“When I was getting ready to go to the warzone, I told my father that I wanted to see the truth. I did see this truth, and I am completely unhappy with it. Someone decided to write their name in history as a great ruler. Of course, you have an idea of who I mean. But I don’t want to mention this name.”
The ‘I was never into politics’ is exactly why I have always been into politics. It affects everyone’s life, if you’re not into politics then you’ll not even know what hits you, like this guy.
Putin took some steps to strategically wreck any semblance of politics in Russia. One of his advisors, Vladislav Surkov, secretly funded a variety of opposition parties, ranging from “green” environmental parties to openly Nazi groups. They let these groups grow in an organic way before “leaking” the information that they were all funded by the state/FSB.
This type of move, and similar actions, have made true political engagement very difficult. That march, protest, Facebook group, or underground newspaper? One has no idea whether it’s legitimate grassroots movement, or purely astroturfed campaign. Unless you have significant time and resources to study the issue, it is impossible to tell.
This was the exact objective: to basically make politics inaccessible for 99% of people. Sure there will be 1% who do have a good picture of what’s going on and who try to create movements, but their voices are drowned in the confusion. The average person may simply find that it’s too difficult to participate in a meaningful way. Even someone with full intentions to learn and participate may find themselves sidelined into a fake movement and essentially neutralized from a political perspective.
And anyone who says they’re “not into politics” is obviously OK enough with the status quo to be able to not care, they’re just trying to dodge responsibility and make themselves look like helpless victims. Which, fair enough, they sort of are as a nation, but I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that Russia has been known for centuries for being an incredibly brutal and imperialist country with a penchant for genocide, and who are seemingly almost completely unable to select leaders who aren’t – in a word – psychopaths.
There’s been some polls of Russians that have shown a fair bit of overlap between the “I don’t care about politics” set and “I support the SpEcIaL MiLiTaRy oPeRaTiOn” set. Not quite a circle of a Venn diagram, but the intersection wasn’t a sliver either.