Julia Ioffe is almost always right about Russia and Ukraine. This time might be different.

benfell

To the extent I left California to escape wildfire smoke, this summer has been a failure.

Smoke, apparently from Canadian wildfires, is back with a vengeance today, hanging over the neighborhood trees like a fog, noticeably darkening the skies. It’s “another code red air quality action day” for the entire state of Pennsylvania—there have been a few of these this summer.[1]

Imperialism

Russia

Ukraine


Fig. 1. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,[2] fair use.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the idea that the rebellion shook Russian authorities or [Vladimir] Putin, instead insisting that it “demonstrated a high level of consolidation of society, political forces and the military around the president,” even as Russian analysts said the opposite was true.

Peskov tried to explain the contradiction of dropping treason charges while some Russian activists are in prison simply for social media posts critical of the war. Peskov said the deal was a necessity born out of “a rather sad event, an extraordinary event.”[3]

Even as repercussions begin in Russia,[4] we’re well into the post-event bullshit phase of what I guess more people are calling the Wagner Mutiny than anything else. Basically, this is where 1) all the pundits (excluding Julia Ioffe, who, if memory serves, has been on vacation) who haven’t written anything about Yevgeny Prigozhin’s coup/mutiny/insurrection/rebellion decide they need to get in on the action, but don’t really add anything new, and 2) the subjects of their discourse all try to spin what happened in their own favor. Generally speaking, trust this even less than what you heard at the time when nobody knew what the fuck was going on. What you’ll see here is mostly me catching up on details.

There’s a lot we don’t know about what really happened, and what continues to happen in the couloirs of power. In the two days since [Yevgeny] Prigozhin choked when he was within striking distance of Moscow, the Kremlin has been furiously sweeping up the damage. After a deafening 48-hour silence, [Vladimir] Putin can’t seem to stop speaking. He gave a taped, Monday-night address, then spoke on a red carpet in a Kremlin courtyard, then went inside and met with—i.e., talked at—some servicemembers. (Throughout, he refused to acknowledge Prigozhin by name, a vindictive anonymity reserved for Putin’s worst enemies, like Alexey Navalny.)

People who had been quiet during Prigozhin’s march—the defense minister, the heads of various security services, the most prominent propagandists—have resurfaced for some vigorous rewriting of the weekend’s events. Prigozhin, in the meantime, has landed in Belarus where [Alexander] Lukashenko has already started building camps to house his fighters. And even though the F.S.B. dropped its criminal case against him, there were some local media reports that Prigozhin has found the only high-rise hotel where the windows don’t open. “If we’ve learned anything over the last 23 years, it is that Putin goes after people he feels betrayed him,” said Sergey Radchenko, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “He seems to not tolerate betrayal; he values loyalty over competence.” Personally, I’ve been asking people if they think Prigozhin makes it till his next birthday: June 1, 2024.[5]

So what do we actually know? It appears that Yevgeny Prigozhin saw defense ministry moves to require Wagner to sign a contract that would bring the latter under the former’s control as an existential threat to Wagner.[6] It’s rare that I’ll doubt Ioffe, who writes,

[Yevgeny] Prigozhin was the strongest, most obvious rival [Vladimir] Putin had. He had his own private army, tens of thousands of men who had criminal pasts and were loyal to him personally, and who, having been through the gauntlet of the war in Ukraine, were skilled at violence and clearly unafraid. Sure, Prigozhin’s march revealed damning details about the defense of the Russian homeland: as Prigozhin advanced, the Russian military mostly melted away. But Prigozhin, for whatever reason, blinked first. And that means Putin won.

Having survived a coup, Putin is stronger, not weaker. And Putin didn’t even get his hands dirty trying to wrangle Prigozhin. He let everyone else—from [Alexander] Lukashenko, to his negotiating team, to his spokesman—come down to Prigozhin’s level and talk, while he removed himself from the capital and the situation, clearly demonstrating that he didn’t think Prigozhin’s march was worth his time or energy.[7]

Ioffe is almost always right. She here interprets the bully as having faced down another bully and as looking stronger for it.[8] But I think nearly everyone else, including myself, is interpreting the failure of Putin’s forces even to resist Prigozhin as a sign of acquiescence, certainly not loyalty to Putin,[9] and Putin’s departure from Moscow[10] as a sign of fear not indifference, rather that Putin uses apparent indifference to cover fear, which, in the world he grew up in and never really grew out of, that Ioffe herself has described,[11] he dare not admit to. Crucially, everyone knows this.

