Comment by H8crilA
2 years ago
Ah yes, just like in Russia we all know someone who was put in the trunk of a car by the FBI and driven around the forest just because they didn't want to pay up to the local director and his network of cronies. Or we all know of a prominent local case of a murderer or rapist that was released from prison (without any legal basis), then went on to fight a war for 6 months, then came back to our city with new military experience, now knowing how to handle rifles, grenades and man portable rocket launchers, and with severe PTSD.
/s
You honestly don't remember when people were being snatched off the street in unmarked vans during the BLM protests under Trump? It was caught on video several times.
https://www.npr.org/2020/07/17/892277592/federal-officers-us...
Under Trump? The president we voted out? Let's have the same conversation when Putin is no longer president.
We arrest journalists all the time in the USA. You just don't hear about it much.
https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/reporter-arrest...
This is under Biden. Why shut such a conversation down?
I am Russian and personally I know nobody with the former or the latter experience.
I don't doubt such cases exist somewhere out there. But the prevalence of such revelations is from people re-posting emigrant press, who often do not have any firsthand Russia experience for a few years now.
> personally I know nobody with the former or the latter experience
I have personally received threats of having such experience, from a director of the company I was working for at that time. Happened in Moscow around 2010. The director was from FSB, unfortunately the company forgot to mention that detail in the job ad.
> emigrant press, who often do not have any firsthand Russia experience
LOL. The reason you only read about cases like that in emigrant press, local journalists don't want to be murdered in a forest.
> local journalists don't want to be murdered in a forest
I can see this pronounced difference between Palestinean journalists and journalists specializing in Russia.
The former are present on the ground and fall victim to the current military conflict.
The latter are comfortable writing about Russia from their rented Israeli or German flats, while not setting the foot in Russia in years. That would be way too dangerous. Unsurprisingly they are not having much cred with actual Russians who do live there.
Not to mention setting their foot in the area of the conflict and having a firsthand experience of what happens there on the Russian side of the front. That would be an absolute taboo.
Most Americans knowledge of Russia is based on movies depicting the Yeltsin era during the 90s. For them Moscow is like a giant prohibition era Chicago in a cyberpunk scenario.
Fast forward to 2020s - the gangs are now reorganized under the Siloviki, the "strong man". Methods have changed from being shot in the street to being defenestrated. Meanwhile the state uses beatings and barrier troops to enforce military discipline at war. It also castrates and starves POWs and performs organized, list-based murder on the territories that it occupies.
I could go on and on, but yeah. Russia fundamentally hasn't changed in the past ~few hundred years (since its founding really), unlike countries in Europe. As the world moved forward some things remained unchanged, such as preemptive compliance, learned helplessness, lack of civil society, and the culture of violence, ranks, racism and humiliation.
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