Their fears

On September 29, the prosecutor’s office, at the request of the Penza lawyer Yevgeny Moiseev, checked the article by Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, in which the latter compared atheists with the “circus bears”. According to the prosecutor's office, the text contains a “negative attitude towards atheists” and the statement about the “advantage of Orthodox Christians in front of them”. In principle, this is a corpus delicti. The verification materials are transmitted to the UK, and how all this will end for one of the most striking and scandalous figures of the Russian Orthodox Church is probably known only to God.

Behind the desire to block the possibility of a critical statement on a political theme, as easily assumed, is hidden by fear. And this fear is growing - since the number of punishing articles is growing for the words and thoughts of the articles of the Criminal Code. Due to the uncertainty of terms and “old” articles, there was enough to deal with the dissatisfied, but through the efforts of the Duma of the sixth convocation of tools to combat any manifestations of discontent, it became even wider. The old joke “would be a person, but there is an article” today for everyone who has a habit or professional need to publicly express their own views does not sound so fun. Moreover, from the content of the views, the opportunity to be under the blow, as the incident is shown by Archpriest Smirnov, practically no longer depends.

The leaders of the authoritarian type have another specific fear, growing from historical experience. “They are afraid that they will not be able to leave their post, judicial persecution or even physical elimination”

It is interesting here not just an attempt by a kind of hedge of political risks. Everything is clear with them: they saw the danger in nationalists - they activated the long -existing article 282, and at the same time found out that it is also perfect for the fight against any other critics of power. They were impressed by the Maidan - and decided to legally fight the “rehabilitation of Nazism”, as well as protect the “territorial integrity of the Russian Federation” from verbal attempts (that is, they actually prohibited the Crimean issue). After the Pussy Riot campaign in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior invented the “protection of the feelings of believers”, so that in similar cases not to disgrace the whole world, recalling the decisions of medieval church cathedrals. Much more interesting is the psychological component of the fears of the authorities, the cure of which are also articles about thought crime.

The main instinct

“All laws aimed at protecting one part of the population against the interests of the other are discriminatory,” Ekaterina Egorova, the PR-Companion of Niccolo M, emphasizes in conversation NT. In her opinion, if laws that limit the expression of any opinions are adopted, this is always a signal. The authorities are afraid that these thoughts are contagious and some part of society with their help can be knitted on a social protest. In addition, Egorov is sure, sometimes the laws of this kind are a way to support the loyal authorities of the population group: “For example, the law on protecting the feelings of believers discriminates a certain part of society. The authorities are now playing on the side of believers because they are very psychologically controlled and convenient in terms of obtaining any electoral support - whatever power and no matter what this power is required. ” Any believer is easily controlled and suggestible. Slariting a person of an unbeliever is much more difficult than sagiting a believer. He has all the psychology imprisoned on the adoption of everything that is inspired by, emphasizes the expert.

But the desire to block criticism can be associated with more deep fears, the main of which is the fear of losing power. This fear is especially strong for people who are not ready for the replacement of power, are not ready to give her voluntarily, says Egorov: “In a society where a person knows that he has been staying for so many terms as a president, governor or prime minister-and can no longer under the law-he is ready for this at the moment when he sits in his chair. And when a person understands that he has no working legislative restrictions for staying in power, he begins to think: “Why will I part with the authorities at all?” According to the expert, in such a situation, the bearer of power will go to any measures for the sake of maintaining it. ”

The leaders of the authoritarian type have another specific fear, growing from historical experience: “They are afraid that they will not be able to peacefully leave their post, judicial persecution or even physical elimination.” Egorova recalls the fate of Slobodan Milosevich, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi and claims that these examples are before their eyes and those who control Russia today.

Here - the fear of the loss of property "in people focused on the acquisition of a corruption nature." This is, for example, the incident of Viktor Yanukovych: “There is a revolution, and you physically drapes from your country to save your life, and all your golden loaves do not remain with you.”

Egorova also demonstrates how understandable human fears flow into fear for the fate of the country, arising from ideas about their own special mission: “There are fears for members of their family, for a close circle. But there can be another situation - when a person sincerely believes, and this cannot be ruled out that he leads the country in the right direction, fulfills his mission and believes that the more he is in power, the more correctly and the country will move on. ” And the laws “excluding any turbulence in the country” may well be the result of this kind of fears, the expert summarizes.

