Messaging Roundup: Lessons in Dissent
Greetings Resisters!
This week, Julie shares some lessons learned from a group of young female Russian journalists who fought hard to resist Putin’s authoritarian regime, in a film review of sorts. We also briefly touch upon satire on social media, and an instance of historical denialism we wish were satire too.
Image Credit: Book Quotes Club, from Emilie Autumn’s The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls.
From Moscow, with Warnings
Earlier this week, I watched an incredible 5 ½ hour documentary in two parts. If you have any time this weekend, and you’re in NYC, do yourself a favor and go see “My Undesirable Friends: Part 1.” (I bumped into Saul at one of the screenings. He can attest to the film’s power and urgency.)
The film, by Julia Loktev, documents a several month period from late 2021 to early 2022, during which the Putin regime began subjecting Russia’s independent media to ever more severe restrictions—from labeling individual reporters, and then entire outlets, as “foreign agents,” to fining, detaining, surveilling, raiding the homes of, and in some cases imprisoning those who crossed ever-shifting lines of permissibility. The film ends with the invasion of Ukraine, at which point Putin snuffed the free press out once and for all.
“My Undesirable Friends, Part 1,” film still, journalist Ksenia Mironova
The movie is, for one thing, a profoundly intimate record of that period. Shot entirely on an iPhone, Loktev places us in close proximity to these Moscow journalists everywhere they go, whether they’re gathering in cramped kitchens, pulling all-nighters in an adrenaline-fueled TV studio, or criss-crossing the city in taxis. All of Loktev’s subjects are smart, brave women in their 20s and early 30s. We come to know each of their faces and habits, who has blemishes or crooked front teeth, who smokes and who vapes, who has a cat, a dog, a child, a partner.
I’ve been fascinated by Russia since I was a kid, back when it was still the USSR, so it’s no wonder I’d be drawn to this film. But more broadly, I think it offers multiple lessons for anyone thinking about how to resist totalitarianism right now, which is to say, all of us. Here are a few of them.
Find your purpose: Loktev’s subjects know what the Russian state is capable of, but they refuse to stop working until it becomes impossible to do so. Repeatedly, they express why this work is important to them: they love writing, going out on the street and speaking with their fellow Russians, providing a counterweight to state propaganda, or, as one puts it, “making a record” of what’s happening in these dark times. That sense of purpose emboldens and energizes them. Without it, they say, they would lose all hope.
Russian state TV journalist Marina Ovsyannikova [not featured in the film] protests the Russian war in Ukraine during a live news broadcast on Channel One March 14, 2022. (CNN)
Understand the stakes: Russia is no stranger to totalitarianism. The journalists we follow grew up hearing about Stalinism from their grandparents. And while many of their fellow countrymen seem to have surrendered without a fight, the women we follow understand that they have everything to lose, and they act accordingly, by shining a light on all that Putin attempts to conceal. Here in the US, the myth of American exceptionalism has made it difficult for many of us to grapple with the real and present danger to our democracy, and to mobilize in the ways that this moment requires. What we see in the film—the assault not only on media but on universities, on civil liberties, women and LGBTQ+ people, and on dissent, history and memory—is underway here, too. Of course, it looks different. No two countries are the same. But we know Trump worships “strongmen” like Putin, and aspires to follow that playbook. We should act like we, too, have everything to lose, until proven otherwise.
A demonstrator carrying a poster saying “No War - Ukraine is not an enemy - Stop the war” is detained by police during a protest in Moscow against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2022.
Photo credit: Denis Kamenev/AP Photo
Exploit our freedoms: While there are frightening parallels between what’s happened in Russia and what’s happening here, unlike them, we still have many freedoms, long established civic institutions, and public spaces that are relatively free of state control. We must do everything we can to preserve or even expand them. We also have a history of protest, and hard-won civil liberties, that we can and must put to use.
