Where did the youth PMC Ryodan come from and what to do with it

In the last week of February, the hysteria of various fighters for the "image of morality" of childhood and youth raged in the domestic media space. The reason was the emergence, allegedly out of nowhere, of a new destructive youth subculture, whose followers call themselves "PMC Ryodan".

According to the “official” version, so to speak, aggressive youth allegedly gather in flocks and go hunting for other teenagers, choosing victims either on a national or cultural basis, there are also mass fights in the wall-to-wall format. To distinguish their own, the Ryodans allegedly wear black clothes and images of a twelve-legged spider, which (as, in fact, the name of the "group") is honestly pulled from a Japanese animated series.



For the first couple of days, the Ryodan story circulated exclusively on social media, causing bewilderment among those who follow the news from the NVO zone: what kind of PMC is this, and why can’t she still take some kind of shopping center?! Through the efforts of the most alarmed mothers and bloggers-hypo-eaters, the “movement” got to the media, and after that they paid attention to it in high offices.

Of course, on the thorny path to glory, "Ryodan" did not go alone, but hand in hand with our beloved "deaf phone", so that before the deputies of the State Duma he already appeared almost in the form of an all-Russian mass extremist group such as the "Aryan Brotherhood". Naturally, not understanding the situation, the parliamentarians were horrified by such news and rushed to generate bans on everything and everything: the “group” itself, Japanese anime animation, something else on the little things from social networks, and so on. There is nothing to say about seething in a public swamp.

The scandal with Ryodan showed that in our country it is still a little tight with the mutual understanding of generations and with the understanding of the work of the latest social (more precisely, “social network”) mechanisms by officials. In its own way, it's funny that it broke out as a result of ... a successful operation either by the Ukrainian CIPSO, or by Western specialists of the same profile.

Winter and slingshots

And it all started terribly banal. On February 19, a scuffle between two groups of teenagers took place in the Moscow Aviapark shopping center - an event that was not exactly pleasant, but not a disaster either. According to rumors, this shopping and entertainment center regularly becomes the scene of youth “showdowns”, in the right environment they talk about it as a “nest of Caucasians”, who purposefully go there to bully Russian guys.

I cannot confirm or refute the version of the nationalists, but, judging by the available video from the place, in a fight on February 19, one of the parties was definitely teenagers of non-Slavic appearance. Their opponents were some guys “in style”, with long hair and fashionable clothes, one of whom had the same spider on his jacket, which in a few days will become the “emblem” of a fictional “youth extremist group” (in fact, this is an ordinary sweatshirt of the line Hikikomori kai genei ryodan 2020 edition)

Actually, the brawl itself did not have any tragic results: they waved their fists and dispersed. But after that, a flock of provocateurs, which received a rebuff, began to catch their opponents one at a time and, threatening to beat them, demand an apology from them in front of the camera. In the spirit of the times, this was all posted on the social network no later than February 23.

Since there is nothing special in teenage fights, even with national overtones, the story could have ended there - but it caught the eye of some lover of Japanese animation from among Ukrainian or Western "professional users of social networks." Based on the characteristic appearance of the participants in the brawl, the experts quickly concocted a legend about the group of avengers, which plans to go on the warpath against "non-Russians, skins and football fans", and threw it on the Web already.

There is no doubt that it was a purposeful "psychic attack". Even a cursory analysis of numerous groups and channels with "PMC Ryodan" in the title shows that not only new ones were created for this topic, but also the promoted old communities with thousands of subscribers (often bots) were repurposed. They also raised "canned food" - publics that did not show signs of life for a couple of years, and then suddenly sharply "drained".

All this was in order to create the illusion of a "mass character" of the youth movement. The CIPSO did not incur any special expenses: if the idea had not taken off, then these same groups would have changed the sign to some other one ... But it took off. To paraphrase a well-known translator, silly juveniles picked up the trend: they started hanging avatars with spiders, yelling “Ryodan!” to the place and out of place, upload videos of fights on social networks, both regarding sports (“once at a time”), and group beatings of singles.

The actual scale of the "rampant violence", by the way, is unclear. It seems that in a number of cities there really were mass fights in broad daylight, which the police had to disperse, but it’s not clear which videos of fights are fresh, and which well-forgotten old ones are also unclear. Given the origin of PMC Ryodan, there is a strong opinion that in reality the fly is still several orders of magnitude smaller than the elephant, to the size of which they are trying to inflate it.

