Communicative aggression in political discourse need not be perceived as just a threat to integrity and democratic quality of public discussions. In their paper, ‘Constructive Aggression? Multiple Roles of Aggressive Content in Political Discourse on Russian YouTube’, Svetlana Bodrunova, Anna Litvinenko, Ivan Blekanov, and Dmitry Nepiyushchikh argue that, in restrictive political regimes, communicative aggression may play constructive roles in both discussion dynamics and empowerment of political groups. They analyze YouTube comments on the 2019 Moscow protests to show multiple roles of obscene language and politically motivated hate speech in a restrictive political setting. The paper is a part of the special issue of Media and Communication, "Dark Participation in Online Communication: The World of the Wicked Web", edited by Thorsten Quandt. It is available here as an open access publication.