“Don’t Rock the Boat”: Why Ukrainian Politics Has Turned into TikTok

Source: Author’s Facebook page

In the eighth year of Volodymyr Zelensky’s five-year term, something strange suddenly became clear: “new faces” are aging faster than the old system. Yesterday, the state was sold to us as a startup, and today it is a franchise with an expired license agreement.

Do you remember the meme “the end of the era of poverty”? Well, the era is over – poverty remains. “Spring will come – we will plant”? Spring has come, but all they planted was trust. “The state in a smartphone”? Yes, but the “update system” button does not work, and “remove bugs” – only in presentations.

They say you can’t compare. They say, not Viktor Yanukovych, not Viktor Orban. Of course. Because the classics of the genre at least had an ideology. Here – pure functionality: power as a service of self-preservation.

Balint Magyar, a Hungarian sociologist and former Minister of Human Resources of Hungary, described Orbán’s state as a “mafia state” – this is when institutions are not eliminated, but tamed. Here they were not just tamed – they were transferred to the regime of “quiet coexistence”. The parliament votes, the courts exist, the media speak – but decisions are made where there are not even signs. Political Airbnb: formally someone else’s apartment, but their own live there.

Ideology? What kind of ideology is that? It’s pure marketing. Today you’re a peacemaker, tomorrow a warrior, the day after tomorrow a digital happiness manager. The main thing is not what you say, but that the likes converge. Politics is like TikTok: there’s verticality, but not much content.

And the funniest thing is the attempt to preserve all this as “stability.” Like, it’s not the time to rock the boat. So we’re not in the boat anymore – we’re in an aquarium, where they show the fish pictures of the ocean and call it freedom.

Dear Ukrainians, do you remember which state you voted for in the first round on March 31, 2019? Can anyone recall at least one of Ze’s programmatic thesis, besides “spring will come – we will plant”? Did you vote for “at least some rye!”? And why can’t you hear the snoring? Why aren’t you snoring?

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