[Vladimir] Putin “knows they look weak” after Russia dropped charges against Wagner to avoid an open firefight that would have likely killed thousands, said a sanctioned figure within Russia’s elite.

“It’s real tough guy stuff,” the person said. “It’s like when you go into the prison cell for the first time and punch the biggest guy you can find in the face to show nobody can mess with you.”[12]

I think “real tough guy stuff” would have said to hell with the casualties, we’re gonna fight. Neither Putin nor Prigozhin showed such mettle:

[Yevgeny] Prigozhin lost his nerve on Saturday. He had a golden opportunity to seize power at a moment when [Vladimir] Putin was surprised and vulnerable. The Russian military had many of its resources in Ukraine rather than Russia, and Wagner’s heavily armed forces had at least the potential to outgun the remaining Russian security services guarding Moscow.

But Prigozhin’s moment was fleeting. Now the odds are good that Putin will have his rival murdered. The Russian leader has had opponents thrown out of windows for far less. To think that [Alexander] Lukashenko, a Putin stooge, will protect Prigozhin in Belarus is madness. Moscow has a long reach; Putin has had plenty of opponents assassinated in the West, and Minsk, the capital of Belarus, might as well be a suburb of Moscow.[13]

I also don’t buy the theory that [Yevgeny] Prigozhin’s men were scared of a bloodbath in Moscow. All of them had seen worse on the battlefields of Ukraine. Many were hardened criminals who saw the meatgrinder of war as preferable to prison. Moreover, the forces tasked with defending Moscow seemed far better at slamming unarmed urban intellectuals to the floor than fighting real, armed peers. (Also, given the Ukrainian drones that exploded over the Kremlin, Moscow may not be as well-guarded as we think.) Rather, I think that Prigozhin truly didn’t want to unseat Putin. He wanted to talk to him and get his point across, to get what he wanted from the big boss, face to face. But with Putin unwilling to meet with him, the prospect of trying to take Moscow had become not just bloody, but pointless.[14]

Okay, we don’t actually know that Prigozhin lost his nerve, but given support in Moscow that didn’t materialize,[15] it’s probably the best explanation for what happened, and Ioffe effectively refutes—not that she should have to—Prigozhin’s nonsense claim to have been avoiding a bloodbath.[16]

Even if Moscow isn’t thrilled by [Vladimir] Putin or his invasion of Ukraine, the specter of [Yevgeny] Prigozhin marching into their city and taking over threw certain things into perspective. Prigozhin is a terrifying brute, someone to the far right of Putin. Putin’s rule has been brutal but has become that way gradually, in a way that most Russians have learned to accommodate and accept. It is a familiar brutality whose rules they can now more or less guess. Prigozhin was bearing down on the capital with his mass of hardened criminals, true barbarians at the gate. What would they do when they got there? Would they do things that would make Putin seem soft and gentle by comparison?

When [Nina] Khrushcheva [Former Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev’s grandaughter] arrived in Moscow, she told me that she kept hearing Prigozhin referred to as a rapist and a murderer. “Whatever we think of Putin, it’s better than rapists and murderers,” she told me, elaborating on the mindset of people she’s been speaking with in the capital. “I heard it several times on Saturday, especially when Wagner got to Lipetsk [300 miles from Moscow]. We don’t need this.”

Putin had long built his legitimacy on the lack of alternatives, or on the fear of what the alternative might be. He was the thing standing between Russians and revolution, civil war, he argued, the stuff their great-grandparents only miraculously survived. It was hard to make that argument with Navalny, a white-collar democrat. But Prigozhin was that nightmare incarnate, the best advertisement for another 20 years of Putin that Vladimir Vladimirovich could have hoped for. And when it came time to make the choice, when it was banging on the city gates on Saturday, the Moscow elite didn’t hesitate. “Before Saturday, the Russian elite didn’t have the sense that they had to choose between [Putin and Prigozhin],” said the well-connected Moscow source. “Then when one of them started a coup, it turned out that no one supported Prigozhin. I don’t know a single person that supported him.”[17]

Perhaps the most important revelation to emerge from [Yevgeny] Prigozhin’s coup attempt is that Russia is too dependent on Wagner mercenaries to effectively confront them, Mark Voyger, the director of the master’s program in global management at the American University in Kyiv and senior fellow at Center for European Analysis, told Defense One. “The fact remains that these are still the best trained, the most motivated, the most cruel, the most brutal but still the most capable…forces that the Russian command currently has at their disposal…The Russian military cannot conjure up new forces in the foreseeable future capable of doing, you know, even a portion of what Wagner was doing.”

