I saw something remarkable on Twitter. I had long suspected that Charlie Hebdo had effectively become a Russian national media outlet rather than a French one. Of course, after the massacre of its journalists, it became world-famous, but who would actually keep going there regularly to look at those hellish images they call cartoons (this is exactly the moment when saying “I could draw better myself” feels appropriate)?
In first place by number of visitors, and by a huge margin, is Russia. France has 2.5 times fewer.
And there’s a whole frenzy around it here: the zombie box (slang for TV) condemns Charlie Hebdo, Kadyrov writes about Charlie Hebdo, lawmakers make statements about Charlie Hebdo, and the unhinged senator with an aircraft carrier on her head “draws” a retaliatory picture for Charlie Hebdo. They’re practically spinning an entire “clash of civilizations” out of Charlie Hebdo—not the abstract magazine as a symbol of free speech, but this specific editorial office supposedly standing on the front line of the “attack on Russia.”
So here’s the plain, ironclad fact: Charlie Hebdo interests no one in the world, almost no one in France, and only Russian officials sit there day and night hitting the refresh button, hoping Russia has been offended yet again and there’s material for a Foreign Ministry statement.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Russia, through some front company tied to Gazprom, is financing *Charlie Hebdo* just to make sure, God forbid, it doesn’t shut down and stop drawing things that people on Channel One talk shows can get outraged about.
It’s astonishing—who would have thought that in the 21st century, in the information age, it would be so easy to manipulate the public and political agenda in a huge country that claims global leadership.
What’s also astonishing is how unwilling the current ruling regime is to solve Russia’s real problems, to the point that it blows such pathetic pretexts completely out of proportion just to shift everything into the “international agenda.” The reason is obvious: housing and коммунальные services (public utilities) and bad roads are scarier than any ISIS.
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