A-Infos (en) Russia, Avtonom: "Rapunzel, Wake Up": "Trends of Order and Chaos", episode 154 (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Fascism on fascism, and drives fascism: students against Ilyin and Dugin 
---- Interesting things began in April at the Moscow University of the 
Russian State University for the Humanities (Russian State University 
for the Humanities). Students there are protesting against the creation 
of an educational and research center named after Ivan Ilyin within the 
walls of the university. Ilyin, as you know, is an openly ultra-right 
philosopher of the late 19th - mid-20th centuries. So that no one has 
any doubts at all, this center will be headed by the odious modern 
far-right philosopher-propagandist Alexander Dugin (Google him yourself, 
we won't give links). Students created a petition against the center and 
also maintain a Telegram channel about the situation. There, for 
example, you can watch a video by historian Alexander Shubin, who wrote 
many works on anarchism and spoke at the Avtonom lecture.

It is great that students are in favor of collective decision-making: 
they are demanding a universal vote on the name of the new center. So we 
support this petition. The subtlety is that in Russia in 2024, even when 
you write a petition against fascist philosophers, you are forced to use 
propaganda clichés like "Russia is the victorious country of fascism." 
Because of this, the petition sometimes reads a little creepily, but 
this is apparently a sign of the times. Let us recall that the president 
of this very "victor of fascism", Vladimir Putin, is a well-known 
admirer of this very Ivan Ilyin. So, it's scary to say that students are 
raising their voices against Putin. Which we are, of course, very happy 
about, and we hope that RSUH students will not stop at petitions. After 
all, as we all know well, anti-fascist action is not just words.

Power signals: how Apple caved in to China
This week, interesting news came from China... or not quite from China. 
In general, the point is that the Chinese government approached Apple 
and demanded that certain applications be removed from the AppStore in 
China. And the huge multinational corporation Apple complied.

China's demand primarily concerned messengers: Apple removed Whatsapp, 
Telegram and Signal.

It is quite understandable why Chinese comrades in uniform are afraid of 
instant messengers: this is communication between people beyond their 
control. Whatsapp and Signal use strong end-to-end encryption, Telegram 
has weaker encryption, but still, this messenger also apparently does 
not easily follow China's lead.

What's more interesting is why Apple caved in and removed applications 
that are used by tens of millions of Chinese. The company itself 
commented on this decision simply: "We comply with the laws of the 
countries where we operate, even if we don't like them." Well, I doubt 
that Apple would have caved in the same way to the demands of some small 
African country, for example. No, here we are witnessing the real-life 
setting of priorities by big business. Apple sees China as a huge 
potential market and a source of huge profits. For this reason, you can 
resort to unpopular censorship - especially since the applications that 
are removed are not from Apple itself, but from other companies, 
actually Apple's competitors. More precisely, Signal is managed by a 
non-profit foundation and formally is not a competitor and is not 
involved in business at all, but Whatsapp and Telegram are absolutely 
commercial products, they are owned by companies that aim to make a profit.

Let's think about what will happen if Russia also demands that Apple 
remove Signal from the Russian AppStore? Or should Google remove it from 
GooglePlay? Of course, there is hope that Russia is now so toxic that 
they will still refuse it. But in general, we see that global high-tech 
corporations are easily willing to sacrifice freedom in the name of profits.

By the way, this is one of the reasons why, of all the messengers listed 
above, we recommend Signal. Quoting the website of this messenger 
itself, "Signal is an independent non-profit project. We are not 
affiliated with any major tech companies. None of them will ever buy us. 
The project exists on grants and donations from people like you."

In 2023, the UK passed the Online Safety Bill. At least in theory, it 
gives the government the right to require encrypted messengers to censor 
the content of messages - that is, in fact, to break this very 
encryption. So far, in reality, these demands have not been put forward 
to anyone, but legally there is such a possibility. So, Signal 
representatives immediately stated that if such demands were made, they 
would simply formally leave the British market, but would never weaken 
the encryption. Compare with Apple. "Leave the market" in this case, of 
course, is just a figure of speech, because Signal does not trade 
anything on any market.

Signal does not and never will have advertising, which is becoming more 
and more common on Telegram. And of course, Signal is open source 
software, so anyone can follow or participate in the development 
process. By the way, you can also write to Autonomous Action in Signal, 
look for details on our contact page.

Kyrgyzstan is unsafe again
We have already written that Kyrgyzstan is unsafe for political 
emigrants from Russia. For example, earlier the FSB easily kidnapped 
anarchists Alexei Rozhkov and Lev Skoryakin there. They were wanted, so 
to speak, "for politics": Alexey for setting fire to the military 
registration and enlistment office, and Lev for an action outside the 
walls of the Moscow FSB.

