Mihail Pojarsky/Violence and violence
In Paris, protests against pension reform are now being dispersed. In such cases, domestic propaganda likes to show footage of the dispersal of European demonstrations, saying, they say, that’s where the real police brutality is, compared to which our cops are darlings! And indeed. In the same France, the cops consider it a good practice to crush protesters with motorcycles, shoot at them with large-caliber rubber bullets (these sometimes gouge out an eye). Well, there’s tear gas and grenades, of course. Batons are also often not made of rubber, like ours, but metal and folding, which is much more dangerous.
Interestingly, Russian society here receives criticism from two sides. Like, we have herbivorous cops, not like in the West. But our society is also cowardly - they say that the protesters cannot fight back even these cops. Look at the Yellow Vests! In fact, I remember very well how, even from a crowd unprepared for clashes on May 6, 2012, around thirty riot policemen were injured, and their helmets floated along the Moscow River. National Bolsheviks, right or left radicals often did a good job rebuffing the cops when given the opportunity. Football fans at Manezhnaya held the defense against the riot police so that he had to enter into negotiations. And what about our cops. Do you think they can’t shoot with rubber bullets, beat with metal clubs, throw grenades? All of the above they have in service. Just biding its time.
But this is not happening in Russia today. Why? It’s simple: fear. For example, during the Yellow Vests protests in Paris, one local heavyweight boxer punched the cops with his bare hands through shields and helmets. What happened to him? Firstly, kind people quickly collected 100 thousand euros for him. Secondly, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison, but there is a nuance - they write [1], part of his term was suspended (apparently, some kind of local condition or something like that) and he was actually sentenced to a year of “semi-freedom”. Like during the day you walk, but you spend the night in prison. Terrible punishment. Let me remind you that that Chechen who beat the riot police on Pushkinskaya left for 5 years in general and can hardly count on parole. Moreover, he is at least not as offended as many other Russian political prisoners who left for comparable periods without doing anything at all.
In general, the protesters in Russia are afraid, but not of batons, but of everything that will happen after - especially given the surveillance system in Moscow, they will find anyone who will be seen as having at least a minimal line-up for an article. Therefore, the cops may well show “humanism”, imposingly walking around with rubber batons those who do not resist. Protesters in Europe, on the other hand, may well break into the cops on occasion. They know that the court won’t give them much. The cops understand this too, that’s why THEY ARE AFRAID and use their entire rich arsenal at once - gas, grenades, rubber bullets, and so on.
More broadly, Russia is a place where the bulk of state violence is not public. Whereas in Europe all state violence is mostly public. In Europe, what we see on the streets is exactly the worst thing that the state machine does. In Russia, the violence in the squares is softer, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. Real state violence is hidden from prying eyes: in closed courts, behind the gates of the police department, in pre-trial detention centers, in camps, etc. Sometimes it emerges from there to the public, but most often it does not. However, it is on such violence that everything rests with us. It’s not that there are no tortures behind closed doors in Europe, but there is rather an exception that is the rule in our country. It is useful to keep this in mind when we see how the cops are gesturing on European streets.
Mihail Pojarsky 2023-03-29
