My comment on the article Opposition figurehead Maria Kolesnikova is bundled into van in Belarus by Gareth Browne in The Times, 7 September 2020.
Fake event. The story does not fit the Communist modus operandi. There is no need to grab someone from the street like that. The Communist way is to socially murder the person long before he or she becomes well known. There are many ways to do it. It need not involve physical contact, while being extremely perfidious and cruel.
My wife and I have been targeted for years in Poland. Those activities are run in an entirely different way. My wife and I were eventually expelled from our jobs in Poland in 2015. The authorities ordered the local branch of the Occupational Medical Service to issue a fake statement proclaiming my wife to be unable to work as a pianist due to some unspecified ‘delusions’. That’s the Communist way to do it. My wife was promptly fired. Not even one person expressed support for us. Neither officially, nor privately.
Western journalists generally have no clue about realities of everyday life under the regime. They also do not understand that the regime has total control of the entire public narrative, including the fake opposition. ‘Opposition’ in Belarus does not even pretend it has a program. Their slogan ‘Country to live in’ is perfectly suitable for Lukashenko as well. Demands of Lukashenko stepping down is exactly what the Communist political technologists want. It is a bit like staging demonstrations in winter to demand the end of the cold season and arrival of spring and summer.
This is really a polit-soap opera. Everyone knows that they need to replace Lukashenko eventually with someone else. No one lives forever. They are not stupid. The trick is to pretend he has been overthrown or stepped down as a result of public pressure and create a bit of mythology in the process.
The way to confuse the West is to arrange a fake conflict and pretend the fake opposition won, like the Solidarity trade union in Poland in the 1980s. The same ruling class continued to run the show post-1990 with the West’s approval, thanks in no small part to journalists who did everything to avoid asking inconvenient questions.
@LechSBorkowski