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Mostrando postagens com marcador Timothy Snyder. Mostrar todas as postagens
Mostrando postagens com marcador Timothy Snyder. Mostrar todas as postagens

quarta-feira, 10 de janeiro de 2024

Constitutional Courage - Timothy Snyder; o grande medo americano

 

Constitutional Courage

How our fears endanger our future

If we ignore the Constitution now, it will not protect our rights later.  We are ignoring it now, because we are afraid.

The Constitution is meant to handle our emotions, to “address itself immediately to the hopes and fears of individuals,” in Alexander Hamilton’s words.  

But there is one fear it cannot address: fear of the Constitution itself.  Too many of us, right now, are running in fear of the Constitution. 

How did it come to this?  An insurrectionist, Donald Trump, purports to be running for president, although the Constitution forbids this.  Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment frankly disqualifies anyone who has taken part in an insurrection, or given aid and comfort to insurrectionists.  Trump has done both, and boasts of having done both. 

The authors of Section Three anticipated just such a frightful situation.  An insurrectionist who swears an oath and violates it has done something terrible.  He will have allies who have tasted tyranny and liked it.  By mandating just how to deal with such a person, Section Three lends us strength we might not otherwise have.  The Constitution defends itself by guiding us towards our better selves. 

Yet Americans who should know better are choosing fear over the Constitution, finding excuses to ignore what it says.  Indeed, they are choosing to fear the Constitution.  Far too many politicians and other media commentators respond to our present situation -- a real insurrectionist who has tried to overthrow the Constitution while in office, a real Constitutional ban on insurrectionists running for office a second time -- by saying that it is the Constitution that must yield. 

Their slogan is: “let the voters decide.”  That is to say: in the case of Trump, and Trump alone, let us simply overlook what the Constitution says. 

The exceptionalism reeks of fear.  In no other case do we wish away the qualifications for office.  There will be thousands and thousands of contested elections in the United States in November 2024.  With respect to only one of them are people saying that legal qualifications for office do not matter. 

a view of the ceiling of a building with columns

The slogan “let the voters decide” makes no sense within our Constitutional order.  We only have voters because we have elections, and we only have elections as organized under the Constitution.  Claiming that voters (and electoral systems) can disregard the Constitution is senseless, because people become citizens and thus voters in ways defined by the Constitution.  No Constitution, no citizens, no voters. 

The real issue, though, is elsewhere.  “Let the voters decide” appeals not to law or logic but to conformism and fear.  It evades critique from within our Constitutional order because it rejects that order.  Rather than following Constitutional procedures meant to handle fear, it redirects fear against those Constitutional procedures.   

When we are ourselves afraid to defend the Constitution, we indulge in a kind of victim-blaming.  Trump tried to overthrow the Constitution; when we say “let the voters decide,” we suggest that the Constitution deserved it.  In ignoring Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment, we refuse, as it were, to hear the Constitution's side of the story. 

We are attacking the Constitution because we lack the courage to defend it.  And so we begin to unwind the constitutional order. 

Take the familiar example of checks and balances. The slogan “let the voters decide” suggests that potential presidents are beyond the reach of the other branches of government, despite what the Constitution says.  Section Three of the Fourteenth amendment raises questions that courts will have to answer.  Saying “let the voters decide” denies them that role.  Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment very explicitly defines a role for Congress after an insurrection.  Congress may vote to allow an insurrectionist to take part in elections. 

The point goes deeper, into the very logic of constitutionalism.  Checks and balances illustrate the Constitution's capacity to transform human imperfections into decent politics.  One of those imperfections is fear.  When we direct our fear at the Constitution itself, however, we push those imperfections past the point where they can be borne.  When we are too fearful of the Constitution to allow the Constitution to address our fears, fear builds to become the main mode of politics.

We then legitimate mob rule because we imagine some future mob.  We obey a tyrant in advance.  Directing our fear at the Constitution makes the tyrant's ascent far too easy. 