That’s in large part because Wagner forces could operate according to their own rules, unlike the Russian military, Voyger said. The force is composed of veteran fighters, but also convicts straight from prison. That will make it very hard for the Russian military to fold the mercenaries into formal service, he said, though the Russian military had stated plans to do precisely that by the end of the summer—likely the main catalyst for Prigozhin’s march in the first place.[18]

In quoting Mark Voyger, Patrick Tucker repeats what many have said. Putin faces not only an opponent he cannot tolerate but the prospect of fighting a war of his own making that brings him only humiliation, that he relied on a now-neutralized force to fight.[19]

Some analysts struggle to see [Vladimir] Putin tolerating the presence of the insurrectionist forces within his camp in the months ahead. Others doubt [Yevgeny] Prigozhin will slip into obscurity in Minsk and reckon he may remain a parallel source of influence over the Russian public. For years, Putin consolidated his power by both suppressing any alternatives to his rule and cultivating a cohort of de facto warlords, like Prigozhin and Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who seemed loyal to him if not the overall chain of command at the Kremlin.[20]

In the wake of [Yevgeny] Prigozhin’s attempted coup, there’s been a lot of full-throated certainty in the Western media—and in U.S. media, especially—that [Vladimir] Putin has been mortally wounded and that his regime is weaker than ever. Look as I might, I just don’t see it.[21]

Count me—I’ve been saying it for a while—among those who think Putin is doomed,[22] but the truth here is nobody knows. There’s a certain amount of hubris (not to mention that of pundits) inherent to this situation, where Prigozhin imagines he can keep Wagner in Belarus and where Vladimir Putin imagines he can remain in power, fold Wagner into the Russian military, and get his revenge against Prigozhin regardless. Which of these, if any, will happen? We won’t know until we know, but taking out Prigozhin is, I’m guessing, the easiest on this list, and Prigozhin would have to be even stupider than he seems not to anticipate that Putin will try.

All this said, it must surely be clear in Moscow that something will need to be done about Putin. The picture that can no longer be hidden is that Putin rules from fear and the price of his rule is not only high but repugnant. The question will be how and when, not if.

Francesca Ebel and Kamila Hrabchuk, “Delivering mail in war-ravaged Ukraine: ‘There are still people living here,’” Washington Post, June 22, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/22/mail-delivery-war-hulyaipole-ukraine/

Robyn Dixon and Mary Ilyushina, “Wagner mercenary boss faces arrest over ‘incitement to armed rebellion,’” Washington Post, June 23, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/23/prigozhin-wagner-mercenary-russia-military/

Gabriel Gavin, Tim Ross, and Zoya Sheftalovich, “Putin in crisis: Wagner chief Prigozhin declares war on Russian military leadership, says ‘we will destroy everything,’” Politico, June 23, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-in-crisis-as-wagner-chief-prigozhin-declares-war-on-russian-military-leadership/

Yaroslav Trofimov, “Russia Issues Arrest Warrant for Wagner Chief on Charges of Mutiny,” Wall Street Journal, June 23, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-shoots-down-russian-cruise-missile-barrage-9d9da03a

Nick Allen, “US says Wagner coup is ‘real’ and ‘serious’ as White House consults allies,” Telegraph, June 24, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/24/wagner-coup-russia-us-reaction-joe-biden-vladimir-putin/

Anne Applebaum, “Russia Slides Into Civil War,” Atlantic, June 24, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/06/russia-civil-war-wagner-putin-coup/674517/

Peter Baker, “Short-Lived Mutiny in Russia Sheds Light on Putin’s Hold on Power,” New York Times, June 24, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/24/us/politics/us-russia-putin.html

Colin Freeman, “How Yevgeny Prigozhin went for broke — then left everyone guessing,” Telegraph, June 24, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/24/how-yevgeny-prigozhins-wagner-group-launched-coup-russia/

