The Net Delusion - Evgeny Morozov [140]
As the Circassian and the Tatar cases illustrate, thanks to the Internet many of the Soviet (and even Tsarist) myths that seemed to tie the nation together no longer sound tenable, with many previously captive nations beginning to rediscover their national identities. How Russia will keep its territorial integrity in the long run—especially if more nations try to secede or at least to overcome artificial ethnic divisions of the Soviet era—is anyone’s guess. Not surprisingly, the Kremlin’s ideologists like Konstantin Rykov have begun emphasizing the need to use the Internet to tie the Russian nation together. At this point, it’s impossible to tell what such increased contentiousness means for the future of democracy in Russia, but it would take a giant dose of optimism to assume that, somehow, modern-state Russia would simply choose to disintegrate as peacefully as the Soviet Union did and, more, that democracy would prevail in all of its new parts. Developing an opinion about the long-term impact of the Internet on Russian democracy would inevitably require asking—if not answering—tough questions about nationalism, separatism, center-periphery relations, and so forth. (And not just in Russia: Similar problems are also present in China and, to a lesser degree, Iran, which have sizable minorities of their own.)
The influence of the diasporas—many of whom are not always composed of progressive and democracy-loving individuals—is also poised to rise in an age when Skype facilitates so much of the cultural traffic. Will some of that influence be positive and conducive to democratization? Perhaps, but there will also surely be those who will try to stir things up or promote outdated norms and practices. Thomas Hylland Eriksen, an anthropologist at the University of Oslo, notes that “sometimes, the elites-in-waiting use the Net to coordinate their takeover plans; sometimes diasporas actively support militant and sometimes violent groups ‘at home,’ knowing that they themselves do not need to pay the price for an increase in violence, remaining as they do comfortably in the peaceful diaspora.”
The problem with Internet freedom as a foundation for foreign policy is that in its simplification of complex forces, it may actually make policymakers overlook their own interests. To assume that it’s in the American, German, or British interest to simply let all ethnic minorities use the Internet to carve out as much space as they can from the dominant nation, whether it is in Russia, China, or Iran (not to mention much more complicated cases like Georgia), would simply be to badly misread their current policies and objectives. One might argue that these are cunning policies, and it’s an argument worth having. The first rather ambiguous articulation of Internet freedom policy by Hillary Clinton simply preferred to gloss over the issue altogether, as if, once armed with one of the most powerful tools on Earth, all nations would realize that, compared to YouTube, all those bloody wars they’ve been fighting for centuries have been a gigantic waste of time. Finding a way to grapple with the effects of new, digitally empowered nationalism is a formidable task for foreign policy professionals; one can only hope that they won’t stop working on it even if the imperative to promote Internet freedom would divert their time and attention elsewhere.
Putting the Nyet in Networks
When in 2008 Evdins Snore, a young Latvian director, produced The Soviet Story, a documentary that made rather unpleasant comparisons between Stalinism and Nazism, Russian nationalists took to LiveJournal, the most popular blogging platform in the country, to debate the best response to the film. Alexander Djukov, the leader of Historical Memory, a nationalistic outlet, wrote an emotional appeal on his own blog, offering to publish a detailed study of how Snore manipulated the truth, if only the community could help raise funds to cover the printing costs.
Within hours, his post attracted more than seventy responses, with many people