Children's corpse in the square

Barbarian practices become the norm, and Chechnya serves as a landfill for their testing and promotion

At the end of the last century, American lawyer Joseph Overton introduced into sociology the concept of “discourse window” (“Overton window”). According to his dynamic model, at each point in time, some statements and symbolic actions correspond to the norm, while others may either enter the range of “permissible” or go beyond their boundaries.

The followers of Overton, who died as a result of an aviation disaster in 43 years, divided ideas, statements and symbolic actions according to the degree of their escalation into: normal, standard, reasonable, acceptable, radical and unthinkable.

The norms of law and customs are located at the bottom of the range, in the range from normal to acceptable. The Populist Policy also more often tries to speak out within this framework so as not to lose public support. Overton, however, drew attention to the fact that a clever populist could gradually or jerk, sometimes even temporarily sacrificing his reputation, move the discourse window, and then it became acceptable what seemed unthinkable yesterday.

In then America, no one has heard about Trump, and the theory of Overton might seem abstract. But we had a lot of such a thing in the Russian Federation. If the audience of the Soviet “blue light” was shown “Dom-2”, they would definitely say that this could not be. Zhirinovsky as a politician was absolutely impossible, but it was on the calls to “wash boots in the Indian Ocean” that he managed to build his popularity.

Ramzan Kadyrov, unlike Zhirinovsky, has real power and armed force.

Digging or inventing barbaric mountain customs, he systematically contrasts them with Russian positive law and shifts the “Overton window” in the direction of acceptability of the unthinkable.

And where it is written that the corpse of a boy shot down when attacking the PPS employees based on motives, which, most likely, will remain unknown to us (there is no normal investigation in Chechnya, but Kadyrov immediately stated that the attackers were led by Ukraine) could not be thrown to the central square in Achkhoy-Martan? ..

Zarem Musaev-the mother of Chechen brothers-oppositions-was first convicted in 2023 on charges of applying violence against a police officer during the detention. In November 2024, the second case was opened against her: the woman supposedly elderly and with diabetes attacked this time an employee of the FSIN. Both accusations are absurd and cannot withstand critics, but the term of detention of Musaeva in custody has just been renewed.

If there is no law in the courts, then what Adam Kadyrov violated, who beat in a pre-trial detention center (and his case was transferred to Chechnya contrary to the criminal procedure law) a fool from Volgograd Nikita Zhuralyel? “Lynch’s court” - and this is - fits if not yet in the framework of the Code of Criminal Procedure, then the “Overton window” frame, in any case, existing in Chechnya.

The teenager did not kill anyone - perhaps no one would pay attention to this - he stabbed the policeman, raising his hand to power.

Therefore, there is no doubt that the illegal requirement (order) of the head of Chechnya to evict the parents and brothers of the killer and to remove their property on the principle of collective responsibility will be fulfilled. Law? And what is the law here - in Chechnya he will not protect anyone.

There is also a direct connection between the shocking performance with the participation of teachers and schoolchildren in Achkhoy-Martan and not subsiding an domestic discussion about the death penalty. If one thing is acceptable, then why not the second? Didn't we hear anything about the hopeless executions, and not only in Chechnya?

But the question cannot be impossible here: is Chechnya a Russian Federation? Do they exist in the same traditional, value and legal time and space?

Dmitry Peskov, when he was asked how the Kremlin reacted to actionism in Achkhoy-Martan, replied: "... we would not want to focus on the information that opposition channels distribute, we do not consider these sources as deserving trust."

Meanwhile, today only “opposition channels” are trying to return the “discourse window” to the civilized framework and withstand the “leaky of the Russian Federation”.