Gabriel Gavin and Christian Oliver, “Kremlin says Prigozhin will depart for Belarus after his rebellion fizzles,” Politico, June 24, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/wagner-group-russia-forces-turn-back-moscow-prigozhin-declares/

James Kilner, “Putin’s aura of invincibility is shattered – and in Russia, weakness is terminal,” Telegraph, June 24, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/24/putin-betrayal-russia-coup-armed-mutiny-wagner-prigozhin/

Ellen Nakashima and Shane Harris, “U.S. spies learned in mid-June Prigozhin was plotting Russia uprising,” Washington Post, June 24, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/24/us-intelligence-prigozhin-putin/

Richard M. Nixon [Justin Sherrin], “Russia Briefing,” Patreon, June 24, 2023, https://www.patreon.com/posts/russia-briefing-85060327

Robert Tombs, “Putin is not out of the woods – he stands gravely weakened,” Telegraph, June 24, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/24/putin-not-out-of-woods-gravely-weakened/

Yaroslav Trofimov, “Russia’s Putin Orders Military to Crush Wagner Power Grab, Calls It Treason,” Wall Street Journal, June 24, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraine-shoots-down-russian-cruise-missile-barrage-9d9da03a

Benoit Faucon, Joe Parkinson and Thomas Grove, “Why Wagner Chief Prigozhin Turned Against Putin, ” Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/wagner-prigozhin-putin-mutiny-moscow-march-7072d6ea

Michael R. Gordon and Alan Cullison, “Wagner Mutiny Revives U.S. Fears Over Control of Russia’s Nuclear Weapons,” Washington Post, June 25, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/wagner-mutiny-revives-u-s-fears-over-control-of-russias-nuclear-weapons-29319369

Richard Kemp, “Putin’s downfall is only delayed. It’s coming,” Telegraph, June 25, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/25/putins-downfall-is-only-delayed-its-coming/

James Kilner, “Putin disappears as allies ask how rebels got so close to Moscow,” Telegraph, June 25, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/25/vladimir-putin-disappears-question-how-wagner-close-moscow/

James Risen, “Prigozhin and Putin: Dead Men Walking,” Intercept, June 25, 2023, https://theintercept.com/2023/06/25/prigozhin-putin-russia-coup/

Tatiana Stanovaya, “Below is a brief description of Prigozhin’s mutiny and the factors that contributed to its outcome. . . .” Twitter, June 25, 2023, https://twitter.com/Stanovaya/status/1672991911538196482

Ishaan Tharoor, “Putin is reaping what he sowed,” Washington Post, June 25, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/25/putin-wagner-damage-challenge-image/

Patrick Tucker, “How Prigozhin’s Baby Coup Weakened Everyone in Russia,” Defense One, June 25, 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/06/how-prigozhins-baby-coup-weakened-everyone-russia/387888/

Douglas Busvine, Gabriel Gavin, and Victor Jack, “Putin condemns Wagner rebellion but says Prigozhin’s men are free to go,” Politico, June 26, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/yevegeny-prigozhin-wagner-group-russia-ukraine-war-mutiny/

Jamie Dettmer, “Putinism’s demise will be chaotic and violent,” Politico, June 26, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-wagner-group-rebellion-vladimir-putin-demise-will-be-chaotic-and-violent/

Robyn Dixon and Mary Ilyushina, “After Putin speech on deal with mercenaries, Russia confronts divisions,” Washington Post, June 27, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/27/putin-prigozhin-wagner-russia-divided/

Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. Prigozhin: The Post-Coup Report,” Puck, June 27, 2023, https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/

Bojan Pancevski, “Wagner’s Prigozhin Planned to Capture Russian Military Leaders,” Wall Street Journal, June 28, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/wagners-prigozhin-planned-to-capture-russian-military-leaders-805345cf

Max Seddon et al., “Vladimir Putin freezes out hardliners after Wagner mutiny,” Financial Times, June 28, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/1d084fc7-d249-451d-b791-56a05b9010fc

Max Seddon, Henry Foy, and Polina Ivanova, “Russia detains ‘General Armageddon’ in crackdown on pro-Wagner elites,” Financial Times, June 29, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/e937199c-a5c1-45d9-85bc-85cf75a3528d

Neoliberalism

Self-driving cars


Fig. 2. Photograph by Mark Doliner, August 1, 2012, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

