The events in Belorussia bring
on more than thoughts about the
brotherly country's internal
and external political problems.
The shutting down of the Internet over there and
the phenomenon of the Telegram channel 'Nexta' ('Someone' - Bel.)'
make worth a contamination on the informational
aspect of such a thing as a street protest,
particularly in view of the
fact that in the era of Internet
it is the information which
brings people into the streets.
The rally and street protest as a sable
form of the public city protest ritual have
been considerably transformed under influence
of the Internet and social networks.
The methods for political
mobilization and protest preparation
have also changed with the appearance
of the so-called new media.
The key issue of these methods is naturally
the conversion rate, the transformation of a
social network reader and user into an active
participant of a protest action in the street.
The crux is that users can
express their discontent
at will and on mass in
the social networks.
But this does not result in people 
coming out into the streets.
The thing is that joining the protests
is practically always an emotionally
rather than rationally validated
action for an ordinary participant.
Initially, according to
sociologists, the propaganda
is always directed to
the young generation.
The organizers play on the
youths' need to raise the
self evaluation and to
experience new emotions.
"The youth in any society is the most
protest prone electorate," explains
sociologist, the director of the Enterprise
group of the Sociology Institute, Maria Fil.
"A generational conflict takes place
here because the authorities are
associated with a certain domineering
of the older generation who allegedly are imposing their rules of play, the order of behaviour.
In a wider sense it is the fathers
and sons problem.
The young want to announce themselves, want to
have more opportunities and it seems
to them that those opportunities
are not as freely available no as they would be if the authorities are replaced.
The opposition leaders arm themselves with an
image of a modern advanced person."
Additionally it is important to evoke within 
a protester strong negative emotions.
So the principal supporting factor
for people's emotions that makes them
come out in the streets can be the
visuals of dispersing of rallies,
when the security forces 
pound the protestors.
After all it is a strong 
source for outrage.
And the more such videos
appear, the stronger probability for those people
appearing in the square who previously were not sure they needed to act.
The advantage that the
protest organizers have
against their opponents, the
authorities, is obvious:
in most cases it is impossible to
determine whether the attacked were the
genuine protesters as opposed to those
who attacked the police themselves.
Of course you can spend a few hours 
in order to find out these nuances.
But this has no baring whatsoever 
on the target audience.
So all that is left in
the viewer's mind is the
violence of the law enforcement
against the civilians.
After the first dispersals and
arrests dozens of videos will
appear on the Internet, which
will trigger the chain reaction.
The entire anger stowed withing the society 
will blaze up from one match strike,
whose role will be performed by 
the right photos and videos.
In these conditions the
decision to block the Internet does not
appear to be so stupid.
It becomes rather logical.
This way the authorities can 
kill two birds with one stone.
Firstly, the interaction on the Internet
has a direct influence on the formulating
the rules for behaviour during the
protest and at the point of detention.
The protests are prepared
on the Internet, there the problem is discussed,
supporters are recruited.
And next, when the protest
moves into the street, the
crowd's movements are
coordinated through the Internet.
This means the demonstrators
must be deprived of
this possibility to
coordinate their actions.
But, as I said earlier, it is
even more important for the
authorities to deprive the
protest of the new energy,
which can be created by the same videos 
of protest dispersals and beatings.
In this light, the situation
in which Belorussia found
itself is very interesting,
when the country blocked
everything it could, even
to the detriment of its own economy,
but was unable to block 
the Telegram with Nexta within it.
The Belorussian authorities
faced a completely new problem here,
for whose solution they
did not prepare in advance.
Possibly they did not even 
suspect its existence.
This problem can be briefly described as 
a punctured informational shield.
In other words, to attempt
blocking the social networks
and fail at it is worth it than
not trying to turn off anything.
According to the preliminary
assessments the modest republic's economy
was losing
up to $56 million a day.
But this is not as bad as the informational
vacuum which the authorities created
with their own hands and which was
filled by the oppositional channel 'Nexta',
whose creators, the way, live in 
Poland by the way,
and which gained almost
2 million subscribers in
a couple of days, having
become, in fact, the principle coordinator of the protests
and the largest Russian language political
Telegram channel.
