Russian security forces detain a protester in Moscow on Sunday. CREDIT: AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko.
I have written many times about the current rounds of draconian legislation here in uStates, in an attempt to quell dissent and protest. As if the legislation isn’t bad enough, of course, there’s the constant narrative of lies coming out of the U.S. Regime, about protesters being paid and other such bullshit. It looks like Russia is going with the very same playbook, which is hardly surprising. What is surprising? The poisonous irony in the rather belated statement by the Tiny Tyrant’s regime about the treatment of Russian protesters:
Late Sunday evening, American time, President Donald Trump’s administration addressed the crackdown in a written statement bathed in irony. “The United States strongly condemns the detention of peaceful protesters throughout Russia on Sunday,” the statement from acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner — which was not issued until 12 hours after the first reports of mass arrests in Moscow — read.
“The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve a government that supports an open marketplace of ideas, transparent and accountable governance, equal treatment under the law, and the ability to exercise their rights without fear of retribution,” Toner added.
Gee, isn’t that nice? Odd how none of that applies to American citizens, or American government, for that matter. The sheer weight of hypocritical irony in that should have been enough to flatten the white house and drive it a mile deep into the earth.
Toner’s words also contrast with Trump’s own pattern of rhetoric and behavior toward dissenters in his own country.
The weekend protests across Russia are not a particularly close analog to the anti-Trump demonstrations that American activists have staged since his election victory. Alexei Navalny, the prime mover behind the anti-Putin protests, is himself a nationalist hardliner whose political platform includes ethnocentric promises akin to Trump’s own stances on immigration, economics, and law enforcement.
But it is nonetheless odd to see criticism of Putin’s crackdown from the government of a man who has called for a criminal investigation into the Movement for Black Lives and encouraged his supporters to beat up protesters.
At rallies throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump relished opportunities to bash protesters — typically pausing his stump speech to peer into the crowd and ask his supporters to remove hecklers by force.
[…]
Today, Trump’s administration is also pursuing serious felony charges against hundreds of people who were rounded up in Washington, D.C., on Inauguration Day after a smaller group of black-clad Antifa protesters smashed a few shop windows and, in a handful of cases, scrapped with police.
Many of those facing felony charges were simply nearby when police “kettled” everyone who happened to be within a few blocks of the stores targeted by the radical fringe. Several journalists were arrested and charged with felonies that were eventually dropped by prosecutors.
Many of Trump’s allies share his disdain for dissidents. Milwaukee County Sheriff Dave Clark has said that protests “must be quelled” because “there is no legitimate reason to protest the will of the people.”
State-level Republican lawmakers in several states have introduced legislation curtailing the right to protest, usually by raising the criminal penalties marchers may face and broadening the scope of rioting statutes.
[…]
Trump’s team insists that such street-level dissent is not sincere but rather a synthetic display manufactured by wealthy liberal donors. The Kremlin is now saying the same about the Navalny-led protesters, many of whom were reportedly in their teens.
Sunday’s anti-Putin rallies were only as large as they were, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, because marchers were “promised financial rewards in the event of their detention by law enforcement agencies.”
Aww, isn’t that sweet, it’s the same story. Think Progress has the full story.
The food is better in the US. And, um…. Yeah, the food really is better.
And Trump doesn’t pose topless in official photos! See. Lots of differences!
Well, they’re manhandling white guys…. So it’s probably not the US.
And the cops aren’t carrying military weapons. Weird to think that Russian riot cops seem less nasty than American riot cops.
Marcus:
You forget the key thing: protester. Here in uStates, the manhandling extends to all shades of skin when it comes to protests!
Kengi:
Let us all be extremely thankful for that one.
Eeeeeeuuwww! I know this is fat shaming, but can we please not talk about a naked The Donald!
Fun fact: The Russian protesters, if convicted of their hooliganism charge, face a fine and/or 15 days in jail.
The inauguration protesters are looking at 10 years.
Something is seriously fucked up when Russia is softer on its protesters than you are!
But it’s the US using Russia’s tactics, as Russia has been arresting protestors since forever. Also, just look at what’s happening in Belarus right now. It seems more like the US is falling into the habits and methods of other authoritarian governments around the world. Plus heavier sentencing, that’s a good one.
Although:
This is usually followed by the close and watchful eye of Mother Russia for the rest of one’s life.
You say that like you think it’s somehow different in the US. Do you think that anybody even tangentially related to any of the recent protests in the US -- convicted or not -- isn’t already on a bunch of watchlists?
Dunc
They’re probably (pretty much definitely) on watchlists, true. I just have a hard time believing that the US is actually somehow harder on protestors than Russia, I guess, and looking for excuses. There was a recent suspected assassination in a country not far away of a well-known dissident, something that still happens more than in the US. That we know of publicly, of course. That was more the direction of my comment, rather than not going deeply enough into the non-jailtime consequences of protesting in the US. Sorry for being unclear and/or obtuse in my writing.
Yeah, every time Canadian intelligence experiences a leak, we find out they’ve been scrutinizing environmentalists, First Nations, former Occupy organizers, or Black Lives Matter more than they’ve been following the Literally Nazi Soldiers of Odin.
When the US assassinates people*, they take out the whole village. And then come back for their families…
(*As they do quite frequently… They just call them “terrorists”, rather than “dissidents”. Of course, Russia also calls the people they kill “terrorists”. “Dissident”, in this context, just means “someone they’ve killed that we liked” -- it’s a propaganda term. Given the history of the US supporting all sorts of horrible people for all sorts of horrible reasons, that doesn’t really carry much weight with me.)