Robert Amsterdam

I recently came across this user-generated news clip from the Current about anti-immigrant hate movements in Russia using online videos to incite and spread their distasteful messages. Along with the new article from the New York Times about the spate of online videos depicting violence against immigrants in Russia, we are reminded why the authorities often talk about new extremism laws - even though they are often misapplied to suppress ordinary dissent, there is a legitimate need to do something to provide security to the public from the ultra-nationalists.

Dmitry Medvedev just talked about this yesterday during a press conference:

The new Russian president said racism, xenophobia and extremism remained serious problems in Russian society and vowed to use law enforcement agencies and the court system to combat them.

"These threats unfortunately are not disappearing," he said.

"We face them in places where we did not expect them... If we cannot eliminate these phenomena, we must strive to reduce them radically."