Depoliticized authoritarianism

This is a really interesting interview with the Russian sociologist Greg Yudin, who is apparently an extremely brave man, as he’s currently a professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Yudin argues that Putin maintains power by doing everything he can to depoliticize ordinary life in Russia:

The most important thing to keep in mind is that Russia is a completely depoliticized country. People generally don’t want to have anything in common with politics. There is an incredible contempt and disdain for all kinds of politics just because Russians are completely certain that there is no possible way to change anything through politics, that no change is possible in general. So for that reason, people prefer to lead their private lives. They have opportunities to do that because most of them are better off under Putin. Any kind of political activity is all just complete nonsense to a vast majority of Russians. If you believe in extraterrestrials, that’s at least interesting. If you are into politics, you’re silly. Particularly for people in business, that’s a complete no go. I always say the best way to spoil the party is to start talking about politics in Russia. You will never be invited again.

Against this background, I think it might become a little bit easier to understand the perception of what is going on. The vast majority is either in denial of what is going on in Ukraine or assume this attitude of passive support that the narrative produced by the state is enough for them to keep leading their everyday lives. This narrative tells them, This is not particularly serious, everything’s under control. It was necessary because it was a threat, and a threat means, of course, the destruction of everyday lives, and we don’t want that. You have people who are militarized and amplified by the state media. On the other hand, you have people who are vehemently against the war, protesting. But in the middle, you have the vast majority, which is still in denial and trying to stick to those stories because it brings reconciliation.

There’s what I call the “few months” theory. People keep believing that in two or three months, all the sanctions will be lifted, the war will be over, and Ukrainians will be, of course, happy with being part of Russia.

Analogies are by their nature inexact, but how different is this really than the narrative the Bush administration pushed regarding the invasion of Iraq?

Ukraine is full of Nazis/Iraq is full of Islamic terrorists and weapons of mass destruction

This country is a threat to our way of life so it must be purged and purified

Ukrainians/Iraqis will welcome their invaders with open arms once the Nazis/terrorists have been purged

The operation is going well although the next few months — six to be precise — will be crucial

Dissent is treason

Yes I realize that Russia in 2022 is a far more authoritarian nation than the USA in 2004. I realize that a neocon scheme to transform Saddam Hussein’s Iraq into a model liberal democracy by invading it is not identical to Vladimir Putin’s scheme to reabsorb “the Ukraine” into Greater Russia by invading it.

Again, I realize the analogy is not exact: that’s what it means for something to be an analogy. But the first time I made this analogy a couple of weeks ago, I was struck by the massive resistance to it by so many commenters, even here in this hive of anti-American scum and villainy.

Another thing that interests me is how a depoliticized authoritarian Russia might be a precursor to a somewhat similarly “depoliticized” gradual takeover of the American political system by our own very exceptional brand of authoritarian ethno-nationalist revanchist theocrats.

What authoritarians bank on is that the vast majority of people don’t want to be hassled in terms of their ordinary lives. Sure you have to have a core of true believers, but the populace as a whole can be successfully managed if you just convince most of them that all politicians are liars, and both sides are really the same because the opposition just offers another (worse) brand of authoritarianism, plus don’t forget the threat posed by Them, with Them being the most convenient folk devils of the moment.

At this moment the folk devils are the “groomers;” 15 minutes ago it was the Critical Race Theorists; a little before that it was the Caravans, and so on and so on. The important thing is that good ordinary volk must be protected from the contamination that threatens the purity of the body politic:

What I find more disturbing is that this denazification narrative turns into an operational concept for the troops on the ground, and that’s very, very worrying. I mean, we already see what it leads to because once the troops perceive the situation as a battle against Nazis, they start doing what they were doing in Bucha. They were trying to purge, to purify, to clean the land from the Nazis. And since Ukrainians have resisted, it obviously implies that they, too, seem to be nazified. Therefore soldiers have to denazify them completely, meaning purges. And I don’t know if you had a chance to read it, but the main news agency, RIA Novosti, just published an article by Timofei Sergeitsev, who basically says precisely that, We were wrong about Ukrainians: They turned out to be much more nazified than we expected, and therefore they have to pay the price.

That is dangerous, once again, because it gets transferred into the operational concept on the ground. But it also infects Russian society because this kind of narrative becomes more and more acceptable. We heard about those crazy ideas, the ideas of the Nazis in Ukraine and Nazis in the government, but it never took such a terrible turn until now. It never was like, We have to purify the whole 40 million people near us. This is a Nazi vision of national purity, of attaining the purity of a whole nation through force.

It turns out the Democratic party is run by a cabal of globalists dedicated to trading child sex slaves with each other (Nearly half of all Republicans now believe this). What sort of measures need to be taken to stop something like this from happening?