Not sure whether this is serious, but to provide a serious answer: you can’t create a healthy democracy by spreading misinformation. Misinformation that’s aligned with your agenda might help push it in the short term, but it also undermines trust (in this case trust in what the average person is saying, since you can’t tell who genuine participants in a discussion are). In a low trust environment, people tend to gravitate toward big personalities and believe sources and make decisions based on their own gut feelings (i.e. their personal prejudices) rather than on things like people’s real experiences and accurate information from trusted institutions.
Demagogues like Putin thrive in this environment because ultimately they don’t have (or care about) solutions to the average person’s problems. They get by based on personality, stoking prejudice etc. But policies that are based on the truth and what the average person actually needs suffer.
Mika@piefed.ca 5 hours ago
Because russia is not a democracy and an average russian is staying away from politics due to learned helplessness. Because of multiple factors, even protests won’t change anything. You can call for sabotage, but that isn’t what an average person would do.
Besides, their internet is far more restricted. They don’t have access to twitter. They use vk and registration there essentially requires a gov id, 1 per citizen.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
You grow up in those countries, you’d soon learn to keep quiet.
My family was all born in mainland China, we live in the US right now, my parents keeps telling me to stop criticizing the government, as in neither the governments of of PRC and USA. Because in their mind:
dissent = trouble
shut up = safe
Which I mean, to be fair, seeing how PRC allegedly has overseas operatives and also the US’s current autocratization, they might actually have a point.
I don’t agree with that idea, but I get where they’re coming from. They lived through the Cutural revolution stuff. My dad was a kid during those times, my mom was born near the end of it, but she heard direct first hand accounts from my maternal grandparents. So… those fears gets passed on. My mom told me many times to not post anti-government views on the internet… even here in the US… 👀
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz 1 hour ago
That’s true in the US, anyone who thinks they have free speech hasn’t said anything that anyone cared about, and were asleep the entirety of 2020 and hasn’t turned on the news now that Trump’s ICE are so wildly incompetent they don’t even bother to obfuscate what they’re doing.
Those who don’t move don’t notice their chains.
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
the fact that you get Siberia’d for holding a blank poster on the street says more than enough to this end.
Mika@piefed.ca 4 hours ago
This isn’t the key factor. Every protest that has big political change goal is potentially dangerous for those who participate, in every country. That didn’t stop Ukrainians, for example.
But the thing that russian gov wouldn’t just go away. Even if 10 millions would be on the streets for like a month. Even if they defend against riot police instead of running away. The key figures would just stay till the bitter end. They would use army. And then what, an average russian doesn’t have a rifle at home. And who would you fight, an army?
At this point it’s easier to just join russian corps in Ukrainian army. At least it is organized.
But then again, they won’t get 10 mil on the streets. And they won’t resist the riot police. Russian protest is a sad view.