Safety fetish

Doctor of Psychological Sciences, Head of the Department of Personality of the Personality of Moscow State University Alexander Asmolov proves NT that fear is not the only motive for the authorities protected from dissent. “Behind the laws of this kind there is a number of different motives. First of all, the ideal of security that appeared in the mass consciousness, ”says Asmolov. And in this sense, the aspirations of the masses coincide with the actions of the authorities: “Today it is the dominant motive of any actions of power. It is this motive - security as the main goal of life, and thereby not life, but survival, not development, but adaptation - becomes a programmatic ideology. It is this program that serves such laws. ”

The security request does not appear from scratch, among the causes of its occurrence - terrorism and other real threats. But what is important, according to Asmolov: “It is the ideal of security that is one of the key grounds for self -isolation of the state. In Russia, this ideal, one way or another, sets the strategy of ideological actions, which, in turn, are embodied in a certain policy. The ideal is a be-saving and preserving the status quo, what is now, God forbid, if it is piercing. ”

The formulations in the articles of the Criminal Code, for the sake of the safety of punishing thoughts, extremely blurry, the expert believes. "The old Russian proverb" The law that is drawn ... "more applies to them than any other actions."

Asmolov is sure that the invasion of power on social networks, the terms for recordings and reposts already have their influence on the psychological state of Russians: “People have a feeling that psychologists call“ learned helplessness ”:“ Whatever you do, you fall into the situation of apathy and do not know how to act. ”

However, the authorities, according to the expert, expanding the range of repressive laws, hits the goal: “They intimidate ordinary people, but not those who can very rigidly resist and defend their rights. So it was always, it is dangerous to contact such people. ”

Light work

But the journalist and blogger Anton Nosik, the accused, as already mentioned, according to the 282nd article for a blog entry, in which the prosecutor's office saw inciting hatred in relation to the people of Syria, recalls NT the most ridiculous examples of thought-crushes, for which the guilty have already suffered punishment. And it calls to look for in them not a deep strategic plan and not a reflection of the fears of power, but much more mundane motives.

“There is such a composer - Richard Wagner. Which wrote not only the opera Tangaizer, he generally wrote a lot of things. So: the attitude towards him and the prohibitions on his performance in Israel are dictated by his acquaintance with his article “On Jewry in Music”. And it is logical, probably, to read this article in order to decide what is more important to you - “Valkyrie Flight” or Wagner's attitude to Mendelsson. But this very article of Wagner in 1850 was included in the federal list of extremist materials, and its distribution in Russia is punishable. And here you need to understand that this is not a struggle with Wagner - it is too late to fight him. This is the fight against our right to know what Wagner wrote so bad 166 years ago, ”the nose ironizes.

“The principle of the work of bodies with these articles is simple: I walked something, excited, transferred the case to court, received a conviction-received an asterisk for epaulets. That's all that interests them "

The journalist emphasizes the extreme negligence and even illiteracy of those who make up the notorious list of extremist materials: “There are a huge number of links to pages, YouTube videos, which do not exist in nature. And not because they were deleted, but because they never existed. To transfer the case to the page of the page, it was collected manually and with errors, and the judge did not even look at what exactly he prohibits. ”

The nose draws attention to the fact that, due to the uncertainty of concepts, the suspect in thought of the crime will not even be able to guess which department will deal with him: “The line between extremism and terrorism is funny-the choice is made randomly. But if you are an extremist, then your post or retweet is investigated through the line of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, SK and the prosecutor's office. And if a terrorist, the FSB will do you. ”

But the technology is always the same: “The principle of work of the organs with these articles is simple: it was reduced by something, aroused, transferred the case to court, received a conviction-received a star for epaulets. That's all that interests them: "The wheels are spinning, the system works." It is precisely this is the reason for the constant growth of the number of entrusted cases and convictions: “If earlier there were 69 cases per five -year plan, now there will be 500. There will be 5,000. This is just an easy way to get an asterisk.”