The Constitution can defend itself in general, and even against the specific threat of an insurrectionist candidate -- but not on its own, not as a piece of paper, not without defenders who read it and affirm it.  When we ignore what the Constitution says, and blame the Constitution for our own cowardice, we join in Trump's attack upon it. 

It takes a little courage to admit that we are afraid, rather than to project our fears.  It takes a little more courage to act, rather than dissemble and delay.  If we want constitutional rule, right now is the easiest moment to mount its defense, in the way marked out by the Constitution itself. 

It only gets harder from here.

segunda-feira, 8 de janeiro de 2024

Timothy Snyder pergunta se a Suprema Corte tem condições de julgar o insurreto ex-presidente golpista

Nem todas as cortes supremas se parecem. Algumas são supremamente mais ridículas do que outras...

Courting Ridicule

When constitutionalism becomes comedy

I am concerned that the Supreme Court, in ruling on Trump's eligibility for office, will make itself ridiculous. 

We stand on the threshold of comedy already. 

A Supreme Court justice takes big gifts from people who have an interest in Court rulings.  Morally shocking, but also ludicrous. 

The Court responds by ignoring a fundamental principle of justice: that one cannot judge oneself.  This is tragic, but also funny.

The wife of that justice supported the overthrow of Constitutional rule during an attempted coup.  It’s hard to miss the humorous side of that. 

She urged the president (through baffling texts to his chief of staff) to (among many other things) "release the Kraken."  This is horrible in its totality, but hilarious in the detail.

She attended and helped organize the rally that became the assault on the Capitol on January 6th, 2020.  And she helps run a for-profit consulting firmthat takes money from people who have cases before the Supreme Court.

In a Court wishing to maintain a veneer of seriousness, Clarence Thomas would recuse himself from cases where Ginni Thomas is making money and from cases concerning Trump's insurrection.  

Thomas did recuse himself from a single case that touched on January 6th, when doing so did not matter. That’s distressing; but it’s also amusing to consider that he thought he was fooling anyone.

What is left for Supreme Court justices at this point is an overt commitment to legal theory.  Most justices, Thomas included, are "originalists," and indicate that they are bound, in their rulings, by doctrines known as intentionalism or textualism.  

In intentionalism, the Constitution is held to mean what its framers intended it to mean.  In textualism, the Constitutionalism is held to mean what its plain language indicates. These views are what most justices want us to take seriously. It would help if the justices who propound these views would act consistently with them.

Court rulings favor big business and make it harder for people to vote.  We are assured that this a side effect of intentionalist and textualist readings of the Constitution.  It is mere coincidence, we are told, that these rulings align with the interests of the political forces who organized the justices' education, ascent, and appointment. Perhaps this is true.  Perhaps it is coincidence.  Perhaps textualism and intentionalism mean something.  

Or perhaps it is all a sham. We are about to find out. 

The Supreme Court is about to consider Anderson vs. Griswold, the Colorado Supreme Court ruling that Trump may not appear on a primary ballot. 

This is a case made for a textualist or an intentionalist.

For a textualist, intentionalist, or originalist of any sort, Anderson vs. Griswoldis utterly simple.  The text of Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution forbids insurrectionists such as Trump from holding office. The intentions of those who discussed and formulated Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment are similarly clear.

This is where the comic potential emerges.  This Court is unlikely ever to hear again a case of such simplicity, in which the text and context of the Constitution so obviously demand an unambiguous verdict: to confirm the Colorado ruling. 

If the Court does otherwise, it will look silly. 

But three of our textualists and the intentionalists were appointed by Trump, and silliness seems to be the general expectation. The theory of Trump's lawyers, as one of them has actually said out loud, is that Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump belong to Trump.

The tittering has begun. Like an audience that sees the banana peel on the stage, commentators goad the justices towards the pratfall. It is widely proclaimed that the Court's decision rule should not be the Constitution, but instead the psychological state of Trump supporters.  

