How effective are the “Stopkham” and “Antizhlob” actions?

Natalya Tumashkova, business coach, coach:

“It all depends on the methods by which we are pointed out to wrong behavior. You know, if a child pinches another child, they sometimes say to him: “What if you do this?” – and pinch in response. But this form of communication is possible only with a child, it is impossible with adults. They need to point out that they are wrong, either in an adult correct way, or in a playful, but not offensive way: an insult will only increase resistance.

I have an ambivalent attitude towards, say, “Stopham” *: on the one hand, yes, I want to stop boors, and they do not always understand intelligent methods. On the other hand, aggression cannot evoke anything but aggression in response. If there were witty text on the sticker that is stuck on the windshield of drivers who violated the parking rules, if it did not have to be torn off for a long and painful time, then this could be considered a tactful and playful way to draw attention to the incorrect behavior of the driver. And so this is only a reciprocal creation of inconvenience, reciprocal rudeness, which causes nothing but anger. To be honest, I can’t even imagine how the driver will get behind the wheel after that. He will be angry as a dog.

The action “Antizhlob” from this point of view is more effective, in my opinion. This is at least a manifestation of an adult position: no harm is done to the car, nothing has to be torn off later. Of course, by touching the car, the participant of the action to some extent violates the personal space of its owner. But on the other hand, and at this moment he is not on his own territory. By and large, a person does not care who “uncovered” his registration plates; he will still have the feeling that someone dared to interfere in his life. Moreover, not everyone has unconditional reverence for the authorities. The activists usually carefully remove the cloth, disc, or cardboard hiding the number without causing any harm to the car. Of course, there is a possibility that next time the driver will try to cover the number from CCTV cameras more reliably, but if the “protection” is again correctly and accurately removed, sooner or later he will still understand that the law should be observed, and the people around him care how he behaves in society.

In general, in my opinion, the appearance of such actions is rather a positive trend: it means that public consciousness is waking up in people. We have the right to show a person that we do not agree with his behavior, that we consider it necessary to adhere to generally accepted rules. And why should only the police keep order? Ideally, everyone should follow the rules and remind a friend about them, but in a correct (!) adult form. I would like to believe that the majority of activists are just like that: adults who respect themselves and those around them, with a sense of their own dignity, and therefore without the desire to offend and humiliate. Indeed, at the heart of rudeness is always the desire to humiliate another.

Evgeny Osin, psychologist:

– Still, the wise men of the past spoke about non-resistance to evil by violence not in vain. New research (in particular, Stillwell, Baumeister & Del Priore, 2008) shows that any attempt to restore justice through violence backfires. In this case, both sides feel like victims of injustice and can enter into an ongoing cycle of violence, which is any civil war. It is not for nothing that in a developed modern state the right to violence is assigned to law enforcement agencies: this is a way to minimize the psychological harm that violence, for whatever purpose it is carried out, causes to all participants in the process. But the need for justice is a real human need, and when, for one reason or another, law enforcement fails to uphold the rule of law in society, people are tempted to assume their role without considering the psychological consequences.

In this respect, the “Stopkham” and “Antizhlob” actions are different: the participants of “Stopkham” themselves carry out violence against drivers and, perhaps, even harm their cars by sticking their stickers. The participants of Antizhlob only remove the obstacle to the fact that an illegal act is detected and punished by state bodies, without invading the sphere of private property (since the numbers do not belong to the driver, but to the state). In any country with a developed sense of justice, such an act is not only acceptable, but even a duty of a citizen. However, in Russian society, not all people agree that the laws of the state are fair, so we have special words: “squealing”, “sneaking”. Since childhood, we have considered snitching as a manifestation of meanness, not realizing that this is a sign of the psychological and social ill health of the very situation in which we live (the word “snitching” came from prison jargon in the XNUMXth century, and a hundred years ago they simply called a liar, a slanderer a snitch ). And while the vast majority of Russians do not believe in the justice of laws and do not trust state institutions, even such innocent actions as “Antizhlob” can increase, rather than reduce, the amount of evil (strife between people) in society.

What drives the participants of such actions? You do not need to be a psychologist to understand that different people can have completely different reasons behind the same act. For some, this may be a conscious desire for justice in society, in the world, and this desire cannot but be welcomed. But psychoanalysts are well aware of the defense mechanism when, instead of realizing and resolving our personal problem, our internal conflict, we throw all our efforts into solving problems in the outside world, just not to meet with ourselves. And although the result for society can be the same, what drives a person depends on the psychological consequences of his act for himself. Kant also wrote that no one but ourselves can know whether our seemingly good deeds are really a manifestation of good will, and even we ourselves can never know for sure.

Stopham is a movement that fights parking violators by placing a huge sticker on the windshield of a car standing in the wrong place, “I don’t care about anyone. I park where I want.

“Antizhlob” is a raid by the “Angry Citizens” movement, during which activists fight greedy drivers who use parking: they remove foreign objects from covered car numbers so that the violator still receives a fine for unpaid / incorrect parking.