JOSHUA ROBERTS
Under the above heading, Eurasia Daily published the text of a meeting on the reflection of the contradiction between the values of democracy and freedom and the reality of practice in the West on Russian youth.
According to the meeting that Igor Zubtsov had with a professor of political science in the Department of International Relations of the Northwest Institute of Management of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Nikolai Baranov:
Against the background of events in the United States, could the radical liberal sentiment that is popular with young people in Russia, albeit for some time, wane?
Frankly, today I do not see extremist liberal views among contemporary youth. Through my contact with the youth as a teacher, I see that internally they are not fully aware of the current situation and all the facts. It is no secret that a very confused situation is also developing in Russia. On the one hand, everyone sees a negative example in the West. On the other hand, legislation within our country is constantly tightening. From experience, I can say that young people see all this with a different eye. There are young people who support some restrictions, realizing that the state should monitor the content, for example, to prevent the spread of extremist content. But in general, they are, of course, more oriented towards a free internet.
You said that young people do not understand the essence of the phenomena that occur. Does this only apply to the situation with the Coronavirus, or are we talking about all global politics?
I do not agree with the phrase “they do not understand.” Young people respond to the changes they see. On the one hand, they talk to them in lectures about democracy and that there is freedom of opinion and freedom of expression, and that in different countries of Western society, they welcome, in theory, demonstrations against governments. However, when young people see that there is a suppression of protests in these countries, they suffer from a kind of cognitive distortion. They think, “It shouldn’t be this way, but it does.” And they cannot explain it with any logic. Thus, young people begin to doubt the reality of the democracy that now exists, including liberal values. There is a lack of understanding, not limited to young people. In fact, we all don’t understand right now what is happening.
The article expresses only the opinion of the newspaper or writer
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