National Ideology of Countering Extremism, Violence and Separatism

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Changes to the Strategy for Countering Extremism in the Russian Federation until 2025 are proposed. Who is considered an extremist? Are Russia's enemies called by their proper names?

It is only possible to resist a hostile ideology with the help of an alternative ideology. Ideas can only be effectively dealt with by counter ideas. While our Constitution in Article 13 continues to insist that “no ideology can be established as state or obligatory” (paragraph 2), the only weapon to oppose the ideologies of violence, extremism and separatism is the repressive apparatus. But the effectiveness of repression can only be effective against extremist actions. Extremist actions are the visible fruits of extremist ideologies. Ideas, as roots, will remain unharmed in the people's soil and will surely sprout again by extremist actions.

The only ideological part in the Constitution is paragraph 5 of Article 13, where

it is prohibited to create and operate public associations, the goals or actions of which are aimed at forcibly changing the foundations of the constitutional order and violating the integrity of the Russian Federation, undermining the security of the state, creating armed formations, inciting social, racial, national and religious hatred.

Actually, the entire Strategy of Countering Extremism is devoted to the development of this clause of the Constitution. Which is clearly not enough to win.

What is ideology?

Ideology can be compared to immunity. With historical immunity, which has a certain ideological resistance to foreign influences. Ideology in a certain sense is social homeostasis. Maintaining dynamic balance, social self-regulation while maintaining self-reproduction and the fight against foreign bodies.

Ideology is a set of ideological attitudes that are professed by a society that has historically separated from its neighbors, and which are for it the criteria of truth, its view of the world. These worldview ideas become social ideals that are cultivated and protected by the state. Protection from extremism, in fact, is opposition to all those ideologies that deny any value to your society. In this sense, the ideological struggle can be called a competitive civilizational struggle.

Do we have a harmonious system of views today, reflecting the attitude of Russia as a state and a nation, as a society, to the world around us, including as to the world of ideas?

Sadly, but the post-Soviet society is ideologically almost unarmed. We still haven't answered the questions of who we are and what kind of society we are building.

But any social cooperation implies the interaction and development of human ideas, desires, feelings in one direction.

Power in societies, in fact, is needed in order to be the guiding and protecting force of this psychological kinship, called the people. Beloved, natural, traditional behavioral attitudes for this people are the essence, the bonds of the unity that we observe in the state.

Ideology in the state codifies, elevates to the rank of social values those ideals of the world, on which the world was built, where this or that people lives.

Power creates a certain legal order in society, bringing the various personal desires of members of society to submission to certain generally binding and generally understandable norms of behavior, since it is capable of coercion.

Ideology, on the other hand, is responsible for a certain world order, leading, with the help of moral, educational, ideocratic requirements, personal aspirations to accord with generally recognized values and traditional worldview in society.

The educational function of ideology contributes to national solidarity even in the case when following the requirements of the law is associated with certain personal restrictions.

Ideology is an area of consciousness, traditions and values.

The state appears as the highest stage in the development of society for the protection of intrasocial freedom and order.

Ideology is the highest stage in society's awareness of itself, as a world outlook institution that guards ideals. The army, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the special services defend the sovereignty of the country by means of physical resistance, ideology protects the sovereignty in the field of worldview, in an area inaccessible to physical influence.

Ideology is a set of ideological norms - on the one hand, accepted, traditional, encouraged, promoted in society, and on the other hand, they impose certain ideological restrictions on the external freedom of persons in society.

Power in society, in fact, is needed to be the guiding and protecting force of this psychological kinship, called the people. Photo: Sergey Kiselev / AGN "Moscow"

Ideology unites social units into a single civil force with invisible worldview threads. Ultimately, ideology should help every citizen to form his national and political identity.

National ideology is the rationalization of unconscious ideas, feelings, innate perceptions, stereotypes of the worldview inherent in the psychological portrait of a nation.

In fact, questions of ideology should precede the identification of threats to Russia's security. But in our case it is the opposite.

