Can TikTok Bring Down a Dictator?
Grace Couch / March 17 / Authoritarianism
When you take a look at the recent events under the Putin Russian government, you can’t help but feel it’s like something out of a Sacha Baron Cohen movie - the dictator finds a more ludicrous way of assassinating each of his opponents, and yet no one is batting an eyelid. The plot twist may finally be that the people use social media to bring him down.
It’s unlikely that Putin will be going anywhere soon, but since his political opponent, Alexei Navalny, was jailed upon his return from Berlin (where he was recovering from Novichok poisoning), the younger generations have been wreaking havoc by organising protests via TikTok. At the end of January, more than 5000 people were detained after taking part in unauthorised protests, more than any other point in Vladimir Putin’s 21 year rule.
Putin’s main political opponent was involved in a near-fatal incident involving the same nerve agent used in Salisbury in 2018, and investigative journalists have named Russian FSB agents suspected of the poisoning. This isn’t the first time a political opponent has mysteriously faced death. In 2015, leading opposition figure Boris Nemtsov was shot near the Kremlin. In 2005, Russia’s former richest oligarch was jailed for more than a decade for tax evasion and fraud after he backed opposition groups and spoke out about corruption. In 2006, Former Russian agent turned Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko died in Britain after being poisoned with a rare radioactive isotope, which a UK inquiry concluded was probably approved by Putin. Can you spot a theme?
Many protesters are not specifically fans or Navalny himself, but have a frustration with the injustice of the political system, and therefore stand by what he represents: “He’s the only one willing to fight back and always say the truth,” said one protestor. “Not everyone here agrees with him, but I think a lot [of people] respect him.”
To arrange the protests, young Russians were using TikTok to encourage turnout at protests, flooding the site with the hashtags tags #freenavalny and #23Jan. These videos included tips such as telling demonstrators to pretend they are American tourists if questioned by the police and bringing milk to help counter the effects of tear gas. As with most TikToks, teenagers have been harnessing humour, catchy music and visual filters as tools for political resistance. The clips have been watched more than 500 million times, prompting the state censor to demand TikTok remove them. Much of the social media hype has also been spurred by Navalny himself releasing a Youtube documentary exposing a vast and opulent palace funded through illicit money by Russia's leader on the Black Sea coast. The video gained 40 million views within 40 hours of being published.
Maybe the international response would be greater if governments were not preoccupied with a global pandemic, but there doesn’t appear to be a particularly vocal objection to the events in Russia. UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab accused authorities of detaining people “simply for expressing their dissent”, adding: “We condemn the Russian authorities’ indiscriminate and arbitrary arrest of peaceful protesters and journalists”. However, this is as loud as the discontent gets.
The US response of condemnation of the crackdown on protests is in stark contrast to the cosying up techniques of the Trump White House. However, in practice, this has had little effect. It almost makes you wonder whether we need to be so concerned about Trump and Putin’s bromance when snubbing him makes no difference to supporting him. Spectators argue that Navalny will only elicit success if he gains support from the political and business elites, or equally, that they are given good enough reason to break ties with Putin. To their credit, Navalny’s allies have released a list of Putin-linked oligarchs and officials calling on the West to sanction them. However, so far, neither Boris Johnson nor Joe Biden have taken action.
It appears that the Kremlin is aware of the threat posed by social media sites as a form of grassroots organisation. At the height of the civil disobedience, Russia's state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said it would fine Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and two Russian social networks for their failure to block calls on minors to join upcoming protests. Some schools and universities even scheduled exams for the Saturday protests were being planned for, and others urged parents to keep their children at home by watching a favourite movie or playing board games.
In answering whether this sensation of information and community organising is enough to bring down Putin, the short answer is no. Navalny has since been sentenced to a further 2 and a half year jail sentence for not reporting to the police regularly due to a sentence for suspected embezzlement - no amount of likes or views was going to prevent that from happening. But neither has international pressure, with the Kremlin shrugging off US complaints about his case and even slapping on an extra $11,480 fine for a separate defamation case.
With Russia blaming the US for using these online platforms themselves to promote the protests, will the internal unrest ever be recognised? How many protestors, online commenters and shared views of discontent would it take for change to happen? With the ability for catchy music and captioned mini-clips to transcend language barriers, maybe these videos will work their way onto western users’ ‘for you pages’ and Charli D'Amelio and her army of followers will finally create some change. Russian citizens can but hope.
“This is a huge internal challenge, just the kind he hates. It will hardly unseat him. But despite the leeway of the law at his disposal, something is shifting - accelerated by the internet quicksands - which repression may not be able to control.” - Diana Magnay