The Kremlin needs the bikers, and movements like them. The things Russia’s dictatorship once depended on to give it an air of legitimacy – its cheerleaders and its fake opposition, the pro-Putin youth groups and tame political parties – no longer hold sway the way they did. Only 5 per cent of Russians think the government ‘very effective’. Putin’s popularity is at an all-time low: an approval rating of 60 per cent is high for a democracy but in a system built around one man it raises eyebrows. Apathy rules: only 30 per cent bothered to vote in the Moscow mayoral elections. The system needs new stars and the Night Wolves are just the type that’s wanted. Where until recently political players talked about ‘modernisation’ and ‘innovation’ the buzzwords are now ‘religion’, ‘traditionalism’, ‘Eurasia’, ‘God’. Among the new religious nationalists are the black-clad Union of Orthodox Banner-Bearers, who have burned Harry Potter books on the embankment by the Kremlin to protest against J.K. Rowling’s Satanism, and Dmitry Enteo, a wan-faced youth with a goatee, who has made speeches on TV about his plan to throw bricks at the windows of Western department stores. Even the Night Wolves think Enteo and the Banner Bearers clinically unwell.
Posted on: Sat, 09 Aug 2014 22:25:50 +0000
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