Moscow Year 2013
“In the twenty-first century the techniques of the political technologists have become centralized and systematized, coordinated out of the office of the presidential administration, where Surkov would sit behind a desk on which were phones bearing the names of all the “independent” party leaders, calling and directing them at any moment, day or night. The brilliance of this new type of authoritarianism is that instead of simply oppressing opposition, as had been the case with twentieth-century strains, it climbs inside all ideologies and movements, exploiting and rendering them absurd. One moment Surkov would fund civic forums and human rights NGOs, the next he would quietly support nationalist movements that accuse the NGOs of being tools of the West. With a flourish he sponsored lavish arts festivals for the most provocative modern artists in Moscow, then supported Orthodox fundamentalists, dressed all in black and carrying crosses, who in turn attacked the modern art exhibitions. The Kremlin’s idea is to own all forms of political discourse, to not let any independent movements develop outside of its walls. Its Moscow can feel like an oligarchy in the morning and a democracy in the afternoon, a monarchy for dinner and a totalitarian state by bedtime.” ― Peter Pomerantsev, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, year 2014
Fun fact. This guy loves to make weird posts about narcissists kissing mirrors.
Do you have links showing Peter Pomerantsev makes posts about kissing mirrors? That's the problem I have with so many social machine users in 2025 who give 13-word Tweeting-length replies on Reddit, Lemmy, really everywhere they duplicate Twitter-thinking values, even the White House in April 2025. People who put Twitter-thinking / Fox News language in their brain as primary thinking never provide any links or citations, they just make little short messages like Twitter users do and seem to not be concerned with reality and what is real, just making react-noise comments.
And why do you think that is "fun", do you find the Surreal Russian performance on the world stage "fun" and entertaining?
Russia-watcher Catherine Fitzpatrick, who documents Kremlin disinformation for InterpreterMag . com, says just as Moscow uses vague Internet laws to encourage self-censorship, trolls inhibit informed debate by using crude dialogue to change "the climate of discussion." ... "If you show up at The Washington Post or New Republic sites, where there's an article that's critical of Russia, and you see that there are 200 comments that sound like they were written by 12-year-olds, then you just don't bother to comment," she says. "You don't participate. It's a way of just driving discussion away completely," she adds. "Those kinds of tactics are meant to stop democratic debate, and they work."
::: ______________
“With today’s regimes, which struggle to formulate a single ideology, the idea that one lives in a world full of conspiracies becomes the worldview itself. Conspiracy theory replaces ideology with a mix of self-pity, paranoia, self-importance, and entertainment.” ― Peter Pomerantsev, This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality, 2019
Sorry, I was referencing Neil Degrasse Tyson. I guess I should have made that more clear that I was referring to the pic of the post and not the quote.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/neil-degrasse-tyson-sad-tweet
Thank you for the link.