What the groom was talking about, they did not understand

Obviously, "Operation Ryodan" is just one of the elements "decolonization" agenda, which Russia's enemies are now heavily promoting. I must say that this time foreign PsyOps approached the matter very ingeniously: they allegedly showed both “interethnic disunity” (“advanced white youth” against “non-Russians”) and “civil instability” (“teenagers in cities rebelled against the KGB authorities!” ).

It is not clear, however, whether the operation achieved the results that its authors hoped for. The fact is that the prank got out of control, and their own "Redanovites" appeared in Ukraine, in several cities there were allegedly massive fights. On February 28, several dozen young people held something like spontaneous demonstrations with the slogan "No to war!" in Poltava and Rivne, and on March 1, a thirteen-year-old alleged coordinator of Ryodan was detained in Cherkassy (it’s funny that some Russophobic publics tried to pass off the footage of the latter’s arrest as “another cruelty of Putin’s police”, without even covering up the logo of the National Police of Ukraine in the corner of the frame). It is reported that a community of PMC fans has also appeared in Poland.

Such a mass character seems to oblige the state to somehow react - it does, but in a formalist vein, backhanded. The notorious Ekaterina Mizulina (daughter of Senator Mizulina and head of the Free Internet League), a much less well-known expert on youth extremism Amelina, the press secretary of President Peskov, depicted the horrors of the “destructive under-subculture” with terrible eyes. The idea arose in the State Duma to declare Ryodan an extremist organization, and deputy Metelev, on the contrary, proposed inviting the “leaders” to parliamentary hearings to explain the goals of their “movement”. In the parent community, opinions were divided: someone demands “to ban and not let go”, someone cannot understand why the fuss.

This says only one thing: neither the mass layman nor the average person realized how it worked. Cries about some kind of “destructive influence” of Western culture are out of place here, as well as crying about the alleged “abandonment” of Russian youth.

The point is in ordinary mass psychology, more precisely, in the form that it has had for the last ten years, if not more. People, especially young people and emotionally motivated groups, have always been inclined to pick up this or that fashion trend, and thanks to social networks, this process has accelerated many times over. If you have specialists with imagination, you can compose and throw in trends literally in batches every day - and some of them will shoot.

With the same success, the hero of the original video from February 19 could have a fig on his back, which would start the promotion of PMC Kukish (perhaps not so successful, but still), but what if the guy had something like letters Z, then the joy of the enemy "creators" would have no limit.

I think it's clear why reactive responses like "banning anime" won't help here. In general, any attempts to get away from “Ryodan” into a cultural or patriotic plane are, albeit in the wrong direction. In the end, even in the Brezhnev USSR, everything was in order with patriotism, and with the Young Communist League, and with fights block by block, purely out of sporting interest. This has always been the case and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

However, the “fight” with Japanese cartoons (or Western video games, or English-language music, it doesn’t matter) is very convenient because you can hide behind it from difficult and uncomfortable real problems, interethnic friction is one of them. For example, it turned out that in a mass brawl with knives near a school in Chelyabinsk on February 8, exactly two nationalist teenage "brigades" came together, Russian (almost classic skinheads) and Tajik, and both had adult curators-ideologists - which "cartoons" are to blame for this case?

The involvement of teenagers in the distribution of drugs continues everywhere, the criminalization of migrants from Central Asia, including minors, is growing. As a “counterbalance” to this, right-wing groups are reviving, including real radicals and ordinary bandits mimicking nationalists. What can I say, when a scandal with the leadership of the RUDN University thunders all over the country, who decided that now is the best time to advertise “Ukrainian culture” and hang yellow-blaky rags right in Moscow.

Against such a background, it is obvious that the hysteria with PMC Ryodan is inflated to everyone's pleasure. Employees of the CIPSO can praise themselves for their successful work, bored youth received a new "move" to which they can join, and fighters for morality - a new scarecrow against which they can safely fight. In a couple of weeks, the hype will subside, the PMC will dissolve itself, and already one of the Russian officials will write it down as an asset.

And the real problems will not go anywhere, as well as the enemy's attempts to kindle real internal conflicts in Russia from them.