Once we had things we called newspapers. It was similar to what you describe. It was possible to read an entire newspaper and have it tell you about just a single facet of a multi-faceted reality.
Navalny, defacto Russian opposition leader (jailed), has an organization that has been doing internet polls on the support for war. See [0] for recent results. As it's an internet poll, and skews young, urban and liberal, it should provide a lower bound for the support of the war.
Re:Modern Fascism Looks Like
by dragonwriter on Monday March 07, 2022 @03:57PM
(#30593234)
How does an internet poll conducted by an organization working for an already jailed opposition leader overcome the polling-in-authoritarian states problem of people not trusting the polling not to be monitored and not to be a black mark in a government file if someone doesn't like the answer?
It doesn't provide a lowe bound on anything.
You do have a point. But those people would rather avoid answering the poll in the first place. Those answering the poll are self-selected for strong anti-war sentiment.
The methodology is a bit a of a mystery, perhaps I'm wrong to assume this poll was conducted on an unaffiliated internet property, so no connection to the opposition leader would be evident.
In any case these are the most anti-war numbers of any poll out there, and still over 50 % put the blame on Ukraine and the West.
I mean, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest that there is some portion, even a sizable portion, of the Russian populace that supports the invasion of Ukraine. But, suppose the support is on the order of 5-10% (I have no idea what it is - more on that below). In the days before telecommunications, if you all had to go out to the town square, or heck just gossip with your neighbors, it would be easy to see that the invasion has so little support most people would just discount it entirely.
With the Internet, though, that 5-10% represents millions of people, which would make it easy to find video after video of people supporting the invasion. Worse, if you were someone on the fence about this issue (or any issue really), it's very easy to go down "the YouTube rabbit hole", see video after video of people telling you how noble the fight to "deNazify Ukraine" is, and convince yourself that all the sane people must be pro-invasion.
When it comes to present-day Russia, Putin obviously has a huge base of real support, but is it a majority? Hard to say given how opaque Russia's institutions are.