The slap in the face for the boor

Columonist Ivan Davydov is trying to understand why people throughout the country reacted to the wild, 22-million, fine of The New Times

When I began to think about this text (that is, on Monday afternoon), more than ten million rubles were collected for The New Times for The New Times. The amount is unthinkable. And it could not be able to believe that this is generally possible. When I began to shed it (on Tuesday day), they collected nineteen million. When I finish, he may not be needed at all. In total, twenty -two million with a little is required. And now the task of collecting them does not seem to be impossible.

The magazine simply decided to destroy. Found in minor formality a reason to find fault. We rolled out the largest fine in the history of Russian media. Understanding that “new times”, which, like the whole country, are going through not the best times now, there is simply nowhere to take such money. This is death for publication. A bullet in the head.

The usual calculation was that the audience, sighing, and quarreling on social networks (at first - on ruthless satraps, and then, according to tradition, already among themselves), will reconcile with another loss.

The usual and justified: power in the USSR and Russia for decades weaned the inhabitants of the country from independent collective actions. Actually, this is one of the main management technologies here. To do something together not on the command of the authorities, but of their own free will-firstly, it is dangerous, and secondly,-hopelessly. You are alone, you can’t, sit quietly - the basic rule of survival, understandable to everyone. The acceptance of it and allows this very authorities to create anything with a lonely and helpless Russian.

But the further, the more often it turns out to go across the proven cowardly rule. To go to rallies that the authorities refuse to coordinate, to support charitable projects for which the authorities do not have enough money. Sometimes even pulling people out of prisons is obtained. And it is possible that The New Times will also be able to save.

And yet - the case is amazing. A natural impulse is clear to help a person who has appeared in trouble. But where does this common desire to save, to cover the magazine from a murderous blow? How many disappeared? Even joking about the "links of the fucking chain" is no longer fashionable.

Differently we can say about The New Times. You can remember loud publications - there were enough of them. You can calculate how many journalists who now work in a wide variety of Russian and not only Russian publications, his difficult school passed. But, it seems, these considerations are not enough to answer the question “why”. Why did so many people respond to the call to support the publication?

The New Times is not the most massive, but noticeable. He has influential readers who sacrifice a lot. But more importantly, a large stream of small translations with incredible geography. There were more than 60 thousand transfers for yesterday, how many today - I do not know, but obviously more. Naberezhnye Chelny, Anapa, Speech, Ragger. Koryazhma is in the Arkhangelsk region, now there is already a very winter, probably. And in Anapa - almost still summer. Big country, an incredibly large country.

Amazing - it is hardly all these people, and I repeat them, tens of thousands, even just read a magazine. And they still want to help. I would venture to assume that the case is in the methods that have been chosen for its elimination. Frank, in no way covered, arrogant arbitrariness. A formal occasion and offensive to common sense, an unbearable fine. A visual demonstration of the theses mentioned above: you are nobody here, and we will do everything that comes to mind. And no one will come to your aid. One is scary, the other is just spitting.

Tens of thousands of transfers - from a million to a hundred rubles - became the answer just to this impudence. No. We live here. And we can help each other. And you, of course, are dangerous for ordinary people, but there is also the limit of your impudence. Ham suddenly gets a slap in the face, and begins to look around in amazement-is it really in the world where he was the only master has changed?

Yes, survival priorities change a little. If you stand quietly aside, you will be quietly and imperceptibly. And if you act together and noisy, maybe they will still be suppressed. At least a chance appears.

The skeptics are jerking out that the day is - “once they decided to finish it off, they’ll get it anyway”, “tomorrow there will be a new fine”, “there is no sense in this.” But it seems to me that there is no right to think about tomorrow for people who are afraid or lazy to win back to themselves today.

Let's try. There is little left. Well, in general, you have to start somewhere.