“Maybe folks’ll be upset” would indeed be a funny way to decide a case. 

gray stone columns worm's-eye view photo

Such a pitchfork ruling, a judgement based not on law but on guesses about the moods of strangers, would be as far from intentionalism and textualism as the justices could get. It is just the sort of thing that intentionalists and textualists say that they never do. Their heroic pose is that they must do just what the Constitution says, regardless of the consequences.

After a pitchfork ruling, the entire originalist pretence — that justices stand bravely apart from the moment and evaluate the text or context of the Constitution as they must — would dissolve.

The consequences of courting ridicule are, of course, very serious. Our form of government depends on a balance between the executive, the legislative, and the judicial branches.  When such a government is toppled, it is usually by an executive who is able to dominate the other two branches.  One way that an executive does so is by mocking the other two branches, portraying them as unnecessary and led by buffoons.

And so actual buffoonery helps no one. If Trump is left on the ballot in defiance of the Constitution by people who claim to be its protectors, he will not respect it or them.  But the danger of constitutional comedy is general.  It leaves the rule of law more vulnerable, and makes regime change more likely.

sábado, 6 de janeiro de 2024

On Tiranny : Twenty lessons from the Twentieth Century - Timothy Snyder

 On Tiranny: Twenty lessons from the Twentieth Century

Timothy Snyder

January, 6, 3024

https://open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p/on-tyranny?r=8ma92&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post 

These are twenty lessons from the twentieth century I published seven years ago, first as a kind of online declaration, and then, with historical examples, in a pamphlet called On Tyranny.

They were written in advance of the first Trump presidency, and have been used since in the U.S. and around the world. 

For those who want democracy and the rule of law in the United States after 2024, I would only add: now is the time to organize, to prepare to win locally and nationally, and to talk not only about what is to be lost but what can be gained. 

I wrote On Tyranny in a defensive mode; but freedom is something not only to be defended but to be defined and to be celebrated. As for me, I believe that if we can get through the next year, things could get better. Much better.

For now, three years after Trump’s attempt to end democracy and the rule of law in the United States, a reminder of the lessons. I recall them now in then hope that I won’t have to do so again a year from now.

1. Do not obey in advance.  Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked.  A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do. 

2.  Defend institutions.  It is institutions that help us to preserve decency.  They need our help as well.  Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf.  Institutions do not protect themselves.  They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning.  So choose an institution you care about -- a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union -- and take its side.

3. Beware the one-party state.  The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start.  They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents.  So support the multiple-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections.  Vote in local and state elections while you can.  Consider running for office.

4. Take responsibility for the face of the world.  The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow.  Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate.  Do not look away, and do not get used to them.  Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

5. Remember professional ethics.  When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges.  Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.

6. Be wary of paramilitaries.  When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh.  When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

7. Be reflective if you must be armed.  If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you.  But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things.  Be ready to say no.

8. Stand out.  Someone has to.  It is easy to follow along.  It can feel strange to do or say something different.  But without that unease, there is no freedom.  Remember Rosa Parks.  The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

9. Be kind to our language.  Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does.  Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying.  Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet.  Read books.

10. Believe in truth.  To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.  The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

11. Investigate.  Figure things out for yourself.  Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media.  Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you.  Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad).  Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.

12. Make eye contact and small talk.  This is not just polite.  It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society.  It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust.  If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

13. Practice corporeal politics.  Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen.  Get outside.  Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people.  Make new friends and march with them.

14. Establish a private life.  Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around.  Scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis.  Remember that email is skywriting.  Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less.  Have personal exchanges in person.  For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble.  Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you.  Try not to have hooks.

15. Contribute to good causes.  Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life.  Pick a charity or two and set up autopay.  Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.

16. Learn from peers in other countries.  Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries.  The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend.  And no country is going to find a solution by itself.  Make sure you and your family have passports.

