• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Second rate reporter says what?

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Mobile Menu

  • Winnable House Races
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Balloon Juice 2023 Pet Calendar (coming soon)
  • COVID-19 Coronavirus
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • War in Ukraine
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • 2021-22 Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Mourn, Organize / The Russian Protests and Their “Network Hamster”

The Russian Protests and Their “Network Hamster”

by Anne Laurie|  December 29, 20115:01 pm| 20 Comments

This post is in: Don't Mourn, Organize, Excellent Links, Foreign Affairs

FacebookTweetEmail

Dmitry Golubovsky, editor of Esquire Russia, interviews “Alexei Navalny — blogger, political activist, and self-described “network hamster” “:

ESQUIRE: The primary cause of the current protests across Russia were the federal parliamentary elections on December 4. What do you remember most about voting day?
__
ALEXEI NAVALNY: Everybody was nervous and worried, myself probably more than others, because I initiated a campaign against United Russia, the ruling party, under the slogan “Party of Crooks and Thieves.” The slogan appeared by accident — during a radio show, the host asked me how I felt about United Russia, and I said, “Very bad. United Russia is a party of crooks and thieves.” Later, I announced a poll on my blog — “Do you consider United Russia to be the Party of Crooks and Thieves?” — and 97 percent of 40,000 people said “Yes,” and away we go. From the very beginning, it was clear that the election was going to be unjust, but I really wanted to know if one could do any significant damage to United Russia by means of a campaign launched on the Internet. That’s what we did, and our main message was: vote for anyone except the Party of Crooks and Thieves. It seemed way more effective than simply boycotting the election — just another strategy propagated by the opposition — because it was in the interest of all the small parties that took part in the vote to join us…
__
ESQ: How much do you think the Internet influenced the December protests?
__
AN: I think about 40 percent of people came to protest mainly because of the Internet. The past year, year and a half was very important in this respect: broadband became cheaper, mobile Internet spread dramatically. And this quantity transformed to quality. The Internet has become a true information infrastructure in big cities — and can now even challenge TV. Social networks gave us some very much needed infrastructure, and different services are useful in very different ways. LiveJournal (The main blogging platform in Russia. —Ed.) was good for informational, more detailed posts. Facebook has more multimedia features — likes, links, posters, videos, events, where you can see if your friends are going to this and that rally or not. Smartphones and Twitter hook people up to news 24/7. And for some things even I, a 35-year-old, am too old — for instance, I made a big mistake when I didn’t run the campaign against crooks and thieves in Vkontakte: I simply don’t understand how this social network works, unlike my employees at “Rospil.” (A noncommercial anti-corruption project founded by Navalny this year that raised over $250,000 from Internet users. —Ed.) But the people didn’t go out on the streets because of Facebook or LiveJournal — it’s because they were angry. If it wasn’t for this informational infrastructure, they’d go anyway, but it would be harder for them to coordinate their efforts, and because of that the protest would probably break out in a more aggressive way. Now, since everything is easier to organize, the protests are more peaceful….

More detail, including an explanation of the “network hamster” nik, at the link.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Positively K Street
Next Post: Open Thread: Paranoia Engines »

Reader Interactions

20Comments

  1. 1.

    kindness

    December 29, 2011 at 5:12 pm

    Just caught that through Charlie Pierce over there.

    Man Charles is the bomb, I’m tellin’ ya’!

  2. 2.

    Benjamin Franklin

    December 29, 2011 at 5:16 pm

    Of the 70 detainees who were arrested after the rally, 80 percent were observers at the elections. They were expelled from their voting stations, they witnessed ballot stuffing and all kinds of fraud, and they came to the rally not to support any oppositional party, association, or person — they came because they were filled with very personal, furious rage.

    This sounds vaguely familiar……….

  3. 3.

    Veritas

    December 29, 2011 at 5:30 pm

    Two posts, and someone manages to make this about the 2000 Election. That has to be some kind of record.

    BUSH. WON. FLORIDA. Get over it.

  4. 4.

    kindness

    December 29, 2011 at 5:39 pm

    @Veritas: Actually he didn’t. He may have been GIVEN Florida by the Supreme Imbeciles, but you will not convince me that he won the majority.

  5. 5.

    Veritas

    December 29, 2011 at 5:41 pm

    @kindness:

    Just like some people refuse to believe we went to the moon, I guess.

    Was 2004 “STOLEN!!111!1” too?

  6. 6.

    David in NY

    December 29, 2011 at 5:45 pm

    Bush v. Gore was the least principled, most political, most “activist” decision in history. Get over it.

  7. 7.

    PeakVT

    December 29, 2011 at 5:49 pm

    Somebody has a guilty conscience. Old Ben didn’t even mention FL, let alone the USA.

  8. 8.

    Linda Featheringill

    December 29, 2011 at 5:57 pm

    The Russians are serious about this. May the FSM love them. They’ve got guts.

