
The eXile gets a visit from the authorities
Mark Ames, founding editor of the eXile, was recently visited by Russian Federal Service for Mass Media, Telecommunications and the Protection of Cultural Heritage for an "unplanned audit."
In all my years I'd never heard of an "unplanned audit" of editorial content. The insiders whom I contacted all said, "It's ... strange." That's how my Russian lawyer reacted, it's how an American official reacted, and it's even how the head of the Glasnost Defense Fund reacted
[...]
In my opinion, this is the real reason they're moving to shut us down. What offends the Russian elite more than anything about the Exile is its aggressive refusal to play by the "serious" rules. The authorities can deal with serious print-media criticism of the Kremlin—so long as that media outlet makes everyone look serious and respectable, with serious dull language quoting serious dull think-tank analysts. These days, Russia is all about getting serious and respectable. And it's also in the grips of a national persecution mania, in which grievances and complexes about the West have exploded into a kind of mass grievance obsession, a frenzied Easter egg hunt for evidence of Western disrespect or unfairness in order to feed this grievance jones. The fact that our paper has also exerted a lot of bile in savaging the West's Russophobe industry is irrelevant to them, even annoying; all they care about is sifting for evidence of humiliating Russia.
- bartley's blog
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see also
Eleven Years of Threats: The eXile's Incredible Journey
I haven't kept up with the
I haven't kept up with the eXile in some time, and honestly I'm surprised that they've managed to stay alive, both figuratively and literally, for this long.
They're back, they're pissed off
And they're in Panama.