17. Listen for dangerous words.  Be alert to use of the words "extremism" and "terrorism."  Be alive to the fatal notions of "emergency" and "exception."  Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives.  Modern tyranny is terror management.  When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power.  The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book.  Do not fall for it.

19. Be a patriot.  Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come.  They will need it.

20. Be as courageous as you can.  If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.

These lessons are the openings of the twenty chapters of On Tyranny, which has been updated to account for the Big Lie, the coup attempt, the war in Ukraine, and the risks we face in 2024.  On Tyranny has also been published in a beautiful graphic edition, illustrated by Nora Krug.


quinta-feira, 7 de setembro de 2023

Ukraine: The State of the War p Timothy Snyder

 Os interessados numa história da Ucrânia, dos tempos ancestrais à atualidade, podem visualizar o curso que ele deu na Yale, disponível no seu canal no YouTube.


segunda-feira, 26 de junho de 2023

Timothy Snyder sobre dois GANGSTERS russos: a marcha de Prigozyn contra Putin

 

Prigozhin's March on Moscow

Ten lessons from a mutiny

How to understand Yevgeny Prigozhin's march on Moscow and its sudden end?  Often there are plots without a coup; this seemed like a coup without a plot.  Yet weird as the mercenary chief’s mutiny was, we can draw some conclusions from its course and from its conclusion.

1.  Putin is not popular.  All the opinion polling we have takes place in an environment where his power is seen as more or less inevitable and where answering the question he wrong way seems risky.  But when his power was lifted, as when Rostov-on-Don was seized by Wagner, no one seemed to mind.  Reacting to Prigozhin's mutiny, some Russians were euphoric, and most seemed apathetic.  What was not to be seen was anyone in any Russian city spontaneously expressing their personal support for Putin, or let alone anyone taking any sort of personal risk on behalf of his regime.  The euphoria suggests to me that some Russians are ready to be ruled by a different exploitative regime.  The apathy indicates that most Russians at this point just take for granted that they will be ruled by the gangster with the most guns, and will just go on with their daily lives regardless of who that gangster happens to be. 

2.  Prigozhin was a threat to Putin, because he does much the same things that Putin does, and leverages Putin's own assets.  Both the Russian state itself and Prigozhin's mercenary firm Wagner are extractive regimes with large public relations and military arms.  The Putin regime exists, and the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg are relatively wealthy, thanks to the colonial exploitation of hydrocarbon resources in Siberia.  The wealth is held by a very few people, and the Russian population is treated to a regular spectacle of otherwise pointless war -- Ukraine, Syria, Ukraine again -- to distract attention from this basic state of affairs, and to convince them that there is some kind of external enemy that justifies it (hint: there really isn't).  Wagner functioned as a kind of intensification of the Russian state, doing the dirtiest work beyond Russia, not only in Syria and Ukraine but also in Africa.  It was subsidized by the Russian state, but made its real money by extracting mineral resources on its own, especially in Africa.  Unlike most of its other ventures, Wagner's war in Ukraine was a losing proposition.  Prigozhin leveraged the desperation of Russia's propaganda for a victory by taking credit for victory at Bakhmut.  That minor city was completely destroyed and abandoned by the time Wagner took it, at the cost of tens of thousands of Russian lives.  But because it was the only gain in Russia's horrifyingly costly but strategically senseless 2023 offensive, it had to be portrayed by Putin's media as some kind of Stalingrad or Berlin.  Prigozhin was able to direct the false glory to himself even as he then withdrew Wagner from Ukraine.  Meanwhile he criticized the military commanders of the Russian Federation in increasingly vulgar terms, thereby preventing the Russian state (and Putin) from gaining much from the bloody spectacle of invaded Ukraine.  In sum: Wagner was able to make the Putin regime work for it.

