Vladimir Putin – Pike & Hurricane

The Clash of the Titans – Public Figures against the Tech Giants

Julia Kavanto — Wed, 10 Feb 2021 20:17:53 +0000

President Donald Trump of the United States of America became the first president to achieve many things. He was the first US president to be impeached twice, and his administration was the first to declare that China was committing genocide on Uighurs, but now I am talking about Trump being the first world leader to be permanently suspended from Twitter.

Trump supporters stormed the halls of the United States Capitol on January 6th, and their agenda was to stop the inauguration of Joe Biden. Soon after the coup, Trump’s Twitter account was first suspended for twelve hours, and then for good, as he continued to violate the community rules of the platform.

Multiple social media platforms followed Twitter’s example and suspended Trump’s accounts. We are having this discussion because permanently suspending a person of authority is considered a threat to the freedom of speech. The concern is valid. The common social media platforms, especially Twitter, are crucial to the hectic politics of the modern world; it is there where the political debate is the most heated. So, is it right to suspend a political leader permanently?

What is freedom of speech? What is it not?

Freedom of speech essentially means that any individual should have the right to express their thoughts and feelings without fear of sanctions. The right is universal, so it applies to everyone regardless of status, race, religion et cetera. There is a limitation to it, though. Freedom of speech should not be exercised to harm. A very important question to this is that who decides when someone or something has been harmed. One would think that the person who is harmed decides if they have been harmed, but then there is the question of people who cannot reply or, for example, non-human entities like nature. Who decides for them?

Twitter decided for the people who were injured in the coup of Capitol. Five people died in the attack, and Twitter understood President Trump’s tweet on the 8th of January about not joining President Biden’s inauguration was an invitation for his supporters to be violent. Trump’s use of words was interpreted as violating the platform’s glorification of violence policy.

Yes, Twitter can decide, and they did right to protect American citizens from further acts of violence. However, this does not mean that there should not be a more democratic way to decide. The board of Twitter who presumably called the shot to suspend Trump’s account was not selected democratically, and should not, therefore, have the right to take away the freedom of expression, even from Donald Trump.

On the other hand…

The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny travelled back to his home country from Berlin where he was treated after having been poisoned in August 2020. Navalny was immediately detained upon his arrival on the 17th of January, and he soon posted a video on Twitter where he urged his supporters to “take it to the streets” because of his jailing. The protests were unauthorized, but successful, as the demonstration was organized in 100 Russian cities and there were 40,000 participants only in Moscow.

It is no surprise, then, that someone got hurt in the protests; Navalny must have known that the riots were unauthorized and would be met with violence. Videos show how the police are dragging people and using batons relentlessly. For the western democrat, it seems obvious that Navalny, Putin’s arch-rival, would not be banned for social media. That would be a victory for tyranny. But essentially, Navalny and Trump used Twitter for the same: for rallying supporters to protest against the government. It can be that Navalny’s tweets were not seen “to incite violence”, as Trump’s tweets were, according to Twitter’s blog post on Trump’s suspension. That, though, is problematic, that there is no universal guideline to fall back on.

Of course, Trump was not banned solely because of the tweet to join him on the 6th, but also because of the countless times he posted fake news on the platform. A certain president of Russia would argue that Navalny has also posted fake news, as the opposition leader recently uploaded a video to Twitter exposing Putin’s palace of corruption. Putin denies that the palace is his or any of his close relatives. The media in the United States seems to have agreed that Trump often tweeted lies. The same could be said about the Russian media breaking the news of Navalny’s accusations, as Pravda and Russia Today repeat Putin denying that the palace is his. American media agrees that Trump posted lies, and Russian media that Navalny posted lies, but the reception is very different.

There needs to be a universal guideline for social media usage, which states when a person has crossed the line of what is accepted. The board of directors of tech giants should not be the ones who decide who has the right to be heard. There are many questions regarding the universal guideline for social media that I am suggesting, such as who should be trusted to tell the truth i.e. who says what is “fake news”. Russian media argues against Navalny’s allegations of Putin’s Palace, but the allegations are still not put down by Twitter as lies.

Navalny joined the suspension discussion

Navalny himself responded to the suspension of President Trump negatively by saying that it “is an unacceptable act of censorship”. He says that Twitter’s decision to suspend Trump is based on personal political views. Therefore it can be said that the decision was not democratic. But does it even have to be in a private company? I think so, as they carry so much power in the public speech arena where freedom of speech is exercised. It is a slippery slope that Twitter has entered, as with permanently suspending Trump they open the possibility to suspend other people who do not follow the prevailing ideology. Silencing people is too great a power for any company to have.

No matter how much I disagree with Trump’s views, he, too, has the right to be heard. Imagine if Navalny was suspended. How radically would the Western world react to silencing the one figure who is against the all-mighty Vladimir Putin? In a democratic world, everyone needs to be heard, regardless of views. In a democratic world, everyone is treated equally, and with the universal guideline of social media usage, the same rules would be applied to everyone, regardless of power they possess.

