Trump, Putin and their kind are still dangerous -- but their time is almost up
Trump, Putin and their kind are still dangerous but their time is almost up
Old-guard autocrats like Trump, Putin and Erdogan can't control information in the end, that will destroy them
By BRIAN KAREM
PUBLISHED APRIL 14, 2022 8:30AM
(Salon) My phone vibrated, indicating a new text message.
I checked and found one from a Turkish colleague who occasionally visited the White House during the Trump presidency: "I'm a 26-year-old journalist. I don't want to end up in jail."
At the time I was in a private screening of the movie "Navalny," about the Russian politician who is widely considered to be Vladimir Putin's greatest national rival. Alexei Navalny survived an attempt on his life, by way of poison applied to his underwear, only to be arrested upon his re-entry into Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from the attempt on his life in Siberia.
....(snip)....
From behind prison bars, Navalny has called for protests against Putin's chosen war in Ukraine, where Navalny has ancestral roots. He is viewed by Amnesty International as a "prisoner of conscience" and re-entered his country knowing he might be jailed for up to 20 years because he wants to fight the "corruption and thieves" at the heart of the Russian government.
As for my friend Ibrahim Haskologlu in Turkey, he reported on news that the authoritarian regime of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn't like. He was called "Fake News" and told me that pro-government groups "started to share my home address and identity information." He reports that he's gotten threatening messages and Turkey's minister of the interior sent him a message that there was "an investigation launched against me."
....(snip)....
But what Trump and the rest of these old, dangerous, atavistic, arrogant authoritarians haven't learned yet is that their time is up. It's done. The Navalny documentary partially shot on cellphone the text sent by my colleague in Turkey, the home videos posted on a variety of apps by those suffering from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and even the videos posted from Trump rallies are exposing these cretins for what they are: narcissistic power-mongers who care about no one but themselves. Because of social media, they cannot hide and lie with impunity as they could in the past. ...........(more)
https://www.salon.com/2022/04/14/trump-putin-and-their-kind-are-still--but-their-time-is-almost-up/
Lovie777
(11,992 posts)but alas in the USA we have DeSantis, Abbott, Rick Scott, and the rest of the insane GQPs which includes police, lawyers, judges and US
SC, Musk, to name a few.
thucythucy
(7,986 posts)Just as right wingers bought out so many major TV and radio outlets in the '80s, they're now moving to clamp down on social media.
I think it's way too early to say these cretins are "on their way out."
2naSalit
(86,061 posts)The reason Musk wants to buy twitter but I think it's a desperate grab at something substantial while circling the drain. Trying to cling to the rim of the bowl.
eppur_se_muova
(36,227 posts)I can understand the optimism behind the post, but conclusions that "the new technology will change everything" have always been off the mark. Lots of things change, often to an enormous degree, but much remains the same, and then some of the bad guys learn to use the new technology to their own ends -- witness trolls farms, bots, etc.
There may be turnover in the dictatorial class, but it's not dying out.
TheRealNorth
(9,435 posts)People said similar things about the internet 20-25 years ago.