3.  Prigozhin told the truth about the war.  This has to be treated as a kind of self-serving accident: Prigozhin is a flamboyant and skilled liar and propagandist.  But his pose in the days before his march on Moscow made the truth helpful to him.  He wanted to occupy this position in Russian public opinion: the man who fought loyally for Russia and won Russia's only meaningful victory in 2023, in the teeth of the incompetence of the regime and the senselessness of the war itself.  I'm not sure enough attention has been paid to what Prigozhin said about Putin's motives for war: that it had nothing to do with NATO enlargement or Ukrainian aggression, and was simply a matter of wishing to dominate Ukraine, replace its regime with a Moscow-friendly politician (Viktor Medvedchuk), and then seize its resources and to satisfy the Russian elite.  Given the way the Russian political system actually works, that has the ring of plausibility.  Putin's various rationales are dramatically inconsistent with the way the Russian political system actually works.

4.  Russia is far less secure than it was before invading Ukraine.  This is a rather obvious point that many people aside from myself have been making, going all the way back the first invasion of 2014.  There was never any reason to believe, from that point at the latest, that Putin cared about Russian national interests.  If he had, he would never have begun a conflict that forced Russia to become subordinate to China, which is the only real threat on its borders.  Any realist in Moscow concerned about the Russian state would seek to balance China and the West, rather than pursue a policy which had to alienate the West.  Putin was concerned that Ukraine might serve as a model.  Unlike Russians, Ukrainians could vote and enjoyed freedom of speech and association.  That was no threat to Russia, but it was to Putin's own power.  Putin certainly saw Ukraine as an opportunity to generate a spectacle that would distract from his own regime's intense corruption, and to consolidate his own reputation as a leader who could gather in what he falsely portrayed as "Russian" lands.  But none of this has anything to do with the security of Russia as a state or the wellbeing of Russians as a people.  The Putin of 2022 (much more than the Putin of 2014) seems to have believed his own propaganda, overestimating Russian power while dismissing the reality of the Ukrainian state and Ukrainian civil society -- something no realist would do.  That meant that the second invasion failed, and that meant (as I wrote back in February 2022) that it would give an opportunity to a rival warlord.  Prigozhin was that warlord and he took that opportunity.  This might have all seemed abstract until he led his forces on a march to Moscow, downing six Russian helicopters and one plane, and stopping without ever having met meaningful resistance.  To be sure, Wagner had many advantages, such as being seen as Russian by locals and knowing how local infrastructure worked.  Nevertheless, Prigozhin's march shows that a small force would have little trouble reaching Moscow.  That was not the case before most of the Russian armed forces were committed in Ukraine, where many of the best units essentially ceased to exist.

St. Basils Cathedral

5.  When backed into a corner, Putin saves himself.  In the West, we have worry about Putin's feelings.  What might he do if he feels threatened?  Might he do something terrible to us?  Putin encourages this line of thinking with constant bluster about "escalation" and the like.  On Saturday Putin gave another speech full of threats, this time directed against Prigozhin and Wagner.  Then he got into a plane and flew away to another city.  And then he made a deal with Prigozhin.  And then all legal charges against Prigozhin were dropped.  And then Putin's propagandists explained that all of this was perfectly normal.  

So long as Putin is in power, this is what he will do.  He will threaten and hope that those threats will change the behaviour of his enemies.  When that fails, he will change the story.  His regime rests on propaganda, and in the end the spectacle generated by the military is there to serve the propaganda.  Even when that spectacle is as humiliating as can be possibly be imagined, as it was on Saturday when Russian rebels marched on Moscow and Putin fled, his response will be to try to change he subject.  

It is worth emphasizing that on Saturday the threat to him personally and to his regime was real.  Both the risk and the humiliation were incomparably greater than anything that could happen in Ukraine.  Compared to power in Russia, power in Ukraine is unimportant.  After what we have just seen, no one should be arguing that Putin might be backed into a corner in Ukraine and take some terrible decision.  He cannot be backed into a corner in Ukraine.  He can only be backed into a corner in Russia.  And now we know what he does when that happens: record a speech and run away.