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Photo credits:

Tech/Book Special NRC Handelsblad, by Jenna Arts, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Freedom of Speech, by Vladan Nikolic, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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Eternal Putin

Maya Diekmann — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 18:33:49 +0000

How does one leave the Kremlin after nearly two decades in office? And can one leave it gracefully and even more importantly—perhaps—alive? Russia’s Vladimir Putin has little to learn from his predecessors. Of the nine de facto Russian leaders since Lenin, five died in office, two were more or less officially exiled and eradicated from the Russian political scene, one became one of “the most reviled men in Russia”, and the last one remains nothing but the drunk memory of Russia’s chaotic stumble into the 21st century. Putin, the founding father of post-Soviet Russia, surely has no interest in following in his immediate predecessors’ footsteps or becoming yet another Russian leader among many.

Till death do us part

Recent constitutional reforms in Russia, initiated by the president, have commentators pointing to the possibility that Putin might in fact be choosing the more popular mode of transportation out of the Kremlin—that is in a coffin. With the annulment of his presidential terms, Putin could seek reelection in 2024 and technically stay president until 2036, ensuring him a de facto presidency for life, given that the life expectancy in Russia averages 67.75 years for males—an age which Putin has already exceeded.

Putin’s legacy is withering away, unless he makes one of two decisive moves: Tightening his grip on power or—almost unimaginable—letting go.

But why go to such lengths of reforming an entire constitution to be re-elected president if playing a game of musical chairs with a designated side-kick, in Putin’s case Dmitry Medvedev, is just as effective? Unless, of course, the partner is increasingly weak and no longer suitable for the game, as Medvedev’s plummeting approval ratings after 2014, from which the former Prime Minister never managed to recover, indicate. Only after Medvedev resigned upon Putin’s proposition for constitutional changes, and Mikhail Mishustin assumed his position, have the approval ratings for the new Russian Prime Minister started to recover. Perhaps, Putin has found a new president-in-waiting in Mishustin. Though this still wouldn’t explain the constitutional reform.

More realistically, Putin may have realized that his own image might just never fully recover either, after the 2018 anti-government protests—least when the organizer of these protests and Putin’s main political opponent almost miraculously survives a “mysterious” attempted assassination. And only so many political opponents can end up poisoned before an explanation to the Russian people and the international community is inescapable. Approval ratings will unlikely ever reach those peaks of Putin’s early presidency and opposition is only likely to grow louder. In other words, Putin’s legacy is withering away, unless he makes one of two decisive moves: Tightening his grip on power or—almost unimaginable—letting go.

The last responder

If Putin does in fact want to be reelected in 2024, he needs to have sufficient support from the people of Russia, meaning he needs to stabilize his approval ratings. Those are in fact looking pretty stable—albeit not great—even if one accounts for a temporary corona-induced low. Yet, if he actually plans to retire, doing so with such mediocre ratings—a far cry from his heydays—would leave a bitter aftertaste for the man who has been ranked Russia’s second greatest leader after Stalin by the Russian people. Whenever and however Putin leaves the Kremlin, he will want to do so on a high note. Since Putin first assumed power he has only experienced two major crises in approval ratings—not counting the most recent one triggered by the Kremlin’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. The first were the large scale anti-government protests between 2011–2013, that were, among others, motivated by Putin’s decision to run for reelection. It was essentially Russia’s suspiciously successful performance at the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi—cue: the 2017 documentary “Icarus”—that propelled Putin’s ratings back up after these protests.

The second were the large-scale anti-corruption protests against the government between 2017–2018 and although not immediately linked to Putin’s reelection, these—once again—occurred in the year of the Russian presidential elections out of which Putin would emerge victorious. Unfortunately for him, there were no more major sports events scheduled in the near future that could prove handy to Putin’s agenda. If the Kremlin wants to keep an already strained Russian population under control for the next presidential election—or even just until then—they need to find a remedy for the dissatisfaction. And how better to please the opposition than to give them what they have been asking for ever since the President circumvented the constitution in 2012: a Russia without Putin.

A Piece of Eternity

Enter the constitutional reform. However near or far the amendments project the end of Putin’s reign, it does project it. It is almost a guarantee for no one like Putin to ever happen to Russia again. And Russia was thrilled about that: A sweeping 78 percent of Russians approved Putin’s suggested reforms, even in a time where the President’s popularity itself was scraping at a corona pandemic induced near all-time low, and even at the risk that Putin might in fact run for another term. At least the end is in sight.

“But Putin’s reform might just prove successful, regardless of future presidential terms or even approval ratings.”

Had the corona pandemic not happened, Russians might have even been thankful enough for their president offering his own head, to spare some more positive opinions towards him, too. Then Putin’s master plan might have worked out––he could have left with a bang or ridden his wave of approval a bit longer. But Putin’s reform might just prove successful, regardless of future presidential terms or even approval ratings. In the end, the reforms have gifted Putin with one thing: He has enshrined his legacy—his rediscovered Russian greatness—into the heart of the Russian state, while ensuring that no president after him will even come close to this legacy. And that itself is a piece of eternity for Putin.

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Photo credits

Kremlin, Luigi Selmi, CC BY-SA 2.0

Chris Liverani, Unsplash

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