Crisis of basis: Economics and Information

From occasion to cause

The recent political events, which detonated in the end of 2018 a new criminal charge against the blogger Mehman Huseynov, who is serving his sentence, revealed serious tectonic changes in the power-society relationship. The main distinguishing feature of this phenomenon was the demonstration of the power, influence of the Internet and the loss of the informational impact of official state propaganda on people's minds.

In particular, the mass opposition rally on January 19, the large number of participants and emotionality was noticeably different from the rallies of the past 14 years. The latest large-scale anti-government rally was observed on November 26, 2005, during parliamentary elections.

The current rally, although convened by the opposition, was represented by a wide circle of people not previously involved in the political struggle. It was a demonstration of the consolidation of citizens dissatisfied with the existing state of affairs. This is evidenced by the mass calls to the police of the rally participants in order to identify the reasons that prompted people to respond to the call of the opposition.

Apparently, just the preventive conversations revealed the presence of protest moods of various motivations (absence of jobs, low wages, violation of rights, etc.) united by a single impulse of protest against the authorities. As a result, the authorities were forced to refuse the opposition to conduct further actions, fearing the development of a protest movement of increasing amplitude. Although the official statement about the opposition"s refusal to hold the next rally was linked to its inability to control the situation at a mass event within the framework of the rule of law.

The reasons for the growth of protest sentiment

The basic catalyst for the growth of discontent is undoubtedly the socio-economic crisis, which unreasonably dragged on, dispelling the population"s hopes on soon getting out of the difficult situation, which the authorities promised. The crisis, which openly started in March 2015 with the devaluation of the manat, was never overcome, because no operational measures were taken to eliminate it. Some advances began only in 2018, but are inconsistent and not complex. The decline in the living standard of almost all segments of the population continued (the average nominal wage of the population decreased from $ 542 to $ 224). Due to stagnation in the economy (GDP growth - 1.4% due to oil), along with rising prices for essential goods (growth 40% ), reducing the purchasing power of twice devalued manat (2.16 times) under conditions of high import dependence (for example, milk imports doubled, meat - by 4 times, etc.). This was the main motive for the activation of society in the struggle for their socio-economic and political rights. Just hopelessness becomes the main motivating factors of the protest mood.

Information self-organization

The Internet in Azerbaijan, with 8 million people users, and 3 million social networks, has become an information catalyst for the growth of the protest electorate. If to paraphrase the words of Vladimir Lenin, the classic of the proletarian revolution, on the role of the newspaper, one can say: "The Internet is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer." This the most massive information field, ahead of TV and the press, is the only interactive communicative tool that develops limited control of power, although it tries to do so unsuccessfully. Three important components of the information web: 1) various controlled and uncontrolled information flows that allow citizens to develop their views more or less objectively from various sources; just like any expert who is looking for the answer to the questions: who, where, when, and why would do it. The World Wide Web allows interactive information exchange and thus turn into a consolidated movement of information users, producers and distributors of information. 2) The ability to produce information products and becomes an integral part of Internet propagandists. The ability to create and broadcast, introduce mass sentiment. The ability to develop goals and directions of internal protest. 3) Finally, the developed understanding of the goal, objectives and the need for collective action, leads the participants of the information community to move on to real actions outside the virtual world - in squares and streets.

Boomerang effect

If to follow the development of the information community in Azerbaijan, we can observe how the authorities systematically destroyed the framework of ethical and legal norms, first in the print media, then in the mass media. The authorities unilaterally in the pre-Internet era removed the taboo on the destruction of their opponents by means of discrediting, black PR, insults. This practice became widespread during the development of the Internet, which provoked retaliation by its opponents, the opportunities for which were created by the World Wide Web. The taboo on insulting the president and other officials below the rank has ceased to be the norm, which caused the devaluation of their status as inviolable. This perception covers not only the population, but also the state machine itself, where the decomposition of the system of the senior-junior hierarchy begins. The devaluation of the image of the head of state automatically leads to the devaluation of the state itself, especially the authoritarian state. Recent observations show that protest sentiments are growing in parallel with the growth of information activities aimed at devaluing the image of the head of state and the state system. The state propaganda machine can do little to oppose the information community. This is because the credibility of the pro-government information is directly related to the trust in the authorities, and the credibility of the latter is melting before our eyes.

Internal component

The situation is aggravated by the internal power struggle, where, as recent trends show, the power is concentrated in the hands of the president and a weakening of the bureaucratic oligarchy. Until today, one could say about the ongoing initiative and success of this struggle by Aliyev with his old entourage, but the informational and rally components of the process showed growing resistance from the clans. If to look at the participants in the information struggle from one side or the other, you will see that the catalysts of the informational loosening of society and the image of the president are mainly clan members, and, less - those who are outside the clan. At first glance, this is a struggle between different views and cultures, but in reality, it is the focus of protest sentiment in the first plan against the First Man, and in the second plan against the oligarchic officials.

External factor

The strong system of the defense Mehman Huseynov, which was expressed in powerful political pressure by international democratic circles on the Aliyev administration, demonstrated the consolidation of external forces. Pressure on the regime came both from the West on the issue of Huseynov and others, as well as from Russia, which threw the issue of protecting the rights of Russian citizens of Armenian nationality into the information space. Such a doublet phenomenon can also be assessed as a result of the long-term uncertainty of the regime, which, first of all, too lowered the speed of the pro-European movement and actually brought it to a crisis that manifested itself in parallel with the economic crisis that began in 2015. The Russian pressure on the authorities in the conditions of its confrontation with the West can be considered as a signal for official Baku on the need to accelerate the pro-European movement. It may sound strange, but such doublet phenomena have already manifested themselves during the Georgian, Ukrainian, Armenian state crises, and led to a change of political scenery and acceleration of pro-European integration. In our case, further tightening of this process may cause further undesirable situations of pressure on the regime of an international character.

Thus

In the view of the above said it could be concluded that all the factors noted below are the main components of real political processes leading to revolutionary consequences:

the economic crisis in Azerbaijan, an information protest society, the protracted transformation of power, the internal power struggle based on the information protest community, tiredness of the expectations of external forces, and their willingness to use the protest information community.