(And most likely write a check.  A note of speculation.  No one yet knows what the deal between Putin and Prigozhin was.  There are rumblings in Russia that Sergei Shoigu, Prigozhin's main target, will be forced to resign after accusations of some kind of corruption or another.  There are reports that Prigozhin was given reason to be concerned about the lives of his own familymembers and those of other Wagner leaders.  I imagine, personally, that one element was money.  On 1 July, Wagner was going to cease to exist as a separate entity, at least formally speaking.  It like all private armies was required to subordinate itself to the ministry of defense, which is to say to Shoigu.  This helps to explain, I think, the timing of the mutiny.  Were Wagner to cease to function as before, Prigozhin would have lost a lot of money.  It is not unreasonable to suppose that he marched on Moscow at a moment when we still had the firepower to generate one last payout.  Mafia metaphors can help here, not least because they are barely metaphors.  You can think of the Russian state as a protection racket.  No one is really safe, but everyone has to accept "protection" in the knowledge that this is less risky than rebellion.  A protection racket is always vulnerable to another protection racket.  In marching from Rostov-on-Don to Moscow, Prigozhin was breaking one protection racket and proposing another.  On this logic, we can imagine Prigozhin's proposal to Putin as follows: I am deploying the greater force, and I am now demanding protection money from you.  If you want to continue your own protection racket, pay me off before I reach Moscow.)

6.  The top participants were fascists, and fascists can feud.  We don't use the term “fascist” much, since the Russians (especially Russian fascists) use it for their enemies, which is confusing; and since it seems somehow politically incorrect to use it.  And for another reason: unlike the Italians, the Romanians, and the Germans of the 1930s, the Putin regime has had the use of tremendous profits from hydrocarbons, which it has used to influence western public opinion.  All the same, if Russia today is not a fascist regime, it is really difficult to know what regime would be fascist.  It is more clearly fascist than Mussolini's Italy, which invented the term.  Russian fascists have been in the forefront of both invasions on Ukraine, both on the battlefield and in propaganda.  Putin himself has used fascist language at every turn, and has pursued the fascist goal of genocide in Ukraine.  

Prigozhin has been however the more effective fascist propagandist during this war, strategically using symbols of violence (a sledgehammer) and images of death (cemeteries, actual corpses) to solidify his position.  Wagner includes a very large number of openly fascist fighters.  Wagner's conflict with Shogun has racist overtones, undertones, and throughtones -- on pro-Wagner Telegram channels he is referred to as "the Tuva degenerate" and similar.  

That said, the difference between fascists can seem very meaningful when that is all that is on offer, and it is absolutely clear that many Russians were deeply affected by the clash of the two fascist camps.  That said, it is important to specify a difference between Putin and Prigozhin's fascism and that of the 1930s.  The two men are both very concerned with money, which the first generation of fascists in general were not.  They are oligarchical fascists -- a breed worth watching here in the US as well.

7.  The division in Russia was real, and will likely endure.  Some Russians celebrated when Wagner shot down Russian helicopters, and others were astonished that they could do so.  Some Russians wanted action, others could not imagine change.  Most Russians probably do not care much, but those who do are not of the same opinion.  Putin's regime will try to change the subject, as always, but now it lacks offensive power in Ukraine (without Wagner) and so the ability to create much of a spectacle. Russian propaganda has already turned against Wagner, who were of course yesterday's heroes. The leading Russian propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, recruited for Wagner. The son of Putin's spokesman supposedly served in Wagner. Although this was almost certainly a lie, it reveals that Wagner was once the site of prestige. 

It might prove hard for Russian propagandists to find any heroes in the story, since for the most part no one resisted Wagner's march on Moscow.  If Wagner was so horrible, why did everyone just let it go forward?  If the Russian ministry of defense is so effective, why did it do so little?  If Putin is in charge, why did he run away, and leave even the negotiating to Lukashenko of Belarus?  If Lukashenko is the hero of the story, what does that say about Putin?

