| 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 6 |
|
(
2010), authoritarian leaders of Arab countries often resorted to similarly vague
accusations because such rhetoric complicates refuting charges.
During this period, the pro-government media systematically used anti-Western
conspiracy theories to discredit the opposition and politically active NGOs. Such
“
theories” were represented in various genres, such as in pseudo-analytic television
programs like Mikhail Leontiev’s Odnako, “investigative” NTV documentaries that
sought to compromise regime opponents, and shows like “Explorations of Historical
Secrets” that purport to uncover sinister plots. In most cases, television stories about
conspiracies, regardless of their genre, were presented in similar styles utilizing huge
volumes of reliable facts intermixed with some dubious assumptions, accompanied by
rapid-fire narration and sensationalist tones.
”
Rocking the Boat” for the Money of the ”Washington Obkom”
During the 2011-12 election campaigns, network activism, a growing volunteer
movement to prevent election fraud, and post-election mass protests became serious
challenges for Putin’s authoritarian regime. As one of the main counter-moves, he
intensified the use of conspiracy theories in which opposition activists were accused of
carrying out the instructions of foreign enemies, especially the U.S. State Department or,
more broadly and metaphorically, the “Washington Obkom,” which sought to “rock the
boat” and destabilize Russia.2
Before the 2011 parliamentary elections, among the main targets of pro-
government conspiracy theorists were Alexei Navalny and Golos, an election monitoring
NGO. In trying to discredit Navalny, who launched an Internet-based corruption
investigation against high-standing officials and famously dubbed United Russia the
“
party of crooks and thieves,” pro-government opponents focused on his half-year
fellowship at Yale University, where he allegedly was trained how to mobilize mass
protests to overthrow a government. In a similar way, Golos was portrayed as an
organization serving the anti-Russian interests of its foreign donors by systematically
collecting and publishing information about electoral violations with the aim of
negatively portraying the authorities and election commissions and subsequently
undermining public confidence in the Russian political system.
Since the parliamentary elections, conspiracy theories have become almost the
main ideological weapon for Putin’s supporters. They are used to de-legitimize mass
protests and protest voting. Such conspiracy narratives typically depict Russia’s
heterogeneous opposition as a single entity, easily amenable to manipulation by bribing
its leaders, who in turn are instructed by the “Washington Obkom” and color revolution
guidebooks (most infamously the work of American political scientist Gene Sharp).
Putin himself repeatedly accused unnamed opposition members of intending to
implement the plans of foreign powers to export the Orange revolution to Russia, which
for the latter could have the same disastrous consequences as the upheaval in Libya. As
2
Obkom refers to Soviet regional communist party committees, which issued instructions to all local
authorities and informally supervised them.
4
Page
Quick Jump
|