This whole story and the narrative of &quot;civil activist Alexandra Elbakyan&quot; sickens me to no end.<p>In reality, Alexandra is an avid supporter of Putin&#x27;s regime and a borderline fascist (in the original sense of cooperative state). Last year, when Dynasty non-profit fund (which sponsored thousands of Russian researchers, mostly in natural sciences) got expelled from Russia because of political reasons, she welcomed it because &quot;they were against Putin&quot;. Here is my translation of her words [1][2]:<p>&gt; [Dynasty] fund is one of the main supporters of &quot;Liberal mission&quot; fund. It supports, develops and advocates &quot;liberal&quot; ideas. In Russian realities it means support of Maidan [Ukrainian revolution], Bolotnaya [location of major protests in Russia in 2012], propaganda against Putin and Russian government.<p>She hates liberalism and the West in general. To add to the picture, here is what she really thinks about Sci-Hub (context: someone questioned her moral authority) [3][4]:<p>&gt; We will fight you not only with bans [5], I warn you [6]. … I understand why you are so against Sci-Hub - it&#x27;s one of the projects that Russia can be proud of and this doesn&#x27;t fit into your narrative of &quot;everything is bad in Russia&quot;. And given that I support the government - it turns into a nightmare for people like you.<p>So yeah, when I see comparisons like<p>&gt;Actions of civil disobedience like those of Aaron Swartz and Alexandra Elbakyan<p>it&#x27;s very hard not to throw up. No, it isn&#x27;t &quot;civil disobedience&quot;; she is a complete, utter opposite to civil activists like Aaron Swartz. Sci-Hub is born out of indifference to intellectual property, total invulnerability to lawsuits (Alexandra lives in Russia and Kazakhstan, which aren&#x27;t aren&#x27;t very fond of cooperating with US institutions) and poverty of Russian scientists. Yet she manages to see it as a &quot;thing Russia can be proud of&quot;.<p>It is very sad that media picks up the accustomed narrative of activist underdog and completely misses the context of her true views. Doing this, journalists both distort reality and miss a very interesting and provocative story of a statist (and probably somewhat mad) woman which found herself in a right position in a right time to get Western media attention.<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vk.com&#x2F;wall-36928352_2614" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;vk.com&#x2F;wall-36928352_2614</a><p>[2]: «Так, например, фонд Зимина являлся одним из основных спонсоров фонда «Либеральная миссия». Этот фонд поддерживает, развивает и пропагандирует «либеральную» идею. В Российских реалиях это означает поддержку Майдана, Болотной, пропаганду против Путина и Российской власти.»<p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vk.com&#x2F;wall1396880_8792?reply=8796" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;vk.com&#x2F;wall1396880_8792?reply=8796</a><p>[4]: «Если потребуется — и не только с помощью банов с вами воевать будем, имейте это ввиду. … Я понимаю, почему вы так против Sci-Hub — ведь это один из проектов, которым может гордиться Россия, и это очень не вписывается в вашу пропаганду о том, как всё в России плохо. А на фоне того, что создатель проекта поддерживает государство — это вообще оборачивается кошмаром для таких, как вы.»<p>[5]: She bans everyone who even remotely don&#x27;t support her views in VKontakte Sci-Hub group.<p>[6]: Yep, it seems like a physical threat in the context. Sorry if I wasn&#x27;t able to convey it in the translation.<p>EDIT: formatting, typos