In the summer of 2019, Moscow saw protests in support of independent candidates who had been barred from the Moscow City Duma elections. The rallies were accompanied by mass detentions, followed by a solidarity campaign for defendants in the so-called “Moscow Case”.
“At this stage, a public pressure campaign appears capable of saving almost anyone. In individual cases, with favorable circumstances, enough patience, and public support, it is possible to pull out almost anyone who has been caught in the system’s iron jaws,” political analyst Ekaterina Shulman said at the time.
Six years have passed since those events. Over that period, the Russian opposition, the article says, was not only crushed but also fully recast as an internal enemy.
At the same time, state and pro-government media, according to the authors, launched a full-scale campaign of hatred against a wide range of groups. Those named include pacifists, dissenters, independent journalists, the LGBT community, feminists, and migrants.
What the authors studied
The authors examined how hostile rhetoric toward these “internal enemies” intensified. To do so, they analyzed more than 5 million Telegram posts published since 2019.
The sample included nearly 100 pro-government media outlets, ranging from official news agencies such as TASS and RIA Novosti to prominent propagandists, including Solovyov, as well as anonymous channels such as Boilernaya and Adequat Z.
Based on this body of material, the authors trace how hate-filled rhetoric in Russia’s public space has intensified over several years and how the range of people portrayed by pro-government platforms as enemies within the country has steadily expanded.