Jacob Comer, “State Police: Tesla on autopilot crashes into stopped truck on Pa. Turnpike,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 26, 2023, https://www.post-gazette.com/news/transportation/2023/06/26/state-police-tesla-autopilot-crash-truck-interstate-freightliner/stories/202306260060

Eriq Gardner, “The Elon Hubris Deposition Test,” Puck, June 26, 2023, https://puck.news/the-elon-hubris-deposition-test/

Gilead

Competitive authoritarian regime project


Fig. 3. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Mitchell during signing ceremony of the voting rights act. Yoichi Okamoto, August 6, 1965, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the independent state legislature theory that would have allowed state legislatures to gerrymander and generally tinker with elections, all free from judicial review.[23]

Time will tell whether this thought proves embarrassingly ludicrous, prescient, or something else: I’m thinking that some of those justices on the Supreme Court felt their fingers burn or perhaps their noses lengthen when they saw the backlash to Dobbs, that they might have been scared straight, at least for a little while. I also might have some serious blushing to do.

Tierney Sneed, “Supreme Court allows for Louisiana congressional map to be redrawn to add another majority-Black district,” CNN, January 26, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/26/politics/supreme-court-louisiana-congressional-redistricting/index.html

Robert Barnes, “Supreme Court rejects theory that would have meant radical changes to election rules,” Washington Post, June 27, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/27/moore-v-harper-supreme-court-rejects/

Leo Cassel-Siskind, “Tens of thousands of Pa. mail ballots will be thrown out in the 2024 presidential election,” Philadelphia Inquirer, June 29, 2023, https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/pennsylvania-mail-ballots-presidential-election-20230629.html

Twitter


Fig. 4. “Elon Musk shared a video of his entrance on his Twitter account.” Photograph attributed to Elon Musk, October 26, 2022, via the New York Post,[24] fair use.

William D. Cohan, “The Elon Twitter Debt Vulcan Chess Theory,” Puck, June 28, 2023, https://puck.news/the-elon-twitter-debt-vulcan-chess-theory/

COVID-19 Pandemic


Fig. 5. Cartoon by Peter Brookes, October 3, 2020, via the Times, fair use.

Understand how this will be spun among white Christian nationalists: They will say that the “deep state” (I don’t remember: am I supposed to capitalize that? or just yell it?) is getting all its hookers from the Chinese deep state. Or something like that.

Apparently, the big news is that the Wuhan Lab was indeed working on coronaviruses, but these were too distantly related to be a likely progenitor to COVID-19. Furthermore, there was no evidence that any much-ballyhooed but merely hypothesized “lab leak” had in fact occurred. This, of course, according to the intelligence community,[25] one of a few targets of extreme right-wing antipathy, in their labeling, the “deep state.”

Some old fogeys might, as I do, remember when we lamented the “deep state” for its misdeeds in Latin America, for spying on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, for running crack cocaine to U.S. inner cities to pay for aid to the Nicaraguan Contras, for facilitating a coup favoring the Shah of Iran, and, I’m sure, numerous other misdeeds either that I don’t know or that fail to come to mind. Somehow, the “deep state” is still a shadowy collection of government agencies and private contractors, but rather than acting on behalf of capitalism it now targets the right wing (you know, “anyone with a brain”). It’s an upside-down world.

Liam Mannix, “COVID-19 lab leak theory ends with a whimper, not a bang,” Sydney Morning Herald, June 27, 2023, https://www.smh.com.au/national/covid-19-lab-leak-theory-ends-with-a-whimper-not-a-bang-20230627-p5djqb.html

Jeffrey Epstein


Fig. 6. “Donald Trump with his future wife Melania Knauss, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago in February 2000.” Photograph credited to Davidoff Studios Photography/Getty Images, February 2000,[26] fair use.

Sadie Gurman, “Jeffrey Epstein’s Suicide Underscores Negligence in Federal Prisons, Watchdog Finds,” Wall Street Journal, June 27, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/jeffrey-epsteins-suicide-underscores-negligence-in-federal-prisons-watchdog-finds-dbc423da

Gilead

Competitive authoritarian regime project


Fig. 7. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Mitchell during signing ceremony of the voting rights act. Yoichi Okamoto, August 6, 1965, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

The legal doctrine in question is contained in Section 5 of the 14th Amendment: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It seems clear enough, particularly given the context, which was to establish that the “free soil” of a reunited America made full citizens of ex-slaves. The prevailing Supreme Court interpretation of the birthright-citizenship clause, handed down in 1898, held that the American-born son of noncitizen immigrants was indeed a citizen.

