Dissident Fetish
Molly Crabapple on the Dissident Fetish: Empires Love Their Dissidents Foreign
Speakers had no words for writer Barrett Brown.Brown’s been jailed since September 2012 for his coverage of hacker group Anonymous, which prosecutors claimed amounted to participation in illegal activities and which resulted in 17 total charges. On its Web site, the Organization posted a mild note of support in March 2014, when some of his charges were dropped. No one mentioned him that night.That night, no one had one word for any American political prisoner, hacker and whistle-blower and activist, cracking from solitary in their 6-foot-by-11-foot cells.The Organization is a savior for imprisoned dissidents the world over. That night, it seemed to forget those closer to home.The Organization whose gala I drank at does deeply admirable work, but its hush on domestic political prisoners mirrors that of those with more troubling motives. By ignoring humans locked in their own cells, states can pretend that dissent is only punished elsewhere. They can both toast hell-raisers abroad, and clamp down on hell-raisers at home.Empires love their dissidents foreign.Any regime, no matter how repressive, will gladly fête its enemy’s critics—while homegrown versions of those critics occupy concrete cells. Cooing over foreign dissidents allows establishment hacks to pose like sexy rebels—while simultaneously affirming that their own system is the best.The dissident fetishist takes a brave, principled person, and uses them like a codpiece of competitive virtue.The Kremlin loves (American) whistle-blowers. The State Department loves (Russian) anarchist punks.Mainstream media cherishes these dissidents because they allow journalists the by-proxy thrill of challenging power. They, too, can stand square-shouldered against Putin or Obama, capes billowing behind them in the wind.These same media figures aren’t always so lippy on their home turf.Not everyone gets to be called a dissident, of course. In pop imagery, a dissident should be pure and unworldly, unconcerned with either the danger or fame his or her actions may bring. Dissidents should be educated, telegenic. They should renounce violence. They should talk in the Western-friendly language of human rights.In court, they should stand with their backs straight, their words like honey and fire.Today's dissident is often yesterday's criminal or terrorist. And vice versa. Advocates of ideologies like political Islam are seldom granted the dissident label—a fact that regimes from Egypt to the U.A.E. have used to damn critics across the political spectrum.In The Atlantic, writer Sarah Kendzior called Pussy Riot “manic pixie dream dissidents.” For Western commentators, Kendzior wrote, Pussy Riot’s beauty and victimhood took away their complicated political critique. Nadya Tolokonnikova, Masha Alyokhina, and Yekaterina (Katya) Samutsevich are artists. They were artists as members of performance-art group Voina, when they forcibly made out with Moscow cops as part of “Operation Kiss Garbage,” or spray-painted a giant dick on a bridge across from the headquarters of the secret police. They were artists in the courtroom cage.When Tolokonnikova raised her fist in that No Pasaran T-shirt, or Alyokhina refused to leave her prison camp in solidarity with less famous inmates, they were performing gestures as iconic as any painting. They deserve every glossy party New York throws in their honor.I only wish there were parties as glam for another young woman who challenged power.Last summer, I sat in the courtroom when a judge declared Chelsea Manning guilty of violating the Espionage Act.