They are returning

The "legal" mechanism of Soviet political repression was simple and logical and built in its own way. Soviet officials and propagandists have repeatedly stated that they did not plant anyone for dissent in the USSR. Plant only for actions. These actions may consist in the spread of knowingly false, slanderous fabrications that defeat the Soviet public and state system.

Now, if you publicly affirm orally or in writing that in the USSR they plant for dissent, this is the distribution of obviously false, slanderous fabrications, for which you will be imprisoned according to the appropriate article. Because it is known that only for dissent in the USSR they do not plant anyone.

It followed reinforced concrete that the statement in itself about the presence of political prisoners in the USSR is “slanderous” and “defamatory”. Like any other critical statement about the Soviet system. Moreover, in an inverted totalitarian logic, the statement was considered "defaming" not because it is "slander." It was considered "slander" because it "defeats".

When the prosecutor’s office accused the Memorial PC of justifying terrorism and extremism on the grounds that he calls political prisoners some of the persons convicted (or accused) under “extremist” and “terrorist” articles, the public was once amazed at the legal illiteracy of the prosecutor's office. A collision with a memorial explained the public to the reasons, except for the one that was directly indicated in the lawsuit of the prosecutor's office: the "memorial" disputes the legitimacy of today's political repression.

Today, similar accusations are precisely under the same scheme “OVD-info” are brought by . And it's time to say loudly that this is not a one-time, situational “pulling the owl on the globe” regarding the particular, particularly unloved authorities of the organization. We are talking about running in a "legal" mechanism that criminally disputed the legitimacy of the actions of the authorities. Disagreement with the actions of the authorities as such. That is, we are talking about a return to repressive practices characteristic of classical totalitarianism of the 20th century.

How widely this mechanism will be used depends solely on the discretion of the authorities. Someone hopes that he will be involved only on some separately sensitive issues for the authorities. And the rest will remain quite wide freedom of criticism. However, a prohibitive-consuming machine is always prone to expansion, to the expansion of the sphere of its action.

Right now, the Kremlin’s repressive machine is trying to force the media resources that are in reaching it to remove the materials of journalistic investigations from open access. To this end, the built "legal" design has been involved for years. Its main shock element is the legislation on undesirable organizations. Any social structure can be arbitrarily declared undesirable or unwanted. This means a ban on the distribution of information emanating from such a structure.

The ban is not only reprinting such information with any other media resource, but also a simple link to this information or its free retelling. Nothing prevents the authorities from declaring even a simple mention of the presence of such information.

Until recently, a feature of the new post -industrial, postmodern authoritarianism was believed that he was not afraid of information openness. Spit in his eyes - all God's dew. Indeed, modern autocracies for some time did without a direct censorship, without ideological prohibitions. The mechanisms of control over the political sphere worked differently. But in recent years, something has changed greatly with regard to authoritarian regimes for freedom of statements.

One can argue about why Putin Pahanat suddenly saw a clear threat in journalistic investigations. Either they cause unplanned problems in inter -plane relations within the ruling elite. Whether the point is still the exhaustion of the Loyalty limit of the so-called "conservative majority." But it must be stated that a mechanism suitable for total political censorship is built in the Russian Federation and a number of other autocracies. And there is no reason to hope that the action of this mechanism will be limited to spicy details from the life of the elite or the problem of political prisoners.

This mechanism is by no means a generation of legal illiteracy and sloppiness of legislators and chain dogs of new dictatorships. On the contrary, the hand of the master is felt in it. Substarm-thistle. New dictatorships are returning to the very "legal logic" of classical totalitarianism of the 20th century. They are returning, armed with such technical means of control over society, which the totalitarianism of the 20th century did not know.

Yes, today's technical means of bypassing censorship also did not dream of dissenting totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. But do not carefully think that the "network itself will find the answer" to any challenge. New tyranny is aimed at the systemic destruction of the freedom of dissemination of information, freedom of thought, freedom of self -organization and mutual assistance of people. The time of their relative "tolerance" was only a time of gathering forces for this. The confrontation will require efforts and victims.