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 implying 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 Ukrainian 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 […]
We too are enduring “self-purification”. For example, you can no longer find any shows by Chris Hedges on YouTube. In our case the purge is completed by Corporate social media companies at the behest of government officials rather than by the government directly. It is indirect censorship for certain but its implementation further weakens the moral standing of the powers that be, as it becomes clearer and clearer that the narrative cannot withstand criticism. All of those contrary voices must be silenced.
Anyone who is against war or anti-“military-industrial-complex” is shoved right off of YouTube.