this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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Blank signs are a sign of astroturfed (and usually foreign backed) protests. Why would someone protest using a blank sign, unless someone else was going to photoshop a slogan onto it at a later date?
You guys don't like it when foreign governments interfere in your elections, and every other country feels the same.
actually, the only times I know blank sheets were used weren't for Photoshop (makes no sense to use it for Photoshop tbh imo, I don't think it was ever the case in Russia at least for any remotely relevant protests), but as an anti-war protest, where explicit anti-war slogans were clearly banned, so some people tried going out with blank sheets because it's obvious what their message is. There were funnier loopholes, like someone claiming "НЕТ В***Е" (no to w*r) was meant to say "НЕТ ВОБЛЕ" (no to some specific kind of fish) because the protester particularly hates that kind of fish, and it miraculously worked, but she later got a 30k fine after wide media coverage.
It's usually used for western news coverage of western backed protests, the signs will be blank, and filled in in English to manufacture whatever story western newspapers want to make about one of the "bad guy countries." (there were quite a few of these people in China during covid and they were widely mocked for their very obviously artificial "white paper movement" over there, but it was treated as a 100% real protest against "authoritarianism" by western newspapers).
Of course, just because something has been used for astroturfed and manufactured protests doesn't mean that is the only time it has ever been used. As you listed there, there are attempts to get around anti-protesting legislation (though as you also pointed out, that's kind of pointless anyway, as people will be punished by the "spirit" of the law rather than the letter of it).
We need to oppress people because of Photoshop but it's okay when we do it because the west is evil is a new one for me.
Fuck off with that debatebro bullshit. Please actually read what I said.
If someone is trying to overthrow a government, especially on behalf of foreign powers, that government will try to stop and arrest them. This isn't a moral statement, it is a factual one. Russia isn't fucking Mordor, it's a real country, and it functions like one, governments will act to preserve their own existence. I don't know why this is an impossible concept for libs to grasp.
Because they see reality like fucking Marvel movies. I'd love to believe that it's propaganda but honestly it's just because their privilege allows them to be insulated from real world shit.
Sure is convenient for them that all those bad guys are always over there in those bad guy countries and they don't actually need to do anything to be a "good guy."
Redsails articles are always appropriate here: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
Btw. Mordor was not less real than Gondor and Rohan, there are snippets of lore here and there about it having a functioning economy, society and international relations, just in the book we mostly see the volcanic wilderness and hot war-condition military infrastructure in its west part.