Followers as I define them have little or no power, authority, or influence. This in contrast to leaders who have visibly more power, authority and, or, influence.
This definition of “follower” has several advantages, one of which is to make apparent that while people with no power, authority, or influence usually follow their leaders, they do not always follow their leaders. Sometimes followers defy their leaders, refusing to go along with what they want and intend. It’s why followers matter. They matter because leaders cannot count on them, always, automatically, to follow.
Examples of what I mean: The first is of followers who are following their leader. The second is of followers who are not following their leader – they are refusing to go along.
Follower Fodder
I use the term “follower fodder” quite literally – for these followers are cannon fodder. They are Putin’s soldiers, men who by all accounts are being used by the Russian military as “storm troops.” As targets deliberately intended to draw fire to identify where the enemy, Ukrainian soldiers, is located. In other words, on the orders of their superiors these troops are throwing themselves deliberately and directly into harm’s way.
Given Russia lacks the hardware necessary to guarantee a victory over Ukraine, Putin is relying on overwhelming manpower to accomplish his war aims. Most of Russia’s conscripts are inexperienced, poorly trained, and ill equipped. Many are former convicts, sprung from prisons and recruited from penal colonies. It is their numbers, though, their sheer numbers, that tell the story. Russia has already deployed about 320,000 soldiers in Ukraine. Moreover, an additional 150,000 men are preparing to enter battle, and there are another half million waiting, ready if necessary to join the offensive. Already some 200,000 Russians have been killed or wounded in the war – a number likely to escalate exponentially.
Do soldiers such as these – followers such as these – have a choice? A choice other than to do what they are told to do? Other than to obey orders given by their superiors?
This post is not intended to address questions like these. It is intended only to point out that some followers follow to the death. Including their own.
Follower Power
Other followers refuse to follow. To be clear: I am not for a second equating the well over one hundred thousand Israelis who just took to the streets to protest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to revamp the Israeli judiciary with Russian soldiers. The overarching context is entirely different, as are the specific situations within which these two sets of followers find themselves. The former, Russian soldiers, are by no stretch of the imagination free agents. The latter, Israelis in opposition to the current government, are.
Still, the mass opposition rally in Israel earlier this week was composed of those who can broadly be described as ordinary people. They had been organized by a coalition of civil society groups, and heartened by prominent individuals at home and abroad who have spoken out forcefully against what the government was intending to do to the courts. Finally, Israel is still a democracy, so it still matters that public opinion is clearly against Netanyahu and his allies in parliament.
Given the extreme differences between Putin’s Russia and Netanyahu’s Israel, why even discuss Putin’s pliable, pitiable soldiers and Netanyahu’s resistant, recalcitrant protesters in a single post? Because it is precisely these contextual or situational differences that remind us of the similarities.
- History always matters.
- Ideology always matters.
- Technology always matters.
- Culture always matters.
- Education always matters.
- Organization always matters.
- Socialization always matters.
- Connection always matters.
The history of the Holocaust is stamped onto the fabric of Israeli society. Many Jews – not only in Israel but the world over – equate the famous phrase “Never Again” with never again allowing anyone anywhere to push them around. Ergo, they are quick to protest, strongly and unremittingly, against an idea, an individual, or an institution they believe is wrong.
Russians have no analogous history. In this sense, they are the opposite of Israelis. In their DNA is obedience to authority – whether in Tsarist Russia, Stalin’s Soviet Union or, now, Putin’s Russia. Russians have no significant experience with democracy, no relevant ideology, and no political culture to encourage anyone anywhere in the country to stand up and speak out. Moreover those that dare to do so – Alexei Navalny is the most famous and certainly among the most tragic examples – are severely punished. This explains the obvious: soldiers as follower fodder. It also explains the less obvious: why while many Russians have fled their country in the last year, the overwhelming majority have accommodated themselves to an unjust, unnecessary war that their president started and is hellbent on continuing. Notwithstanding the copious amounts of blood already shed on what he claims is his soil.