The right to be free

RT special correspondent Ilya Vasyunin spent the weekend at the Meshchanskoye police station in Moscow.

He was detained for going to a one-man picket with a poster “Stop organizing Ukraine here” in protest against the inclusion of the Dozhd TV channel in the register of “foreign agents”.

The rest of those detained for single pickets in support of "Dozhd" were released, and social networks focused on the analysis of the personal case of citizen Vasyunin. In particular, the adherents of the Beautiful Russia of the Future tried to figure out whether the Komsomol member Vasyunin has a high enough appearance to support the TV channel on which he himself once worked, what he made at the action a “wrong” poster about Ukraine (so Vasyunin was also recorded as a provocateur) and in general - what right does an employee of the RT channel have to protest against any actions of the state, who, as the well-meaning public knows, is the main mouthpiece of the bloody regime, who is personally responsible for everything that happens in the bad world. While the Internet fighters for the Beautiful Russia of the Future cursed the white crow that had crowded into the ranks of people with bright faces - that is, the raven, that is, Vasyunin,- he continued to sit in the police department and came out only on Monday under the obligation to appear in court.

In fairness, Vasyunin's colleagues, from the newly-minted "foreign agents" to his own RT colleagues, almost did not participate in the discussion, except that they rhetorically asked whether the "sofa warriors" were stunned - it was activists who sent curses, most of whom did not write in life, not a single article, not to mention work in the same Donbass, where human life and death cease to be a line on Twitter, and the spoken and written word implies immediate responsibility for it.

For any normal (just normal) person with any views - patriotic, liberal, left (Vasyunin's views are left, they have not changed for many years) - Ilya Vasyunin's act is completely ordinary.

A person decides to express his opinion about what he considers unfair, chooses a form, draws a poster.

Because to be left, right, liberal, patriot and so on does not mean to stop being human.

When two years ago police planted drugs on Meduza journalist Ivan Golunov, a variety of colleagues came out to support him - from Meduza to RT or VGTRK.

When Russian journalists were detained in Minsk a year ago, colleagues from various publications came to the Belarusian embassy in support of them.

And as practice shows, the more people of very different views solidify around one problem or one misfortune, the more chances that the situation will be reversed.

And vice versa, the more the reaction is niche, “for its own”, the less resonance it produces and the less effect the statement gives.

Those who tell you otherwise are brazenly lying to you and manipulating you. Their goal is to become stronger themselves by weakening you. And they certainly don't care about your problems, or at least care less about your personal clicks and likes.

In general, if you read completely the same type of insults addressed to the same Vasyunin, then even if you remove the anonymous "couch warriors", it is impossible to discern exactly who wrote what mocking phrase (and the person about whom the phrase was written, I recall, obviously could not answer, so as he was in the OVD), because pack actions involve the rejection of individuality. This is also called "batch thinking". For example, this logic assumes that if you support the authorities and, for example, consider Crimea to be Russian, then you are absolutely satisfied with the health care situation in small towns, you are a fan of the Unified State Exam and will not shed a tear when children who are not being killed by the state provides medicines for orphan diseases. And vice versa, if you do not like the current government, it is assumed that even if this very government saves the kitten from under the car, then,it means that the kitten was first thrown there by this very power. The individual position “I personally like it here, here I personally am against” is sacrificed to collective emotion and marching in formation. Defamatory individual ties are subject to breaking for the sake of belonging to a group of adherents of goodness and peace, no matter how good and peace this group may be.

Freedom “for our own people” is not freedom, but, on the contrary, voluntary imprisonment of oneself in a cage with like-minded people.

This cell can be more or less comfortable, clicky and hype.

But the cell remains a cell.

Because freedom presupposes the preservation of one's own individuality and subjectivity with the right for other people to have a different individuality and subjectivity.

And if you think that Vasyunin cannot have either one or the other, and his conditional only value is a mortgage, money or comfort, then this means one thing: you judge by yourself and then you cannot be surprised if you are also accused of not having their own values ​​and their own subjectivity.

Further more. You can ask a simple question. Okay, you dream of a free, strong, rich Russia. But why does the struggle for the best values ​​suddenly require you to write something nasty right now about a particular Vasyunin, who, of course, has many shortcomings, but they hardly threaten Russia to be beautiful in the future? If it is rude - if you want good, then why does it require so much daily anger?

Well, another alarming call for a supporter of any bright idea (again, it doesn't matter, leftist, liberal, patriotic, conservative or progressive) is the dehumanization of the opponent and depriving him of the right to a different opinion and even to his own subjectivity. If the opponent (who was appointed to this only by a crowd of like-minded people and about whom you have no special real idea) gets into trouble, then the dominant reaction becomes the textbook “it's my fault, I put on a short skirt”. That is, an opponent from a person whom you can scold, regret, with whom you can argue, turns into a kind of "biomass" that will burn out - it's not a pity. In the name of good it will burn.

I know many of the current individual foreign agents, some of them are my friends.

And I will not abandon them, because this is my subjectivity, my personal friends, my personal views, which I am ready to discuss exclusively again with those whose opinion is important to me, but not with a crowd of strangers repeating from strangers votes clickable "provocateur" addressed to the same Vasyunin.

Finally, the elementary.

If a person is in trouble, then the last thing that should be of interest is his views, place of work or who his friends / enemies are.

Either help, or walk by (yes, I have situations when I walk by).

Otherwise, endless "put on the short skirt itself."

“You understand that they don’t amnesty you,” one patriotic friend once told me.

But I will be in a normal relationship with my conscience.

To be in a normal relationship with your conscience is the highest degree of freedom. 

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.