Written by Kate Gordon, MSc Media, Power & Public Affairs student 2019-20
Anyone who spends his or her fair share of time on the internet will likely recognize the word trolling; an act of making unsolicited and often controversial comments with the intent of provoking an emotional reaction in hopes of inciting an argument or fight. Trolling is common behavior frequently seen in Reddit threads, YouTube comments, and elsewhere online, and is usually performed by private individuals for comedic purposes, personal amusement, and thrill of the schadenfreude. But what happens when an authoritarian government appropriates trolling as a tactic for suppressing civil engagement and activism?
In her work, Xymena Kurowska looks at how the Russian government co-opted trolling as a means to deter and delegitimize societal civic engagement. It does this through the process of what Kurowska calls neutrollization, a kind of political trolling that involves corruption through (normative) chaos. Neutrollization is the idea of neutralization-by-trolling; a process by which an authoritarian government uses technology in order to neutralize the potential for citizens to mobilize politically and renders that mobilization ridiculous if and when it finally occurs. Neutrollization operates through a mechanism of overidentification, by which the people or organizations engaging with this method ensure that the system is taken more literally than it takes itself, meaning the political system becomes something of a parody or mockery. When the atmosphere for political discussion takes on too farcical a tone, citizens feel ill-equipped or are simply unwilling to engage in political discourse because the troll has already successfully corrupted the dialogue. The process of neutrollization renders civilians unable to present the regime as a threat to societal security because their actions will essentially be mocked and ridiculed, thus delegitimizing their arguments.
Though the regime of the Russian government is strong domestically, the Russian regime is heavily stigmatized internationally. In order to circumvent this stigmatization in international politics, the Russians employ the second tactic discussed in Kurowska’s work: trickstery. To act as a trickster is performative, and a morally as well as ontologically ambiguous method of handling international stigmatization. Russian trickstery largely derives from the national tradition of parody and again makes use of the concept of overidentification. Kurowska’s example for this case involves the instances in which Russia portrays itself as a lead champion of global norms, thereby both embracing and ridiculing global basic principles, imploding the normative coordinates of the international system. According to Kurowska, Russian trickstery is also noticeably demonstrated in their concept of stiob, a genre of parody from Soviet times but now a genre connected to the idea of containing liberal Western hegemony. Russia uses stiob and overidentification to hold a mirror to liberal society in the West and expose the hypocrisy that lies between the ideals that liberal nations espouse versus the actual courses of action those nations pursue.
Through the use of overidentification and trickstery, the Russian government attempts to make liberal norms an object of travesty. For example, when the West refused Georgia's requests for assistance in 2008, leading to the deaths of its citizens, not only did Russia present this as legitimizing its subsequent decision to intervene, but Russia could politely criticize Georgia for not upholding its citizens’ human rights even when it was Russia that was pursuing military aggression against them. Because overidentification makes a mockery of established norms, even norms that are legitimately invoked and endorsed by their ontological status have their legitimacy questioned and undermined. By delegitimizing the Western order, Russian trickstery demonstrates both the idea that the liberal script is not the only script that is operational and what it sees as the underlying hypocrisy of the liberal script. By employing trickstery and stiob in international diplomacy, the Russian government is able to both navigate its international stigma and attempt to weaken Western hegemony.
After her presentation, Kurowska was asked who exactly is fooled or neutralized by neutrollization and trickstery. She answered that it is very likely that no one is actually fooled. Civil society actors are aware that the Russian government is using these tactics to discourage and prevent political mobilization, but the efforts have been so successful that there is nothing those actors can really do about it. In essence, at least on this battleground, civil society actors have lost. It is an important win domestically for Russia’s government; digitally empowered individuals could be a threat and could expose vulnerability in a regime. Through the process of neutrollization, the Russian government seems to have largely fortified a potentially vulnerable area, at least for now.
Western governments are also very likely aware of the use of trickstery in Russian diplomacy. Russia, in turn, is aware that the West is aware of its trickstery, but the Russians feel that the West does not understand quite how progressive and quite how subversive of a strategy it actually is. And, of course, the Russians will not actually confirm the existence of trickstery, as an admission of its existence would take away an important weapon in their fight against international political stigma. As Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu said (and Kurowska translated): “It is very difficult to look for a black cat in a dark room, especially if it is not there. All the more stupid to look for it if this cat is clever, brave, and polite.”
Dr. Xymena Kurowska presented her paper to the Department of Politics and International Relations on 12 February 2020.
