A-Infos (en) Russia, Avtonom: The Right Side of History: "Trends of Order and Chaos" Episode 144 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Presidential race ---- Last week, the participants in the so-called 
"presidential elections" in Russia were determined. Putin will be 
assisted by three faceless extras, and so far everything is going 
according to the scenario of Egypt and Azerbaijan, where local dictators 
recently reappointed themselves in the same way through the supposed 
expression of the people's will. ---- But at the stage of candidate 
registration, interesting events took place. Out of nowhere, a certain 
unknown Ekaterina Duntsova appears . A pleasant, relatable young woman 
who says she wants to end the war with Ukraine. A real all-Russian 
movement is immediately being built around it. The Central Election 
Commission quickly removes her from the race.

Boris Nadezhdin, an old functionary of the "Union of Right Forces" and 
then of many other parties, declares his intention to register as a 
candidate . He won serious elections to the State Duma only once, in 
1999. Then he had a series of failed election campaigns under different 
flags, and his next electoral success was in 2021, excuse me, in the 
elections in the Moscow region town of Dolgoprudny.

Nadezhdin also went to propaganda shows on Russian TV, where he tried to 
convey the liberal point of view amid the shouts and insults of 
Solovyov's regulars. Nadezhdin also had various political technology 
projects. Apparently successful. The author of the text saw Nadezhdin 
once in his life, in the mid-2010s: he was in a Porsche Cayenne with a 
personal driver.

Nadezhdin also began to advocate for the anti-war agenda, and instantly 
collected more than 200 thousand signatures for his registration. The 
authorities again tensed up and removed him from the elections.

Neither Duntsova nor Nadezhdin - despite massive support - have called 
for any real confrontation with the authorities; they are broadcasting 
some nonsense about appealing the registration procedure in the courts, 
creating a party, and focusing on elections to the Moscow City Duma.

What are the conclusions from this story? Even despite laws that 
severely punish any protest against the war, and opinion polls , the 
cases of Duntsova and Nadezhdin show that people are not afraid to say 
that they want peace with Ukraine, that they are not satisfied with the 
bacchanalia going on in Russia.

At the same time, people are not ready for tough confrontation and 
consistent struggle. There remains faith in election procedures, in the 
fact that one can sign for an "anti-war candidate," and supposedly this 
is already a lot. Based on this, it seems that we need to build work in 
Russia: understand that there are a lot of people who disagree with the 
regime, but the situation is not yet ripe for a real strong protest.

About the elections themselves. As anarchists, we are generally very 
skeptical about the mechanisms of representative democracy. And such a 
position as the President of the Russian Federation, which concentrates 
power over a country of 140 million in its hands, is far from any kind 
of democracy. Back in 2018, during the last elections, "Autonomous 
Action" spoke about the need to abolish the post of president as such . 
And life showed the correctness of this idea. Any power corrupts. And 
when in the hands of one person such an insane amount of power as Putin 
has, then such incredible madness as, for example, a war with Ukraine 
becomes possible.

Four months of another war
Last week marked four months of Israel's war with the Gaza Strip. It 
seems that it is beginning to end, but there is no way to jinx it, the 
situation can still turn out any way.

Reading about the international reaction to this war, one notices an 
important mistake that many left-wing activists make in arguing that the 
Israeli-Palestinian relationship is identical to the practice of white 
colonialism.

The obvious mistake is that Jews are so-so white Europeans. For the most 
part, Jews are, excuse me, not blonds from St. Petersburg or London. A 
huge part of the Israeli population are very dark-skinned people from 
Ethiopia, Morocco, Yemen, and Iraq. You probably haven't noticed: 
Whatsapp allows you to add emoticons with different skin tones. And 
Israelis often choose dark brown emojis.

It should also not be forgotten that of the seven million Arabs in the 
country, two million - as a result of all sorts of confusing events in 
Israel's 76-year history - have Israeli citizenship. And the 
Palestinians, another five million, are essentially Arabs who have no 
citizenship. During the four months of the war in Gaza, two million 
Arabs with Israeli citizenship did not express any sympathy for the 
actions of Hamas.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is much less a story of colonialism, 
but something like the Armenian-Azerbaijani or Georgian-Abkhazian 
conflicts. Where both sides brought each other a lot of grief, killed 
and oppressed each other. It's just that the Israeli side is more 
successful so far.

But this is also changing: Israel is very dependent on the support of 
the United States and the European Union. And there, immigrants from 
Arab countries are becoming more and more successful; they are gradually 
finding themselves in responsible government positions. Many 
Palestinians have American citizenship.

Every killing of a Palestinian with an American passport by the Israeli 
military or settlers in the West Bank is a serious diplomatic scandal. 
Also, the United States and the European Union are increasingly 
cooperating with the Arab oil monarchies of the Persian Gulf. Pressure 
on Israel from the United States  and the European Union is growing and 
will continue to grow .

In Israel, of course, there is a depressingly huge amount of hatred 
towards Arabs . The strange confidence of many residents is that the 
whole world owes them hundreds of years in debt for the horrors of the 
Holocaust, and inside Israel you can do whatever you want with Arabs 
without citizenship... Interestingly, any oppression of Arabs with 
Israeli citizenship in Israel will be punished in the same way as for 
crimes against Jews.

Both the war between Russia and Ukraine, and the Israeli war with the 
Gaza Strip show that empathy either exists or it does not exist at all.

It's disgusting when people worry about Russia's bombing of Ukraine but 
ignore the deaths of women and children in Gaza. Or he worries about 
Gaza, but ignores the massacre carried out by Hamas. Or ignores the 
deaths of civilians in Donetsk.

There is no right or wrong side to history. And yes, no great idea - the 
borders of Ukraine in 1991, a free Palestine from sea to river, a 
historical state of Jews, the protection of the Russian-speaking 
population in Ukraine - all these wonderful ideas are not worth a single 
tear of a single child.

Well that's all for today! We remind you that in Trends in Order and 
Chaos, members of Autonomous Action and other authors give anarchist 
assessments of current events. Listen to us on  YouTube ,  SoundCloud 
and other platforms, visit our website  avtonom.org , subscribe to our 
e-mail newsletter!

Issue prepared by Listyev

https://avtonom.org/news/pravilnaya-storona-istorii-trendy-poryadka-i-haosa-epizod-144
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