Last Friday evening, images from the horrific Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow, Russia flooded my television screen and my Facebook feed was lit up with posts from all of my Russian friends. Finally, overwhelmed, I dug around for my remote control and switched over to March Madness to cheer on some underdogs (Go James Madison — who I am sure will have had their Cinderella story ended by the time this blog is published).
Anyone who knows me knows that I am a sensitive soul (understatement of the year). I cry over commercials featuring cats and dogs, cover my eyes at scary parts of movies, and frequently ask my parents to pre-screen movies to make sure that I can tough it out. Oh, and I also sleep with my light on most nights. Real life tragedies are even harder for me to watch, and I regularly cry during the news. So, it should shock no one that I cried buckets full of tears over what happened in Moscow … and these tears were compounded by the fact that I have personally attended concerts at Crocus City Hall several times. I could feel myself in the formerly safe and comfortable space and sense the horror of not knowing where to run for safety. Would I have gone to the left or the right? Would I have hidden behind seats? Would I have done something different?
Unlike most Americans of my generation, the defining terrorist attack in my memory is not 9/11 — I was isolated in Russia dealing with a personal tragedy during those awful days and even though it impacted my psyche, it somehow seemed like it was happening in a completely different world. Instead, it was the 2004 attack on a school in Beslan, Russia, leaving more than 300 victims, most young children, dead, that is seared into my memory in agonizing detail. And, it also took me years after the Dubrovka Theater hostage situation in Moscow to feel safe in theaters — every bump or sound during an opera or ballet would leave me fidgeting in my seat.
Not surprisingly, given the authoritarian nature of the Putin Regime, every terrorist attack over the past two decades in Russia has been used as justification to silence domestic dissent and critics — political dissidents have been unfairly painted as dangerous and potential sources of violence. Even yesterday, in the early hours after the attack, many Russian media sources feebly attempted to link the attacks to Navalny or the Ukrainians, despite the fact that the Russian government had received intelligence from America about an impending attack from ISIS.
In addition to being a silencing tactic, Putin has also used these national tragedies as an excuse to stand up and trumpet to the Russian public that they are only safe with a strong man in control. These promises of faux security eerily echo some of the claims that Trump makes at his increasingly unhinged rallies — that a second Trump Presidency is the only way to protect Americans from a broad array of nebulous risks, including imaginary caravans of migrants at our borders.
This is the language of authoritarians and autocrats and wannabe autocrats around the world — make people afraid of something and dangle the promise that you and only you can protect them. But, the truth is, these autocrats are never able to provide protection to their citizens, as the tragedy in Moscow clearly demonstrates — they frankly don’t care to even try to do this. All they are interested in is consolidating their own power and privilege,
Real protection and safety does not come from faux strong men, like Trump, cracking down on legitimate opposition and spirited debate. As Masha Gessen, a leading Russian-American journalist, cogently explained, “Autocratic power requires the degradation of moral authority — not the capture of moral high ground.” Instead, real safety comes from sitting down and having nuanced conversations, based on knowledge and facts, about the real issues that face us — listening to opinions from across the political spectrum. And, as the Republicans have shown us repeatedly over the last several years, they have no ability, or desire, to engage in these needed dialogues. And, until they change their tune, it remains critical to continue to vote blue up and down the ballot in November — for democracy, for prosperity, and for our very safety and security. Do not let our moral authority be degraded as Trump, and his cronies, try to drag us toward the authoritarian abyss.
-Bree J. Schuette
