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Kamil Galeev

Jan 13

To be fair it may also mean that court politics >>> military considerations

And Shoigu is really good at court politics. Uniquely good, I'd say. He's been serving in central government since 1991 surviving plenty administrations and plenty purges. That's absolutely unprecedented

https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1613816704177672192

* I know that between his two ministries he's served as a governor of Moscow oblast. Not the point. The point is him never ever being ousted, a singular, unprecedented case. It seems he's just got rid of a potential competitor and returned back to the pre-invasion power balance

I really want to write on Shoigu vs. Serdyukov one day. "Do your job well and ignore the court politics" formula doesn't work in reality. You'll end up vilified, ousted, universally hated and despised. Absolute destruction - that's the normal price for ignoring the court politics

Read 4 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jan 11

To be fair, I think that "Russian people are not at fault, they can't do anything" argument has an *element* of truth in it. I just don't see how it is compatible with the "Russian empire should continue to exist" argument. I think these two ideas inherently contradict each other

https://twitter.com/i_gil_/status/1613232684758622217

First, if a nation is helpless and bears no responsibility for its own fate, this nation may not be *so* great as it claims to be. You are either great or helpless. Choose one. At this point pro-Russian writers choose helplessness thesis. That's ok. But this may exclude greatness

Second, if a nation got to this sorry, helpless condition as described by its own advocates, then it may bear responsibility for having fallen to this condition in the first place. There was no foreign conquest, so it's probably a chain of your own poor choices. You choose badly

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Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jan 6

Great question. Let's open the original video. Notice how @albats formulated her question:

"I was told but I could not find this later in the Internet that you had called the Gastarbeiters cockroaches somewhere. Yes or no?"

Her description is (intentionally?) inaccurate

https://twitter.com/alovlie/status/1611064731191676942

@albats First, @navalny did not technically "call" anyone cockroaches. When making an argument about "too big cockroaches" he illustrated it with a photo of Chechen rebels. This can and will be understood as a reference to generalised Muslims, but (technically) not to "Gastarbeiters"

Second, @albats framed it as an occasional verbal remark, almost accidental "called somewhere". But there was nothing accidental about it. Verbal narrative, visuals, a TV tune, everything was intentionally dehumanising

Read 13 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jan 5

What you should know about @navalny?

1. Far right politician, promoter of hate propaganda
2. Never disowned his extremist agenda or assumed responsibility for it. When being called out, he lied and smeared his critics
3. Enjoyed thorough whitewashing by Moscow & Western media🧵

@navalny started his independent political career in 2007, co-founding an ethnonationalist "Narod" movement and launching the Radio of the Thousand Hills style propaganda. Remember this video, we'll need it later to judge integrity of:

a) @navalny
b) journalists whitewashing him

For context:

The 2000s were an era of the mass nationalist violence in Russia. The golden age of "White trains" with nationalist gangs entering the public transport and attacking those who didn't look sufficiently white. The far right wave was real and @navalny aimed to ride it

Read 41 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Jan 2

1. Language gap -> Most Westerners do not consume content in Russian

2. So, Westerners form their opinion based on what their own media/cultural establishment told them

3. Western cultural establishment forms their opinions based on what Moscow cultural establishment told them

https://twitter.com/shtuddie/status/1609959433966166017

Western discourse on Russia is being formed by the Western cultural elites. And the Western cultural elites rely on the facts selected and interpretations provided by the cultural elites of Moscow. As a result, it's the upper class of Moscow that defines how the West sees Russia

Perspective of the Moscow cultural elites is wildly overrepresented in the Western discourse. Since the Western cultural elites hardly even interact with anyone else, they fully depend upon the former as the source of both "facts" and interpretations to base their opinions upon

Read 7 tweets

Kamil Galeev

@kamilkazani

Dec 31, 2022

And that’s why you shouldn’t trust the reputable sources blindly. Many of them tend to distort facts when it suits their political agenda. The very systematic whitewashing of @Navalny by the media establishment is a good example

I’ll post a thread on the first week of Jan

https://twitter.com/christogrozev/status/1609113192038543360

Consider a “good and balanced” account of @navalny politics quoted by Grozev. This is Masha Gessen’s article in the New Yorker. Notice how this reputable journalist is describing one of Navalny’s debut video clips:

“One was a forty second argument about gun rights”

Seriously?

Watch it yourself and make your own judgment on whether the “forty seconds argument on gin rights” description fits well to this video. You can make your own conclusions on the impartiality and trustworthiness of the quoted article

Read 10 tweets

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