Compare: the popular and
quite reputable channel
"Nezygar'" has merely
348 thousand subscribers,
which used to seem a huge number.
Aleksei Navalny has only 176 thousand 
subscribers to his Telegram channel.
I will not analyze the 'Nexta' channel in 
the context of Belorussian protests.
I am more interested in 
something different.
Everything points at
the fact that a new
anti-Russian media giant
appeared under our noses,
which, in addition to
everything else, is practically
out of range for the Russian
law enforcement system.
There should be no doubt
in the Russophobic nature
of the newly born Russian-language
Polish media source.
The channel simply gleams
with outward Russophobia
and a few times it
transmitted fakes,
one of which was the
post about the 'Russian spetsnaz'
beating up
ordinary Belorussians.
Have a look.
Besides this channel's posts are soaked with 
calls for radicalization of the protest.
Interesting are the personalities 
who created the channel.
For instance the chief editor of 'Nexta'
is Roman Protasevich, who used to work
for the American 'Radio Freedom' and
for the Lithuanian-Polish 'Euro Radio'.
The problem is that if some protests start in the territory of the Russian Federation,
that channel will be able to easily
tell the protesters what
and how they should do
all the way from Poland.
And if the comrades
from 'Nexta' calls for
throwing Molotov cocktails
into the law enforcement forces
or shoot at them
with fireworks, 'Nexta' could
not be held into account. They 
are in Poland. Out of reach.
In this hypothetical situation
'Nexta', calling for the protest radicalization,
will not be
acting in the people's interest.
Because this would cause
casualties among both the
law enforcement forces
and among the protesters,
and would bring to naught any possible 
concessions on behalf of the authorities,
which would be quite possible in 
the case of a peaceful protest.
as is the case in Khabarovsk,
where there have been no
dispersals of rallies, nor forceful
detentions, nor beatings of citizens.
On the contrary,
the clerk in the rank of Prime Minister
visited the region for
the first time in thirteen years.
Prior to Mishustin, it was Fratkov who visited 
the region in the remote year of 2007.
All that time the leaders of
the country demonstrated their
attention to the region’s
problems only from a distance.
This illustrates perfectly the role
of peaceful protests in Khabarovsk
in the transformation of the Center’s
attitude towards the entire Far East.
Russia should be thinking
today how it should behave
when the described above
situation appears here.
Because pinpoint strikes
against particular
agitators inside the
country would be useless.
Because the entire coordination of actions
and the feeding the ever renewed videos and photos
of beaten up teenagers to the
undecided will be directed from abroad.
Yes, Russia can repeat the
mistake of Belorussian authorities
and try to cover herself with a
punctured informational shield.
But here, it seems to me, the real help to Russia 
could be rendered by the sovereign Runet,
of which there was so much 
talk some time ago.
For instance, the Telegram
channel 'On Duty in Iran'
draws the example of the
last year's protests in Iran.
This is what it says:
"The Belorussian protests
reminded me of the demonstrations
in Iran back in November which was lucky to witness...
the Iranian way of neutralizing the protest
threat looks a lot more
successful (than the Belorussian one).
They didn't just turn off the Internet within
24 hours, but launched
the 'national internet',
which meant that a widen local
service remained: the
state media sites continued
working, so did banking
systems, food deliveries and taxis, ticket sales -
practically everything in the .Ir zone,
but no social networks,
no messengers, youtubes
or even email. The 'national
internet' was prepared
for almost two years but
the result turned out impressive:
it was practically
impossible to bypass the blocking,
while the basic
infrastructure kept working.
It is an extremely effective
short term measure."
This way, in case of events
developing according
to earlier described
scenario, the sovereign
Runet would help to
prevent bloodshed and keep
the protest within the
peaceful framework,
without causing damage to 
the country’s economy.
Yes, technical questions
arise as well as the danger
of misuse of the instrument
by the authorities.
However the Kremlin and Russian society 
still have enough time to reach a compromise,
having created a powerful shield against 
the external resources like 'Nexta',
which, besides its role
described above,
could be used first and
foremost for protection
of important infrastructure of the country
from cyber attacks during the cyber war,
which I covered in my previous video.
This is all for today. Write your comments, rate this video,
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