But this week the news came that Kyrgyz cops handed over Vladimir 
Golovchenko to their Russian colleagues. He seems to be suspected of 
being the one who organized the bombing of Vasily Prozorov's car in 
Moscow in early April. Prozorov is a former SBU officer from Ukraine who 
defected to Russia even before the start of a full-scale war. And so, 
apparently, the Ukrainian special services reached out to him with the 
hands of this same Vladimir Golovchenko, who then evacuated to 
Kyrgyzstan. It's interesting that Golovchenko doesn't even seem to be a 
citizen of Russia - he has citizenship of Kyrgyzstan and a residence 
permit in Ukraine. But even this did not help: apparently, the influence 
of the FSB on the Kyrgyz security forces is too strong.

In general, we remind you once again that if you want to hide from the 
clutches of the Kremlin state machine, then Kyrgyzstan is a bad option. 
Yes, you don't need a visa, but the danger is too great. Better choose 
Armenia or Georgia. The situation with Uzbekistan is not very clear yet, 
if you have information, write in the comments.

Million rubles for the war
People on both sides continue to die in the Ukrainian war. To make up 
for losses, both Ukraine and Russia are using all possible methods of 
replenishing their armies. Russia, of course, is taking advantage of its 
much more advantageous financial position - and it has already been 
announced that in Nizhny Novgorod the so-called "volunteers" will 
immediately receive as much as a million rubles. Apparently, the Kremlin 
is acting rather cleverly: it puts regional heads in a situation of 
competition "who can supply the most contract soldiers to the war." And 
then the governors are already spinning around as best they can - and, 
of course, the most obvious way is to find money and wave it in front of 
low-income citizens.

At the same time, in Ukraine there is much less money, and instead of 
financial enticements, strict "anti-deviation" laws are adopted there 
and virtually violent mobilization continues.

All this, of course, is very sad.

Ukrainians are heroically fighting against Kremlin aggression, but we 
certainly don't have to always approve of what the Ukrainian government 
decides. For example, it is really difficult for an anarchist to support 
forced conscription and the closure of leaving the country for men. It 
is clear why these measures were introduced, but still it is impossible 
to send people to the front against their will, this is, well, some kind 
of base or something. Anarchists advocate a voluntary army, or at least 
a movement in this direction. Moreover, an army that is forcibly 
mobilized is unlikely to turn out to be very effective, no matter how 
many Haymars you give them.

It's sad about Russia, because a lot of Russians seem quite ready to go 
kill people in a neighboring country for a million rubles. It is clear 
that there are also economic reasons for this: there are not very many 
socio-economic elevators, especially in non-central regions, and many 
simply do not see other ways to change their lives. But, on the other 
hand, even the difficult economic situation still does not justify 
voluntarily joining the army of the aggressor.

The Brothers Grimm have a fairy tale about a girl, Rapunzel, who was 
locked in a tower without doors by her evil witch stepmother and would 
not let go. Well, like a repressive family convinced the child that the 
world around him is very dangerous, and this very world should be looked 
at only from the point of view of an authoritarian parent. Rapunzel sat 
in the tower, slept most of the time and grew her hair, along which the 
sorceress then climbed into her tower.

So, there is a feeling that these Russian "volunteers" are living in 
some kind of dream, like Rapunzel. This dream isolates them from a 
holistic perception of the world around them, deprives them of empathy 
and the ability to distinguish between good and evil. It's like children 
who have not yet matured enough to take responsibility for their lives 
and actions. In a sense, it is precisely this passive infantilism that 
is the main enemy of anarchists: we need a society where everyone takes 
responsibility for everyone, and everyone is responsible for each other. 
A society of active and enterprising people.

Well, in the fairy tale of the Brothers Grimm, using the same hair that 
the evil witch climbed into the tower, the good prince eventually 
climbed there, with whom Rapunzel eventually escaped. Authoritarian 
regimes always dig their own graves with their own practices: either 
they name a research center at a university after an odious fascist, or 
they start a war with a neighboring country. Through all this concrete 
and barbed wire, paradoxically, rejection of the regime and the desire 
for freedom grow. This is the kind prince who can wake up in everyone's 
head. This is what we all wish for, as in the Straw Raccoons song called 
"Song Against Sleep."

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 social 
networks and e-mail newsletter.

Issue prepared by Mani

https://avtonom.org/news/rapuncel-prosnis-trendy-poryadka-i-haosa-epizod-154
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