Жертва Телевидения*

While the video below (titled "Attention: Lukashism is hazardous to your health" by the person who posted it to YouTube) shows an individual who is an extreme case, it nevertheless is instructive to anyone who wonders why political opposition is so unsuccessful at gaining traction in places like Russia and Belarus.

There are many reasons, of course: incompetence of the opposition overall, lack of an appealing platform or practical solutions, limited access to media or the "administrative resource," and opposition leaders who refuse to cooperate with each other. But one very important reason is the potency of government propaganda, which portrays any non-loyal opposition as externally funded and dedicated to the collapse of the state, and the susceptibility of certain segments of the population to that propaganda.

The interview subject here talks at various times about shooting, skinning alive, and gassing to death those who protest Lukashenko's rule, and makes repeated and irate references to their American funding, before completely losing it at the end and cursing out whoever is doing the interview. Apparently this was filmed in either early or late 2008 in Gomel', Belarus.

This comes via drugoi - where commenters pointed out that this clip did not actually appear on Belarusian TV and wondered whether the person shown might be mentally ill (watch the clip and you'll see that's not an outlandish question).

*With apologies to Vysotsky.