In 2020 a referendum was held to alter Russia’s constitution to give President Putin two extra terms until 2036. To disguise the power-grab, the vote was cast as a means of Slavic self-defence against the liberal invasions of the much-feared ‘Gay Europa’, whose leaders were busy peddling rainbow-branded ice-cream to children to turn them all deviant via “forbidden images” on the packaging. According to Putinista activist Yekatarina Lakhova, all right-thinking folk should “have the same negative feelings about the rainbow as I do about the swastika.” By reframing the poll as lending explicit constitutional status to “family values” and “faith in God” and officially defining marriage as “a union between a man and a woman”, Putin won conservative votes on false pretences, before reframing them as approval for his extended rule.
Sceptics produced an online video spoofing the Kremlin’s dystopian vision of what Russia would otherwise become. In 2035, all across Putin-less Russia, NATO bases have replaced play-areas and sex-change operations become compulsory; God “doesn’t exist anymore” as “He wasn’t enshrined in the constitution”. An icon of Russia’s first-ever Tsar hangs on a wall – Tsar Pikachu, Nintendo’s adorable yellow Pokémon in regal fancy-dress. “Did Pikachu really establish Russia?” asks a woman. “Who knows?” says. One Twitter fool was “really scared until I read that it was propaganda” – that is, until State propaganda helpfully told her it was propaganda.
