Putinization

For now, the neocons can only dream of Putinization, but you know they wake with soiled jammies. In Russia, “managed democracy,” a Tsarist-like power structure, tightly controls dissent. Media, NGOs, and other aspects of civil society are highly constricted, and although the state itself may not have had thirteen journalists assassinated in recent years, it also hasn’t convicted anyone for these crimes and it has benefited from the cowed press. Admittedly, murder is rare; more usual is this "soft" repression story.

At least for the moment, the Russian people seem to agree with these methods. They were so traumatized by the post-Soviet shocks of western-enforced neoliberalism (the economy was looted by finance capital, new oligarchs emerged, thieving their way to billions, and average life span plummeted, a story little covered here), that they demand the stability, the ol’ law and order, that Tsar Vlad & Co. claim to deliver.

Ah, the bitter irony, that neoliberalism, long sold under the rubric of “freedom,” so inexorably leads to authoritarianism, either directly, as concentrated power and wealth maintains its grip, or indirectly, as when nationalists respond to its depredations in anti-democratic ways.