Believe Quote by Masha Gessen

“I really can't abide conspiracy theories, because I believe that everything in the world stems from idiocy and incompetence. That's certainly true of most of what's happened in Russia under Putin.” quote by Masha Gessen — Download Open image

“I really can't abide conspiracy theories, because I believe that everything in the world stems from idiocy and incompetence. That's certainly true of most of what's happened in Russia under Putin.”

Masha Gessen

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More by Masha Gessen

There's this American pretense, which is the pretense of the journalist with the view from nowhere - which has somehow morphed into the journalist who was born this morning. So, he doesn't know that Donald Trump lied yesterday, and the day before. So, he concludes that he doesn't know whether Trump lied accidentally or on purpose. You can only pretend…

Masha Gessen

Where incompetence is prized, it is ever-present.

Masha Gessen

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Pussy Riot have certainly changed some people's assumptions about the role of political art and the relationship between the intelligentsia and the church. That's…

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Trump, like Putin, has a demonstrably thin skin and short temper when it comes to being criticized by journalists.

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You risk everything if you so much as join a legal protest demonstration in Russia. It raises the stakes.

Masha Gessen

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Donald Trump creates word salads. And that is awful to language, because we try to parse out what he's saying and try to find…

Masha Gessen

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It is the first time since 1993 that Russians have come out into the streets without an explicit permission from the government to do so. The main difference between the protests of 2011-2012 and these protests today is that they didn't have permits. These were - the people who were coming out into the streets were very young people, for…

Masha Gessen

I think Donald Trump was brought to power by Americans. They voted for him.

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In the 1990s, there was a lot of reform, and there was a lot of forward movement on a lot of fronts in Russia.…

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Poverty and scarcity are actually very good for totalitarian societies. They maintain that sense of mobilization that's essential for totalitarian societies.

Masha Gessen

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I think that Putin's strategy has been throwing a lot of money, fairly haphazardly, at a lot of projects aimed at disrupting Western relations…

Masha Gessen

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Both Trump and Putin use language primarily to communicate not facts or opinions but power: it's not what the words mean that matters but…

Masha Gessen

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Explore all 171 Masha Gessen quotes

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I understand that it's the music that keeps me alive... That's my lifeblood. And to give that up for, like, the TV, the cars, the houses - that's not the American dream. That's the booby prize, in the end. Those are the booby prizes. And if you fall for them - if, when you achieve them, you believe that this…

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