pushkov said with confidence.

He said the situation looked bizarre when Khodorkovsky de facto announced the start of his presidential race at the headquarters of Freedom House, which is 90% financed by the US Department of State.

"This means he positions himself from the very beginning as a political stuntman of the US and this surely won't boost his popularity in Russia," Dr. Pushkov said. "These people are simply used to careen the political situation here in this country."

Last but not least, Washington has been probing into a possibility of economic destabilization in Russia, which might bring to existence mass protest movements and call President Vladimir Putin's authority and influence into question, he said.

"It's true that such scenarios do exist but the big question is to what degree they are implementable," Dr. Pushkov said.

This is bizarre. There's people in Russian pockets in most Western countries (FN, some lunatic fringe in Germany, etc.), but it would seem bizarre if not insane for a parliament speaker in those countries in this day and age to go and determine that while Russia is angling for deposing the current governments and desperately seeking allies for this, there's nothing to fear, because the brave French/Germans will not fall for the puppets of the Kremlin. This hysterical paranoia mindset just seems so alien in 2015.

[DGuller]

He might be able to turn it into a totalitarian state, but that takes an enormous amount of energy. 

Is an old school totalitarian state possible in this day and age?  I mean besides North Korea which had the advantage of being set up before the Internet.

Maybe in the future once governments get a firmer grip on electronic communications.

Seems to me Putin, and his imitators, are just doing the best they can under the circumstances.

You're assuming that access to Internet necessarily counters propaganda.  I think that's a delusion.  The goal of the propaganda is not to fool people directly, but to make them unwilling to seek or accept the truth, and Putin shows how that can work spectacularly well.  There are plenty of Russian brain-washed zombies roaming the Internet.  They just think that everyone not consuming Putin's propaganda is the brainwashed one.

[Valmy]

You're assuming that access to Internet necessarily counters propaganda.  I think that's a delusion.  The goal of the propaganda is not to fool people directly, but to make them unwilling to seek or accept the truth, and Putin shows how that can work spectacularly well.  There are plenty of Russian brain-washed zombies roaming the Internet.  They just think that everyone not consuming Putin's propaganda is the brainwashed one.

True but the spell would break as they get screwed by a policy or bureaucratic bungle.  Then people would want an alternative narrative and it would be out there.  If Putin can keep everybody happy then, sure.  But no state has ever managed that despite its best efforts.  Well ok maybe Monaco or someplace where the rulers know every citizen personally.

[DGuller]

True but the spell would break as they get screwed by a policy or bureaucratic bungle.

I don't think so.  There are always ways to believe that whatever your suffering is, it was caused by the opponents of the person actually bringing about the suffering, or their rogue subordinates.  Russians already know full well that their government is full of sociopath crooks, and yet that doesn't prevent 86% of them from supporting the head sociopath crook.

[Syt]

Meanwhile, the propaganda aimed at foreign consumption (RT leading the field) doesn't seem so much to tout the Gospel According to Vladimir, but rather obfuscates and blurs what's truth and what's spin with the aim of creating a climate of distrust of all media - and paid cohorts and useful idiots in the comments sections of news sites are fostering the climate of not believing anything the media say on certain topics, or that all media have a dark agenda and shouldn't be trusted (unless you're a self proclaimed harbinger of truth with a YouTube channel of badly edited videos that unmask the TRUE TRUTH).

[Syt]

There are always ways to believe that whatever your suffering is, it was caused by the opponents of the person actually bringing about the suffering, or their rogue subordinates.

A popular saying in the Third Reich was, "Wenn das der Führer wüsste ..." (If the Führer knew about this ...).

[Valmy]

A popular saying in the Third Reich was, "Wenn das der Führer wüsste ..." (If the Führer knew about this ...).

Hitler's management strategy actually included this, I believe.  He made sure it was hard to trace any policy directly back to him in case it proved a failure or unpopular.

[CountDeMoney]

The goal of the propaganda is not to fool people directly, but to make them unwilling to seek or accept the truth, and Putin shows how that can work spectacularly well.  There are plenty of Russian brain-washed zombies roaming the Internet.  They just think that everyone not consuming Putin's propaganda is the brainwashed one.

You've had Republicans stand up and claim there's been everything from Communists to the Muslim Brotherhood in Congress since Obama's been in the White House, and they only control both houses of Congress now.

[Valmy]

Meanwhile, the propaganda aimed at foreign consumption (RT leading the field) doesn't seem so much to tout the Gospel According to Vladimir, but rather obfuscates and blurs what's truth and what's spin with the aim of creating a climate of distrust of all media - and paid cohorts and useful idiots in the comments sections of news sites are fostering the climate of not believing anything the media say on certain topics, or that all media have a dark agenda and shouldn't be trusted (unless you're a self proclaimed harbinger of truth with a YouTube channel of badly edited videos that unmask the TRUE TRUTH).

A very internet age propaganda strategy.  Plenty of western parties use it well.

[Malthus]

Meanwhile, the propaganda aimed at foreign consumption (RT leading the field) doesn't seem so much to tout the Gospel According to Vladimir, but rather obfuscates and blurs what's truth and what's spin with the aim of creating a climate of distrust of all media - and paid cohorts and useful idiots in the comments sections of news sites are fostering the climate of not believing anything the media say on certain topics, or that all media have a dark agenda and shouldn't be trusted (unless you're a self proclaimed harbinger of truth with a YouTube channel of badly edited videos that unmask the TRUE TRUTH).

Plays also into the notion that if there are "two sides", the savvy person ought to seek the truth somewhere inbetween them - very prevelent these days. There is a positive allergy to stating that one side is more or less the good guys and the other more or less the bad guys no matter what the situation. That way the propogandist can shift the goalposts simply by persistantly making outrageous claims - sure, they are extreme, but the assumption becomes that their opponents are equally extreme and the truth lies in the middle.

Though ISIS and Putin are, between them, putting some strain on that ...