  9. 9.

    Villago Delenda Est

    December 29, 2011 at 5:58 pm

    @Veritas:

    Sorry, shitstain, but the deserting coward STOLE Florida. Nothing you can say will change that.

  10. 10.

    WaterGirl

    December 29, 2011 at 5:59 pm

    All I want for christmas is for everybody to start ignoring stupid trolls.

  11. 11.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    December 29, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    Looks like we’re heading to LLLLLLLLLLL territory with ol’ Verrie here. Anyone who remembers his days as “The Truth” on Sadly, No! will know what I mean (he threw a fit one day and started just posting comments full of keyboard-mashing garbage.)

  12. 12.

    Mike in NC

    December 29, 2011 at 6:01 pm

    “Party of Crooks and Thieves”? Tell those Russkies the GOP has copyright on that.

  13. 13.

    Gin & Tonic

    December 29, 2011 at 6:24 pm

    Three posts, and some fucking moron that people can’t stop themselves from responding to derails the thread. This is about Russia, not the US. It’s actually pretty fucking important.

    How about some self-control, people.

  14. 14.

    Cat Lady

    December 29, 2011 at 6:45 pm

    This Russian episode would make a great movie, something along the lines of Z. A young Rutger Hauer would be perfect as Navalny.

  15. 15.

    gogol's wife

    December 29, 2011 at 6:50 pm

    The protests are very inspiring, but I’m leery of Navalny. There is no Russian savior, unfortunately. But I’m praying for the best. The country deserves for something good to happen for a change.

  16. 16.

    Gin & Tonic

    December 29, 2011 at 6:56 pm

    @gogol’s wife: I can’t figure out why Prokhorov threw his hat in the ring. Nothing good can come of it for him. I wouldn’t be surprised at a mysterious auto accident, or some weird unexplained illness. I mean look at Khodorkovsky.

  17. 17.

    gogol's wife

    December 29, 2011 at 7:09 pm

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I think Putin is trying to figure out how to get 100,000 people on the street to drink thallium-laced tea.

  18. 18.

    fuzz

    December 29, 2011 at 8:34 pm

    I do worry a little bit that too much attention from the western press will give the Kremlin ammo to use against the activists. It’s happened before, the last thing you want is to give credence to the “backed by the US” conspiracies over in Russia. The exiled online is good for coverage of this, Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi, they have videos of pro-Kremlin protesters being bussed into Moscow and then hiding their faces in shame as they get on and off the buses.

  19. 19.

    Darkrose

    December 30, 2011 at 3:05 am

    LiveJournal (The main blogging platform in Russia. —Ed.)

    I’ve been on LJ since 2002, and this article highlights something I’ve thought for a while:

    I think it’s awesome what the Russian bloggers are doing with LJ. I also think that perhaps the needs of Russian political bloggers and fandom porn writers are not the same.

  20. 20.

    Myranda

    December 30, 2011 at 1:05 pm

    @ Darkrose ~

    ::dryly::

    The fandom porn writers of my acquaintance are mostly jumping ship to Dreamwidth or Tumblr and cross-posting to LJ — they’ve been falling out of favor for a while and the latest wankstorm about arbitrary un-optable layout changes, on top of the frequent politically-driven DDoS attacks taking the site down for days at a time, is running a lot of fandom off to friendlier and more stable climes.

    Though, for the record, I think that the ONTD-Celebrity/Socio/Political Gossip Machine has a far, far greater presence on LJ right now than even the largest, loudest, wankiest fandom communities.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

Fundraising 2023-24

Wis*Dems Supreme Court + SD-8

Recent Comments

  • catclub on BJ Hive Mind (Open Thread) (Mar 28, 2023 @ 8:39pm)
  • Another Scott on Russian Affairs Open Thread: The Child Snatchers (Mar 28, 2023 @ 8:35pm)
  • JoyceH on Russian Affairs Open Thread: The Child Snatchers (Mar 28, 2023 @ 8:35pm)
  • StringOnAStick on Russian Affairs Open Thread: The Child Snatchers (Mar 28, 2023 @ 8:35pm)
  • Alison Rose on Russian Affairs Open Thread: The Child Snatchers (Mar 28, 2023 @ 8:35pm)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
We All Need A Little Kindness
Classified Documents: A Primer
State & Local Elections Discussion

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)

Twitter / Spoutible

Balloon Juice (Spoutible)
WaterGirl (Spoutible)
TaMara (Spoutible)
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
TaMara
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
ActualCitizensUnited

Join the Fight!

Join the Fight Signup Form
All Join the Fight Posts

Balloon Juice Events

5/14  The Apocalypse
5/20  Home Away from Home
5/29  We’re Back, Baby
7/21  Merging!

Balloon Juice for Ukraine

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2023 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!