28 March 2024, Thursday, 13:58
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Beware Children Playing

35
Beware Children Playing
Iryna Khalip

The youth did not fail at the "lesson with Lukashenka".

If I were Aliaksandr Lukashenka, I would have stayed at home and kept my head down. I would have minimized contacts and left only Kachanava for promptings of the spirit and sight for sore eyes. And I would have never, under any circumstances, been involved in talks with the children. Any, even the most trustworthy schoolchild, carefully selected by the KGB and security service, will look like Spinoza and Schopenhauer in one person against Lukashenka's background - even in the way one speaks, not to mention the way of thinking, emphasizing the obscurantism of the person who holds a "demo lesson".

Just wonder: do they really put those children together who study with flying colors and are really obedient? No. The selection was based on the principle like that of the USSR for travelling abroad: no repressed parents, no political activism in the family up to the seventh tribe, no relatives abroad or in the occupied territories. They searched dossiers and personal files, studied social networking sites, probably questioned personnel at their parents' workplaces, and, after filtering the candidates through all the available special services and approvals, demanded questions and remarks submitted in advance for approval.

Nevertheless, the young people did not fail. Even the BRYU members, approved by the special services and long-time participants of all kinds of state events, proved that even with all the pressure of propaganda and regular brainwashing critical thinking cannot be forced out, even with a dust. A Vitsebsk cadet spoke Belarusian and recalled his relatives who were repressed under Stalin; a freshman at the Biology Department explained that no one took state propaganda seriously after the events of 2020; another freshman wrote the word "help!" on a piece of paper.

There's no other way. We witnessed a generation which grew up under Lukashenka. They were young people who did not know freedom. Unlike those who grew up behind the Iron Curtain in the USSR, they grew up in a world united by a worldwide network. The volume of information which modern Belarusian children receive from the gadgets hated by ideologists is broader and more diverse than the 24/7 propaganda.

State propaganda loses because it is always clumsy, mediocre, and based on silly clichés that are safely imitated by children. I'm not sure that all the "I'll show you where the attack on Belarus was coming from" memes were created by adults. It feels like teenagers played their part in it. YouTube and Tiktok, Telegram and Instagram offer numerous content for every taste that propagandists had better quit their jobs and go to the country house. Their intended recipients will not notice the absence of their work anyway.

The diversity of information cannot but lead to evolving critical thinking. It is impossible to sort the wheat from the chaff, fakes from the truth, the memes from major things without constant mental activity. Neither military instructors, nor ideologists, nor the BRYU are able to control this process, let alone govern it. So it is absolutely useless to convince the children from the podium about the attack on Belarus. They will not believe it anyway.

Everybody knows it anyway. Both children and adults know it. This "demo lesson" brought nothing new to us, whatever one may call it. The only thing that became absolutely clear: Lukashenka does not love children. A person who loves children will never make them sit and listen for four hours to his reasoning about Beria as the father of Belarusian statehood. In this case, it does not matter whether he speaks about Beria, or the direction that posed a threat to Belarus. The very fact matters: he speaks for four hours. On September 1, the first day at school, when children come back from vacation and want to play catch in the yard and share stories. They want to socialize, share secrets, show new pictures. Meanwhile, all Belarusian schoolchildren and even first-year students are sent to listen to a lecture about Beria. Some of them sit in the auditorium, others watch it on screens. Together with the teachers.

By the way, four lessons could have been held in that time. Dear teachers, it was wrong of you to rig the elections. The customer's gratitude is nothing.

Iryna Khalip, especially for Charter97.org

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