Threats to Russia's security

The new version of the Strategy uses several new concepts: “ideology of violence”, “radicalism”, “extremist ideology”, “manifestations of extremism (extremist manifestations)”, “separatist manifestations (separatism)” and “propaganda of extremism”.

The terms seem to be correct, but smack of some kind of philological scholasticism and lack of concrete content. After reading the Strategy, a lot of questions appear, to which the studied text does not give intelligible answers.

For example, what specific ideologies in Russia will be recognized as preaching violence? Which ones are the most dangerous today? How is radicalism different from extremism?

Left radicalism - is it extremism or social protest? Is liberal shock therapy a manifestation of radicalism or part of a market strategy? Is the call to translate the national language into the Latin alphabet still propaganda of cultural autonomy or is it a separatist manifestation?

The document states that in Russia "there is a tendency for further radicalization of certain groups of the population and exacerbation of external and internal extremist threats," which are supported and stimulated by "a number of states, including through foreign or international non-governmental organizations." This is all in the style "if someone here and there sometimes does not want to live honestly".

What are these separate groups of the population? What states and organizations support them? Strategy is, first of all, the definition of the enemy, real or potential, and a plan for inflicting defeat on him. How can the “trend towards further radicalization of certain groups of the population” be defeated? If it is Islamism, opposition foreign agents or national separatists, then write that. Give each group a description. Assess the degree of danger. Formulate how we will confront them.

And the most important question: what are we protecting? What are our values: religious, state, national, cultural? And then all of the above will immediately fall into place. Where are they registered? Where is our "creed"?

Decide first with the question "who are we?" - and then everyone who encroaches on this "we" will be extremists, radicals and separatists.

Who is threatened by the "formation of closed ethnic and religious enclaves" of migrants? Most likely, to the peoples who have our country as their only homeland.

We must talk about our largely incorrect migration policy. Photo: Pyotr Kovalev / TASS

Who is in danger of the increasing frequency of “cases of involving minors in the ranks of extremist structures”? This is clearly about "navalnist" protests. Of course, they are hostile to the existing government, since they want to bring their alternative … oppositional government to the top.

If the centers of terrorism “primarily in the region of the Middle East and North Africa” have been clarified and the undesirability of the ideological orientation of “graduates of foreign theological centers preaching the exclusivity of such religious movements and the violent methods of their dissemination” has been clarified, then it is necessary to talk about real Islamist organizations and their ideological attitudes … It is necessary to clarify in what way the Islamists pose a threat to us and why they are fighting with us.

If these threats are fueled by an “unfavorable migration situation,” then we must also talk about our largely incorrect migration policy. And it is not embarrassing to remove from the document the phrase that migration violates "the ethnic and confessional balance of the population that has developed in certain regions and municipalities" (previous version).

Violates? Yes, even how it violates. Often, walking down the street, you do not quite understand whether you are in the country in which you were born and raised. So ethno-confessional unrecognizably the surrounding world has changed due to the influx of migration. Isn't this a real threat to Russia's security?

It is interesting that the part about the organization of “football fans” has been removed from the new edition of the text, which speaks of radicalization, but the danger of the spread of radicalism has been expanded to include the sports environment as a whole. Also, a new story is inserted into the text about how "special services and organizations of individual states are increasing the information and psychological impact on the population of Russia, primarily on the youth." Which reflects reality. If athletes are radicalized, then something is wrong with youth policy.

The strangest and most incomprehensible passage in the amendments, talking about some kind of "social exclusion" and "spatial segregation". Is it really about migrants, someone in our country excludes and segregates them? Didn't notice, from the word "once".

Unfortunately, the text of the Strategy contains a lot of bureaucratic water, and not specific practical formulations. The target indicators of the Strategy are very similar to the stick system. Everything will be assessed by the dynamics of changes. That is, the “better” they act, the smaller the figures should be in the reporting. Will this reflect the actual processes taking place? Of course not. Brave "accountability" will destroy the whole matter of the fight against extremism.

In conclusion, I will just repeat that until we formulate what kind of society we are, our ideological principles and distinctive differences, the fight against any of our enemies will be sluggish, groping, blind.