I would say the Putin supporters are the equivalent of our far right. I’m not sure how to “officially” describe them other than as Putin supporters, political parties in Russia work very differently than they do in the US.
Most of the Russian conspiracy theories involve the persecution of Russia by US and other Western countries - supporting Putin’s own Big Lie narrative of a Russian under assault by Western liberalism. Other conspiracy theories involve the opposition groups that are a thorn in Putin’s side. There are also lots of pedophilia panic conspiracy theories, which the government uses as a cover for the persecution of Russia’s LBGT population. I don’t believe the last one is mentioned in this article, but it’s mentioned in some of the books I’ve read on modern Russian society.
The conspiracy theories and those who believe them may be even more prevalent in the Russia than they are in the US, largely due to the lack of free press to push back against the false narratives. Apparently they’ve had the same problems with Covid denialism and other Covid and anti-vaxx conspiracy theories as the US.
The Arizona “election audit” team was searching for traces of bamboo fibers on ballots to prove that they were from China. Because all of China is basically a jungle, and the illegal ballots were shipped to remote bamboo huts to be marked by trained pandas.
They are overwhelmingly Democrats, but IMHO they aren’t liberals in the sense we currently use the word. This is why the Democrats have a bigger long term electoral problem than Republicans do. A lot of minorities who vote Democratic are playing the same game that conservative whites are playing, just for a different team. If Republicans ever stop pushing them away because of the color of their skin, Democrats are going to have a big problem.
I have a theory: “All my neighbors are rabid, chest-pounding republicans. And each of them has one or two dozen guns, at least two of which they carry around all the time. I can’t say anything slightly lacking in testosterone lest they get all up in my face. If the R candidate were to lose, they’d all come after me. I don’t want to get blamed for the wrong guy getting in office, so I have to vote R.”
I mean, it is a caricature, an exaggeration, but I do suspect that there is some of that going on to at least some extent.
If the D wins, the Rs will send in election auditors, who will pore over the ballots and identify the people who voted for the D, so my neighbors will find out.
Well, it looks like Republican state governors have identified a novel way of increasing the number of Republican voters in their states - offer to relocate people with sought-after professions (law enforcement, of course) who are resisting the vax mandates elsewhere…maybe this will offset some of the COVID deaths in their states…
I live in Texas too, and I think your fears are far overblown. If the Trumpers want to identify every Democrat from anonymous votes and make them pay, they’d have a tougher task of doing so than Bletchley Park trying to crack Enigma during WWII, especially given that millions of Texans vote Democratic.
The election audit nutcases in AZ were trying to do just this. A few more of them get into local elections positions of power and maybe it’s not blocked. The point is, they very very much want to do this right now, if they were allowed to.