Thread by @RadioFreeTom

In the case of an authoritarian state like Russia, the way protest brings change is: the elites around Putin worry that public anger will sway the institutions of the state - the cops, the military - to refuse further repression. They start cutting deals internally. /1

https://twitter.com/VoodooChild_40/status/1353126450325499905

People like @Kasparov63 and @IlvesToomas and others can speak about this with more authority, but regimes collapse when other institutions in the state decide the risk and anger from their fellow citizens is no longer worth what they gain from participating in repression. /2

This is what Putin fears most of all: Another Ukraine or Georgia type "color revolution," where popular anger makes basic administration of the state impossible and key players (like the power ministers) start defecting from the ruling coalition. /3

And I'll say it again: Americans have far more tools at their disposal than Russians. The media is free, the police are decentralized, the courts and law function, even if imperfectly, and the government changes hands based on *voting*, as it just did, FFS.
/4

Russians and others, by contrast, have to engage in human-wave disorder to paralyze the state. They have to show - at great peril to themselves and to their families and to anyone who even *knows* them - that the state cannot function in the face of their protests. /5

This is why, when faced with no options, people in repressive states clog the metro, refuse to work as part of general strikes, paralyze the bureucracy, force the cops to engage in mass arrests, etc. Americans have never seen this, never had to do it, never experienced it. /6

So, again, please: Support the struggle of the Russian people, and do it without the bullshit "just like I did last summer!" You didn't do what they're doing right now. You have no idea of the scale of the risk involved over there right now. You. Just. Don't.
/7x