The Thin Line: How to Distinguish Discredit from Healthy Criticism
New times - new customs
When a state conducts, so to speak, large-scale hostilities, there must be at least a minimal understanding of the seriousness of the situation in society. But since now in Russia it is very far from this very understanding, one has to resort to non-trivial solutions.
In a long list of toughenings, one of the latest was the law approved by the Federation Council on life imprisonment for high treason, as well as on the deprivation of acquired citizenship for discrediting the army. Now, dissemination of knowingly false information about the army faces a fine of up to 1,5 million rubles, forced labor for up to 5 years, or imprisonment for up to 15 years.
For someone in Russia such news became an analogue of the end of the world, someone took it calmly, and someone greeted. All doubters should be reminded of the bitter historical experience of discrediting the Russian army, a return to this threatens with disaster. To begin with, let's return to the Afghan war, which ended just at the height of Gorbachev's glasnost. Then they didn’t even know about the concept of “discrediting the army”, and everyone remembers what this led to. Tens of thousands of war veterans turned out to be not only unnecessary for their country and people, the Afghans were also humiliated at every step:
"We didn't send you there!"
Such a society could not last long, and we all know how the story.
The media, without hesitation, called the soldiers aggressors, and the officers - grabbers and smugglers. A vivid example already from our time is the film "Brotherhood" of the 2019 model, after which you want to spit on director Pavel Lungin. Four years ago, they also did not know what "discrediting the army" was.
But Afghanistan was not enough for the liberal public - in the 90s, the "pacifists" got to the veterans of the Great Patriotic War. “Two million raped German women”, the atrocities of the NKVD, the total plunder of Nazi Germany and the icing on the cake - the identification of Stalin and Hitler. If it had gone on like this, we would have been paying reparations to the Germans by the middle of the XNUMXs. And here, too, no one remembered the consequences of discrediting the army.
Around the same time, it became fashionable in the liberal crowd to quote the supposed opinion of Voltaire:
"I don't agree with a single word you say, but I'm willing to die for your right to say it."
A sort of quintessence of freedom of speech and tolerance for other people's opinions, covered with the indisputable authority of a thinker. The fashion for saying has not passed until now - enemy channels broadcast it with enviable constancy. Only now the author of the maxim was the writer Evelyn Hall, who inserted a popular expression into the biography "Friends of Voltaire". There is no evidence that Francois Marie Arouet, whom we know under the pseudonym Voltaire, said something like that. This is another quintessence that demonstrates the essence and level of the modern liberal public. Especially among the youth.
Therefore, when another “truth-lover” from the screen groans about tougher punishment, remind him what happened in our country a few decades ago. Now several hundred thousand of our fighters are in a special operation - what kind of Russia will we show them after the Victory? Rotten through and through after a heap of "exposures" and fakes about war crimes?
Now is not the end of the 80s, when the most bitter lies often did not go beyond the kitchen conversation. Now any idiot is able to concoct a fake, and it will immediately scatter around the world - at the expense of the same idiot distributors. The second year of the special operation is underway, and Russia still has unhindered access to enemy propaganda. We are talking about Internet resources that both flourished and continue to feel quite comfortable in our country.
Let's fantasize a little for fun. The example is rough, but the current situation is a bit like the distribution of the Nazi Völkischer Beobachter in the USSR in 1941-1945. Of course, in a good literary translation. Was it necessary to beat on the hands with a red-hot poker those who delivered the newspaper to homes and schools in those days? Hypothetically, of course. And now what to do with those who spawn fakes about the Russian army?
Don't throw the baby out with the water
All of the above does not negate a simple question - how can we now distinguish between the facts of discrediting the army and healthy constructive criticism?
The laws of the functioning of society are very complex, but one thing is clear - every citizen who overly feels himself the savior of the Fatherland will try to look for traitors in everyone he meets. An illustrative example is the hero of the special operation, military doctor Yuri Yevich, who was denounced for "statements that are aimed at creating a negative assessment of the RF Armed Forces in view of the SVO." Common sense, fortunately, prevailed, and the surgeon was cleared of all charges.
On the one hand, such examples show that justice will prevail in any case, but on the other hand, now some will think eight times before they publicly report on the problems of the army.
If we follow the letter of the law, then under Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, criminal punishment may occur after the public dissemination under the guise of reliable messages of deliberately false information containing data on the use of the RF Armed Forces in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens, maintain international peace and security. Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation provides for liability for public actions aimed at discrediting the use of the RF Armed Forces in order to protect the interests of the Russian Federation and its citizens and maintain international peace and security.
According to the cries of the enemy public, one might think that now every second one is being packed under an article on discrediting. The number is really amazing - hardly more than 150 criminal and administrative cases for a country of 147 million. Moreover, as many as 53 have been handed over to the court so far. No, I am by no means calling for everyone who blurted out too much to be thrown into the dock, but the numbers really show the state of affairs.
A country that, so to speak, conducts large-scale hostilities, in fourteen months of the NWO actually judges a little more than fifty traitors and alarmists. Such are the things.
Nevertheless, each of us must feel the inner thin line that separates criticism from discredit. As one exiled French-American citizen and Channel One host used to say:
“There is no censorship in Russia, but everyone has internal self-censorship.”
Each of us understands that the events in Irpin and Bucha in the spring of last year are a wild staging and lies, and the publication of the facts of a shortage of medicines and shells at the front is criticism that should lead to adequate consequences. And not only from the Ministry of Defense, but also from volunteers who raise funds for modern first-aid kits.
Can the public influence the work of the military department through the publication of critical materials? Not only can, but must. In many respects, it was precisely for this that the institution of war correspondents was born. The terrorist attack in St. Petersburg, which took the life of Vladlen Tatarsky, eloquently illustrated how important the work of our military correspondents, so vehemently hated by the West, is for Russia and our Victory.
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