Did the Kazakh people expose our cowardice?
Did the Kazakh people expose our cowardice?
Maybe. It's worth considering!
Every day, millions of very serious people sit on their couches as they tweet strongly worded messages at their president, prime minister, Reichskanzler, or whatever Jacinda Ardern’s official title is—unfriendly horse, maybe. Stop being bad or one day I will get off my couch and do something about it, someone probably just tweeted right now at their completely rogue government that is actively trying to kill them. Rest assured, such a piercing ultimatum is destined for 50,000 Likes and at least as many Retweets.
Don’t be offended if this describes you. It also describes your humble Moscow correspondent—except oftentimes the couch is too far away so we tweet from our bed, and also nobody likes or retweets anything we tweet. It is what it is.
There’s a lot of tough talk on the internet, but when thousands of horribly abused people rose up against one of the world’s most oppressive and corrupt governments—a government that uses a color-coded livestock tracking system to make sure the cattle know their place—all the revolutionaries on Twitter suddenly became really sweaty. Is this bad for China’s big road? Isn’t it against the law for unhappy people living anywhere near Russia to be upset with their government?
We don’t mean to disparage people for having genuine concerns. And we also understand “color revolution” schemes can end very badly, even in countries ruled by human trash.
But honestly, this is really bad karma. Probably after the internet was shut off, some destitute cattle-tagged Kazakh guy was like, “don’t worry, friends—all the self-professed freedom-lovers on Twitter will send hashtags of support our way.”
Then the internet gets turned back on and they’re like… “Oh, they think we’re all terrorists.”
Why are people so eager to paint with such a wide brush? With so many questions still left unanswered, why would anyone’s default position be: “I am in favor of propping up the barbarous, reprobate regime that has a documented history of violently suppressing peaceful protests”?
Even accounting for seedy elements, surely the protesters—many of whom were/are peaceful—are more deserving of your sympathy and Twitter hashtags?
Besides, the “foreign orchestrated color revolution” theory is not as airtight as RT makes it seem. For example, Kazakhstan’s envoy to Moscow acknowledged there was no outside interference in the internal affairs of his country:
Honestly, this guy sounds like Hillary Clinton talking about Russian bots stealing the 2016 election—he literally blames… blogs.
“At the diplomatic level, I cannot say that there is an obvious interference. If there is, then at the ideological level, or maybe someone is trying through all kinds of centers,” the diplomat said… In the blogosphere, he noted, it is “very difficult” to regulate such interference.
Damn you, blogs!
This makes things a bit awkward for Russia and the CSTO, which cited “outside interference” as the primary reason for deploying to Kazakhstan.
Again, we simply do not understand why the default position for so many people is: “thank goodness that repulsive, vomit-inducing regime violently suppressed those horrible terrorists.”
Here’s a perspective you won’t hear from The Blogs, from a guy who was actually on the ground:
The people who took to the streets of our cities are not marginals and pogromists, not terrorists, as the authorities claim. These are the people of Kazakhstan, humiliated, plundered and driven to fury by a gang of cowardly traitors and scoundrels.
I was talking there yesterday with a lot of all kinds of people. These are the guys who came at the call of the heart from different parts of our country. These are ordinary townspeople, youth, old people, women who can no longer tolerate all this eternal shame, lies and humiliation.
Only the authorities are to blame for what is happening in our country now. Nazarbayev and a pack of his henchmen. By suppressing their own people, the authorities lost time for negotiations. The time for negotiations has passed. Specifically, it took place yesterday, when the people massively came out to a PEACEFUL protest in support of our brothers in the West of Kazakhstan. If the people had not come out as one throughout the country, they would have drowned the Zhanaozen people in blood long ago, as happened ten years ago. After all, the same cannibals and butchers are sitting in power. For them, our lives are not worth a broken penny. Then that execution was allowed by you and me, by our inaction and cowardice.
On January 4, instead of entering into an open dialogue with the people, the authorities set up cordons and set their chain dogs of carabets (riot police) on a peaceful demonstration.
These cowardly creatures, capable of screwing only harmless old women and children in the squares, received a powerful rebuff and complete defeat.
Maybe he’s lying. But we’ll take this random dude over Tokayev any day. It’s not even a contest.
Just to be 100% clear: Yes, there were bad people who clearly tried to take advantage of this situation! But that is always going to happen.
It’s hard to make sense of it all. But we can’t shake this feeling that people reverted to geopolitical tribalism because the alternative would be too painful and uncomfortable to deal with.
We recently read a very interesting op-ed about Novak Djokovic, who got in a lot of trouble for trying to play tennis without being vaccinated? We don’t know the details. Suffice to say, many vaccinated weirdos are now angry at him.
One line in particular from this opinion piece stuck out:
Novak’s real crime was to have stood up for himself and, in so doing, exposed our cowardice.
Can the same be said about the upheaval in Kazakhstan? Have the Kazakh people exposed our cowardice?
More and more, we are leaning towards yes.
Guys, who will stand up for us—us meaning you and me and everyone else—when life becomes so intolerable that we are compelled to leave our couches? Who will tweet their condolences when we’re all labeled terrorists by RT and liquidated in the streets?
Not the Kazakhs, that’s for sure.
In honor of Kazakhstan, here is a music video from Altai, which is next to Kazakhstan.
Governments, media sources and others will mainly show and say those protesting look like “terrorist” and bad people. They’ll show mainly violent acts on the street. The people watching on TV or cell phones will think wow, those are violent people so I’m not going to join them. I might get hurt or worse killed. Even though I look like that person over there even though I don’t agree with what the government’s doing, I’ll just sit here and complain on Twitter, FB and to my friends how are we ever going to stop our governments from destroying its citizens? I heard someone say that until one decides it’s worth dying over will they go out and show their face and join those on the streets. One has to sacrifice and face their fears or everything gets worse.
It took the protests by millions of average people throughout Chile in October 2019 to force the government to let the people write a new people’s Constitution, and once and for all kill and bury the Piñochet Neoliberal Constitution. But with that said, the government including the Congress appear to be all in on the Covid plandemic because no one speaks out against the narrative and the bought-out media only talks about the number of Covid cases and deaths and warns everyone to get your next booster. I truly believe the people are waking up and the protests are getting larger so we’ll see if those same millions will finally wake up and take to the streets to save theirs and their children’s freedoms and lives.
YES!