Aren’t we lucky to live in a “free country” that allows far-right cranks in Arizona to strive to invalidate a lawful election with no evidence of fraud because they can’t stand losing so much that they can’t help but act like losers? Or we allow this Nazi clown to act out recently at Sea-Tac Airport (yes, the same place Amber Heard was arrested for domestic violence against her then partner in 2009):
I find it curious that this is being a called an “anti-Semitic” act, despite the fact that this man was calling for a “race war” and was pointing at a blonde white female airline employee trying to get him to shut up, telling her she was an “alien” and “reptilian” and deserved to go into a “gas chamber"; it probably shouldn't surprise anyone that he was headed to Texas, where there are a lot of "aliens" to hate. People also seem to forget what religion xenophobe and white nationalist Stephen Miller belongs to, and accusations that this was purely an “anti-Semitic” act is in my mind self-serving; after all, the Nazis committed genocide against Roma (Gypsies), as well as mass-murdering millions of Poles and Russian prisoners.
Anyways, that is what “freedom” allows people to do in this country. But when people demand freedom where it is heavily restricted, merely acting like you are off your medication (or should be on it) is probably the safest course of action when protesting against the powers that be. Let's look at three different ways in which three different countries today “handle” people protesting their rights, or for more rights.
First, there is Russia, where there seems little evidence of protest on the streets because the citizenry seems to have become used to living under regimes where human life has little value, or at least if it is someone else’s. The country seems to be on the verge of chaos if the Ukraine war continues as it does, although Ukraine is in desperate need for civilian assistance if its people are to survive the winter after Russian missiles have knocked out power stations.
The "people" in Russia may not be interested in causing too much trouble, especially for men if it means they're handed a draft notice, but Russian oligarchs, politicians, Kremlin media
mouthpieces and even a “mobster” seemingly are the ones doing all the “protesting,”
not because they care about the lives of the men being slaughtered on the
battlefield, but concern for their own if they are deemed responsible for a failed war that
has killed quite a few. One Kremlin propagandist even expressed some fear about the Hague, where Russians could be tried for war crimes against Ukrainian civilians.
Newsweek is reporting that a Russian “mob boss” named Grisha Moskovsky is expressing the fear that the use of prison inmates given the carrot of amnesty and money to serve in the mercenary Wagner Group could lead, after the war, for them to remain under arms as a storm trooper militia by an anti-Putin faction angered by his failures, and perhaps even more nationalist and eager for nuclear holocaust than he is. The Chechen war lord Ramzam Kadyrov is also accused of being a potential “gang” leader who could cause unrest in Russia. Politico has already predicted a post-Putin Russia would be a “Shakespearean knife-fight for power; unleashed regional leaders; a nuclear arsenal up for grabs.”
So if Russia is a country where the people just sit and watch what their “leaders” are doing without attempting to offer any “input” or demand accountability (I have no faith in the "ordinary" Russian), what about in Iran? Iran of course is a theocratic dictatorship masquerading “democratic” institutions as just a way to fool the citizenry into thinking they have a “voice.” If anyone actually uses their voice, the dictators just send out their thugs to silence them, or kill them. But what to do about a nation-wide protest calling for greater freedom? In Iran, people are not asking for much on the surface; after the killing of a woman who showed “disrespect” on how she wore a wearing hijab, women took to the streets demanding that hijab-wearing should be a “choice.”
These protests have morphed into opposition in general and calls for regime change, meaning ousting the theocracy and the Revolutionary Guard that is propping it up. Yesterday the Associated Press reported that the protests continue to go strong three months into it, despite the arrest of 18,000 protesters and the killing of 451 up to that point. The regime, of course, continues to blame “foreigners” for instigating and supporting the unrest, even as the Iran soccer team at the World Cup refused to sing the Iranian national anthem in apparent support of the protests:
As I noted before, the regime really has themselves to blame for this; it could have announced that the actions of the “morality police” in the killing of Mahsa Amini was unacceptable and those involved would be punished. Instead they gave their tacit support for the killing, and this proved too much for people who were already unhappy with the regime and just needed this one spark to ignite the fire.
We can probably predict how this will all end: more bloody repression before the protests begin to subside. It is difficult to see the Islamic rulers giving up power, although it is still possible that they will feel their power so threatened that they will inch toward a system where religious intolerance has a less powerful role in shaping government and social policy.
And then there is China, a country that suddenly finds itself in the midst of mass protests. However, while some protesters were calling for the ouster of Xi Jinping, these protests initially were more about his policies than a protest against the government. Because this isn’t about “freedom of speech” or regime change (although you will find those who claim they want a more democratic form of government), the Chinese government is not (yet) engaging in mass arrests, like they would do concerning the Uyghurs, whose Islamic culture the Chinese authorities are trying to eradicate by arresting all their imams. According to the BBC last year,
Many of the detained clerics faced broad charges like "propagating extremism", "gathering a crowd to disturb social order", and "inciting separatism". According to testimony from relatives, the real crimes behind these charges are often things like preaching, convening prayer groups, or simply acting as an imam.
But for ethnic Chinese, just reducing their access to “forbidden” social media platforms where they can express their discontent over regime policies is deemed sufficient. Today, however, many Chinese have decided there are just some things that are just too much to bear, and that is the ongoing “Zero COVID” policy, when there are lockdowns when just one case is found in a certain locality. Whether or not these lockdowns actually work is a matter of opinion; according to Worldometer’s numbers, China still ranks only 227 out of 230 reporting countries or territories in cases per 1 million, but most observers believe the “official” numbers to be a public relations stunt.
But as long as the regime isn’t being directly threatened, it can afford to see some sense in being “practical.” Unlike the Iranian regime, whose paranoia allowed a problem to fester and then ignite into flames, just admit that they may have gone just a little too far and pretend that they “hear” the “people.” Yesterday the AP reported that mass protests erupted after a Beijing apartment complex that was under quarantine was set ablaze and many residents died in the fire because they could get past locked doors and gates, and maybe realizing that this has upset some people might be a good idea.
After calls for Xi to resign, there have been some “modifications” in the lockdown procedures, but only just. Restrictions of movement would be reduced to allow access to food and health care, and there would be reductions in mass testing and allowances for mass transit to resume in “low infection” areas. But it was announced that the policy in general remains on the books and enforced where “necessary,” and this has again increased calls not only for Xi to step down, but communist party rule ending as well, which predictably has led to arrests of protesters who have expanded their demands.
Thus we see that China isn’t really that different from Iran at its core; its “religion” is the Communist Party, and there is no threatening its existence. So the “outlier” here is Russia, which unlike most countries with internal problems, its “protesters” are those with the most to lose, meaning the minority in government, business and the media—while ordinary people mostly just sit and watch the show because their wants and desires are subservient to the state, as they always have been in Russia.
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