Credit: Morin-toons/Cartooning for Peace/Global Geneva
Support independent media: Loktev’s film begins by noting that the world it depicts does not exist anymore. Every single one of the journalists we see are now living and working in exile. Try to imagine what it would be like to turn on the radio, and have nothing but Trump-sponsored content on the airwaves. Or to have your most trusted online news sources blocked. To prevent that, we must support local and independent media everywhere we can; an uninformed populace fed only Fox News and social media algorithms has already caused enormous harm. We can’t allow for the further erosion of shared, trusted sources of information.
Image Credit: Two Crow Collective on Instagram
Eat cake together: We’ve heard it said that totalitarianism feeds on loneliness. For all that they withstand, it can’t be said that the subjects in Loktev’s film are lonely. Besides working together, they are constantly checking in on each other, laughing, crying, drinking tea or bourbon and, endearingly, baking and eating cake together. It’s a very Russian thing—friends crowded around a table overloaded with plates and glasses—but I think we could take a page from them. It’s why we resisters have started planning more in-person activities (join us for one 9/14!). And why we should never hesitate to show up with cookies, in the service of the resistance.
Postscript
After watching the film, I reached out to the director to congratulate her. I asked her what it feels like to be showing it now, here in the U.S., given our current political climate. Loktev wrote back:
When we were making the film, it still felt like a film about nasty things happening to good people in a far away nasty place. I had no idea how close to home it would come.
I wish it wasn't feeling more relevant every day.
Messaging Corner
Slavery was bad.
I can’t believe we had to type that, but the president of the United States, which to be clear has enslavement as a horrific stain on its history, complained that the Smithsonian depicted slavery negatively. Just thought we should take note that this happened and maybe take a look around at all the other leaders, in government, business, tech, and otherwise who are happy to directly and indirectly support the pro-enslavement president. History, the actual history, if we get to really study it again, will not be kind. For more commentary from around the web, see this post from Roxane Gay, this from Mariame Kaba, or this from Jamelle Bouie.
Source: Eric Deggans on Bluesky
Imitation is the Sharpest Form of Mockery.
Gavin Newsom remains problematic, especially for his positions on trans rights, and we are by no means ready to crown him a resistance king, but if you have followed his social media activity, YOU MIGHT HAVE NOTICED SOMETHING DIFFERENT LATELY.
Yeah, all it took was a sprinkle of all caps, and you know I was referring to Newsom’s parodying of Trump. It’s not just the capitalization; it’s the initials, the parentheticals, the grandstanding, and the syntax of a ten year old.
Newsom’s tweets look ridiculous because the president of the United States is ridiculous. Why is it working? Well, Newsom’s team is effectively drawing on the foe of tyrants and swindlers alike: satire. It’s surfacing something we know but have gotten too used to: the absurdity of Trump’s language. We needed the parody from Newsom with the contours of Trump’s style, simultaneously full of bombast and simplicity, thrown in sharp relief with the ideas of a more serious man. If it were a straight parody that merely exaggerated Trump’s tweets with the same content, I’m not sure the effect would be the same, but this lands some hits we honestly needed.
Amplify This
Head to Governor’s Island on Saturday for live music, poetry, art and more to support safe housing and legal aid for asylum seekers. (h/t Amy S)
ICE getting a DC welcome in Columbia Heights, Washington DC:
Here’s The Onion Fact Checking Trump on Crime
Check out Megan’s latest zine: "How to Report ICE To Help Keep Our Neighbors Safe"
What we can learn from Free DC, starting with: plan ahead.
A Letter from a Father in Gaza to Fathers Around the World by Dr..Hassan AL Qatrawey
“They say,” Anti-ICE music video shared by resister Leah O
DC honors sandwich guy with a Banksy-style tribute
Cue “Seven Nation Army”: Jack White (accurately) says Trump is “masquerading as a human being” who is a “danger to the whole world.”
Justice for Herr’s Sour Cream and Onion Potato Chips: how Kate’s favorite snack got caught up in Eric Adams’s latest scandal.
Contact your electeds with this call script for Gaza.
And as always,
‘Til Next Time,
Kate, Julie & the Messaging Team
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