The entire point is to spread cynicism about democracy as a process. That way autocrats can say “look, it doesn’t actually matter, voting is as free here as it is in the west.” It’s not to convince you that they are free, it’s to make people question the value of Western freedoms.
The reality is that democracy obviously doesn’t work without civil liberties to go along with it. But this is more nuanced than your average person will grasp without explanation.
Exactly this: I remember meeting some Russians that had moved to Belgium a few years ago, and we got to talking about this topic. These were well educated young people, yet they told me the thing that surprised them the most when moving to Belgium was that people actually cared about elections, and that elections actually mattered. They had been completely convinced that elections in the west were just like the “elections” they were used to from Russia.
The entire point is to spread cynicism about democracy as a process. That way autocrats can say “look, it doesn’t actually matter, voting is as free here as it is in the west.” It’s not to convince you that they are free, it’s to make people question the value of Western freedoms.
The reality is that democracy obviously doesn’t work without civil liberties to go along with it. But this is more nuanced than your average person will grasp without explanation.
Exactly this: I remember meeting some Russians that had moved to Belgium a few years ago, and we got to talking about this topic. These were well educated young people, yet they told me the thing that surprised them the most when moving to Belgium was that people actually cared about elections, and that elections actually mattered. They had been completely convinced that elections in the west were just like the “elections” they were used to from Russia.