But the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction of,” originally intended to exclude the children of foreign diplomats and Native Americans from automatic citizenship, has caused some doubt and confusion. A smattering of conservative legal scholars have argued that it means Congress can regulate birthright citizenship, typically by withholding it from the children of immigrants present in the country illegally. Trump asserted before and after becoming president that he had the power to do exactly that by executive order. He never did, however, probably because he was told it would invite an immediate court challenge. But in his current campaign, he has pledged to issue an order ending birthright citizenship (technically requiring that one parent of a qualifying person be a citizen or legal resident) on “day one” of his next administration.[27]

When you are desperate to limit who can vote to certain identity groups, it has to be brain-dead obvious that you are worried that certain other identity groups will either not see or object to the merits of your policies, which just about has to mean that they think you’re trying to fuck them over, which just about has to mean your policies increase social inequality.

Tierney Sneed, “Supreme Court allows for Louisiana congressional map to be redrawn to add another majority-Black district,” CNN, January 26, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/26/politics/supreme-court-louisiana-congressional-redistricting/index.html

Ed Kilgore, “DeSantis Joins Trump’s Call to End Birthright Citizenship,” New York, June 27, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/desantis-joins-trumps-call-to-end-birthright-citizenship.html

Human Science

Inquiry

Quantitative
Artificial idiocy

There is a new blog post entitled, “For regulating artificial idiocy, against regulating cryptography.”

Margaret Heffernan, “The tech sector’s free pass must be cancelled,” Financial Times, June 28, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/c668bf20-40ea-4eb9-8910-ab63d213a63b

Illiberalism


Fig. 8. Photograph by Joachim F. Thurn, August 1991, Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F089030-0003, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE.

Dov Lieber and Michael Amon, “Netanyahu Revives Judicial Overhaul Stripped of Most Controversial Piece,” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/netanyahu-revives-judicial-overhaul-stripped-of-most-controversial-piece-33160de