It is also not clear what will happen now to Wagner.  The Kremlin claims that its men will be integrated into the Russian armed forces, but it is hard to see why they would accept that.  They are used to being treated with greater respect (and getting paid better).  If Wagner remains intact in some form, it is hard to see how it could be trusted, in Ukraine or anywhere else.  More broadly, Putin now faces a bad choice between toleration and purges.  If he tolerates the rebellion, he looks weak.  If he purges his regime, he risks another rebellion.

8.  One of Putin's crimes against Russia is his treatment of the opposition.  This might seem to be a tangent: what does the imprisoned or exiled opposition have to do with Prigozhin's mutiny?  The point is that their imprisonment and exile meant that they could do little to advance their own ideas for Russia's future on what would otherwise have been an excellent occasion to do so.  The Putin regime is obviously worn out, but there is no one around to say so, and to propose something better than another aging fascist.  

I think of this by contrast to 1991.  During the coup attempt that August against Gorbachev, Russians rallied in Moscow.  They might or might not have been supporters of Gorbachev, but they could see the threat a military coup posed for their own futures.  The resistance to the coup gave Russia a chance for a new beginning, a chance that has now been wasted.  There was no resistance to this coup, in part because of the systematic political degeneration of the Putin regime, in part because the kinds of courageous Russians who went to the streets in 1991 are no behind bars or in exile.  This means that Russians in general have been denied a chance to think of political futures. 

9.  This was a preview of how the war in Ukraine ends.  When there is meaningful conflict in Russia, Russians will forget about Ukraine and pay attention to their own country.  That has no happened once, and it can happen again.  When such a conflict lasts longer than this one (just one day), Russian troops will be withdrawn from Ukraine.  In this case, Wagner withdrew itself from Ukraine, and then the troops of Ramzan Kadyrov (Akhmat) departed Ukraine to fight Wagner (which they predictably failed to do, which is another story).  In a more sustained conflict, regular soldiers would also depart.  It will be impossible to defend Moscow and its elites otherwise.  Moscow elites who think ahead should want those troops withdrawn now. On its present trajectory, Russia is likely to face an internal power struggle sooner rather than later.  That is how wars end: when the pressure is felt inside the political system.  Those who want this war to end should help Ukrainians exert that pressure.

10.  Events in Russia (like events in Ukraine) are in large measure determined by the choices of Russians (or Ukrainians).  In the US we have the imperialist habit of denying agency to both parties in this conflict.  Far too many people seem to think that Ukrainians are fighting because of the US or NATO, when in fact the situation is entirely the opposite: it was Ukrainian resistance that persuaded other nations to help.  Far too many people still think the US or NATO had something to do with Putin's personal decision to invade Ukraine, when in fact the character of the Russian system (and Putin's own words) provide us with more than enough explanation. 

Some of those people are now claiming that Prigozhin's putsch was planned by the Americans, which is silly.  The Biden administration has quite consistently worked against Wagner.  Prigozhin's main American connection was his hard work, as head of Russia's Internet Research Agency, to get Trump elected in 2016.  Others are scrambling to explain Prigozhin's march on Moscow and its end as some kind of complex political theater, in which the goal was to move Prigozhin and Wagner to Belarus to organize a strike on Ukraine from the north.  This is ludicrous.  If Prigozhin actually does go to Belarus, there is no telling what he might improvise there. But the idea of such a plan makes no sense. If Putin and Prigozhin were on cooperative terms, they could have simply agreed on such a move in a way that would not have damaged both of their reputations (and left Russia weaker).  

Putin choose to invade Ukraine for reasons that made sense to him inside the system he built.  Prigozhin resisted Putin for reasons that made sense to him as someone who had profited from that system from the inside.  The mutiny was a choice within Putin's war of choice, and it exemplifies the disaster Putin has brought to his country.