  1. [1]Patrick Cloonan, “Another Code Red air quality action day declared for all of Pa.,” Indiana Gazette, June 29, 2023, https://www.indianagazette.com/news/another-code-red-air-quality-action-day-declared-for-all-of-pa/article_342ab07c-669c-54ef-9cf4-114727bd2b5b.html; Jenna Wise, “Code Red air quality alert extended in central Pa. as wildfires bring haze,” Harrisburg Patriot-News, June 29, 2023, https://www.pennlive.com/weather/2023/06/code-red-air-quality-alert-extended-in-central-pa-as-wildfires-bring-haze.html↩
  2. [2]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q↩
  3. [3]Robyn Dixon and Mary Ilyushina, “After Putin speech on deal with mercenaries, Russia confronts divisions,” Washington Post, June 27, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/27/putin-prigozhin-wagner-russia-divided/↩
  4. [4]Max Seddon, Henry Foy, and Polina Ivanova, “Russia detains ‘General Armageddon’ in crackdown on pro-Wagner elites,” Financial Times, June 29, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/e937199c-a5c1-45d9-85bc-85cf75a3528d; Max Seddon et al., “Vladimir Putin freezes out hardliners after Wagner mutiny,” Financial Times, June 28, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/1d084fc7-d249-451d-b791-56a05b9010fc↩
  5. [5]Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. Prigozhin: The Post-Coup Report,” Puck, June 27, 2023, https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/↩
  6. [6]Tatiana Stanovaya, “Below is a brief description of Prigozhin’s mutiny and the factors that contributed to its outcome. . . .” Twitter, June 25, 2023, https://twitter.com/Stanovaya/status/1672991911538196482↩
  7. [7]Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. Prigozhin: The Post-Coup Report,” Puck, June 27, 2023, https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/↩
  8. [8]Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. Prigozhin: The Post-Coup Report,” Puck, June 27, 2023, https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/↩
  9. [9]Jamie Dettmer, “Putinism’s demise will be chaotic and violent,” Politico, June 26, 2023, https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-wagner-group-rebellion-vladimir-putin-demise-will-be-chaotic-and-violent/; Tom Nichols, “The Coup Is Over, but Putin Is in Trouble,” Atlantic, June 24, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/06/putin-russian-coup-over-prigozhin-wagner/674522/; Patrick Tucker, “How Prigozhin’s Baby Coup Weakened Everyone in Russia,” Defense One, June 25, 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/06/how-prigozhins-baby-coup-weakened-everyone-russia/387888/↩
  10. [10]James Kilner, “Putin disappears as allies ask how rebels got so close to Moscow,” Telegraph, June 25, 2023, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/25/vladimir-putin-disappears-question-how-wagner-close-moscow/↩
  11. [11]Julia Ioffe, “About a Boy: The Roots of Putin’s Evil,” Puck, May 10, 2022, https://puck.news/about-a-boy-the-roots-of-putins-evil/↩
  12. [12]Max Seddon et al., “Vladimir Putin freezes out hardliners after Wagner mutiny,” Financial Times, June 28, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/1d084fc7-d249-451d-b791-56a05b9010fc↩
  13. [13]James Risen, “Prigozhin and Putin: Dead Men Walking,” Intercept, June 25, 2023, https://theintercept.com/2023/06/25/prigozhin-putin-russia-coup/↩
  14. [14]Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. Prigozhin: The Post-Coup Report,” Puck, June 27, 2023, https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/↩
  15. [15]Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. Prigozhin: The Post-Coup Report,” Puck, June 27, 2023, https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/; Tom Nichols, “The Coup Is Over, but Putin Is in Trouble,” Atlantic, June 24, 2023, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2023/06/putin-russian-coup-over-prigozhin-wagner/674522/; Max Seddon et al., “Vladimir Putin freezes out hardliners after Wagner mutiny,” Financial Times, June 28, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/1d084fc7-d249-451d-b791-56a05b9010fc↩
  16. [16]Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. Prigozhin: The Post-Coup Report,” Puck, June 27, 2023, https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/↩
  17. [17]Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. Prigozhin: The Post-Coup Report,” Puck, June 27, 2023, https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/↩
  18. [18]Patrick Tucker, “How Prigozhin’s Baby Coup Weakened Everyone in Russia,” Defense One, June 25, 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/06/how-prigozhins-baby-coup-weakened-everyone-russia/387888/↩
  19. [19]Patrick Tucker, “How Prigozhin’s Baby Coup Weakened Everyone in Russia,” Defense One, June 25, 2023, https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2023/06/how-prigozhins-baby-coup-weakened-everyone-russia/387888/↩
  20. [20]Ishaan Tharoor, “Putin is reaping what he sowed,” Washington Post, June 25, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/06/25/putin-wagner-damage-challenge-image/↩
  21. [21]Julia Ioffe, “Putin vs. Prigozhin: The Post-Coup Report,” Puck, June 27, 2023, https://puck.news/putin-vs-prigozhin-the-post-coup-report/↩
  22. [22]David Benfell, “If Vladimir Putin doesn’t make sense, he doesn’t make sense, and he cannot last,” Not Housebroken, June 25, 2023, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/10/10/if-vladimir-putin-doesnt-make-sense-he-doesnt-make-sense-and-he-cannot-last/↩
  23. [23]Robert Barnes, “Supreme Court rejects theory that would have meant radical changes to election rules,” Washington Post, June 27, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/06/27/moore-v-harper-supreme-court-rejects/↩
  24. [24]Thomas Barrabi, “Elon Musk barges into Twitter HQ as deal nears: ‘Let that sink in,’” New York Post, October 26, 2022, https://nypost.com/2022/10/26/elon-musk-barges-into-twitter-headquarters-as-deal-nears/↩
  25. [25]Liam Mannix, “COVID-19 lab leak theory ends with a whimper, not a bang,” Sydney Morning Herald, June 27, 2023, https://www.smh.com.au/national/covid-19-lab-leak-theory-ends-with-a-whimper-not-a-bang-20230627-p5djqb.html↩
  26. [26]Martin Pengelly, “‘She say anything about me?’ Trump raised Ghislaine Maxwell link with aides,” Guardian, October 4, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/oct/04/trump-ghislaine-maxwell-epstein-maggie-haberman-book-confidence-man↩
  27. [27]Ed Kilgore, “DeSantis Joins Trump’s Call to End Birthright Citizenship,” New York, June 27, 2023, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/06/desantis-joins-trumps-call-to-end-birthright-citizenship.html↩

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