Alexei Navalny had a past as an extreme Russian nationalist until at least 2017, to the point that his hate speech caused Amnesty International to suspend his status as "prisoner of conscience":
Alexei Navalny had a past as an extreme Russian nationalist until at least 2017, to the point that his hate speech caused Amnesty International to suspend his status as "prisoner of conscience":
His participation in the nationalist Russia Marches got him expelled from the liberal Yabloko party. This streak of extreme ethnic Russian nationalism against the "enemy nations within" dates from the Tsarist period and has resurged in Russia.
Navalny's elevation to near-sainthood matches the whitewashing of Ukraine's extremist elements, like the "controversial" Azov Brigade, renamed 3rd Special Assault Brigade. "Controversial" is used as a synonym for "neo-Nazi", as in the founder of the Azov Movement, Andrei Biletsky's statement that the movement would finish "the crusade against the Jewish Untermenschen in Europe". Definitely "controversial".
The flood of propaganda since the Ukraine War has turned every opponent of Putin into a democratic light, including Navalny and Azov.
Much more realistic is to view the Ukraine-Russia War like the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s: two awful regimes bashing each other. May they both lose.
Navalny was openly a Russian nationalist, yet I am not sure who elevated him into “near-sainthood.” I don’t believe he advocated for a violent uprising or a coup; instead, he sought a way to a legitimate election. His predecessor Michael Khodorkovsky wasn’t a Russian nationalist but would have met the same fate had he not been released thanks to the outside interference.
Azov Batallion and Pravi Sektor are militant, ultranationalist right wing groups that, yes, have been compared to Nazi.
And while I agree that both countries are deeply corrupt and problematic, comparing Navalny to people running Azov or Pravi is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?
Navalny's statements that certain minorities are cockroaches, his gig dressing up as a dentist to extract the illness from Russia, show he is cut from the same cloth as other extreme nationalists in Ukraine and Russia.
He may not have had the organizational ability to turn those raw public statements into a coherent political movement like Azov.
Read all the recent obituaries on Navalny to see how they've whitewashed his past.
I'm not sure of the relevance of pointing out Navalny was preceded by non-extreme people of truly democratic convictions, other than reflecting badly on him.
I understand your overall criticism of the Western media's portrayal of resisting to Putin as martyrdom, regardless of the nature of the opposition, yet such distinctions are important. Putin suppressed ANY kind of opposition that challenged his ability to stay in power, be it Boris Nemtsov, Anna Politkovskaya (who reported extensively on the conditions in Chechnya), Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Aleksandr Litvinenko, or Alexei Navalny – all of whom are now dead, except Khodorkovsky. All these opposition leaders did have a coherent framework within which they worked, and nationalist or not they did not carry out their ideas the same way as Azov.
Actually Putin regularly attended receptions put on by Echo Moscow, a liberal and dissident radio station setup by Alexei Venediktov until the station was shut down at the start of the Ukraine war in 2022:
Compare with the unwillingness of Democratic officials to appear, in any context, at any event from Fox News.
I've been alarmed by the willingness to ignore any tendencies, even the most overtly neo-Nazi ones, by Putin's opponents in Ukraine and Russia in order to satisfy the geopolitical needs of the moment. The cure may be worse than the illness (remember the enthusiasm for arming Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight Russia's invasion?).
I used to listen to Yulia Latynina's Access Code, a program of Echo Moscow until she left Russia after multiple attempts that initially scared her with violent pranks and then openly tried to assassinate her when her car was set on fire. She left Russia before the Echo Moscow was shut down, fearing for her life. In short, I don't know which receptions Putin attended as none of it matters. That does not mean that it is ok for the Western media to willfully or unwilfully ignore the corruption or extreme tendencies that take place in Ukraine - a concern of yours that I share - but again, comparing Navalny to Ukranian militant groups or Islamic Jihadis is a stretch too far.
"comparing Navalny to Ukranian militant groups or Islamic Jihadis is a stretch too far"
Possibly, although not the Russia March he participated in.
But, excluding literary talent, Navalny could compare to Solzhenitsyn. He too was idolized in the West as a democratic opponent of the Soviet system, although some of Sakharov's associates wrote about his nationalist tendencies. Sure enough, after the fall of the Soviet Union, he laid it bare with his criticism of Western freedom and his anti-Semitic diatribe "Two Hundred Years Together".
Russian nationalists of any stripe are closer to Azov than they are to Western democracy.
Yes, I think the anti-Russian, anti-Putin tendencies are so deeply ingrained in the West that most anti-Putin dissidents are glorified to some extent. "Russian nationalists of any stripe are closer to Azov than they are to Western democracy." For sure they are not anywhere close to our understanding of democracy. Azov's tactics closely resemble Bolsheviks' dominance than any kind of democratic process.
Alexei Navalny had a past as an extreme Russian nationalist until at least 2017, to the point that his hate speech caused Amnesty International to suspend his status as "prisoner of conscience":
https://www.npr.org/2021/02/24/970995185/amnesty-rescinds-prisoner-of-conscience-designation-for-russia-activist-navalny
His participation in the nationalist Russia Marches got him expelled from the liberal Yabloko party. This streak of extreme ethnic Russian nationalism against the "enemy nations within" dates from the Tsarist period and has resurged in Russia.
Navalny's elevation to near-sainthood matches the whitewashing of Ukraine's extremist elements, like the "controversial" Azov Brigade, renamed 3rd Special Assault Brigade. "Controversial" is used as a synonym for "neo-Nazi", as in the founder of the Azov Movement, Andrei Biletsky's statement that the movement would finish "the crusade against the Jewish Untermenschen in Europe". Definitely "controversial".
The flood of propaganda since the Ukraine War has turned every opponent of Putin into a democratic light, including Navalny and Azov.
Much more realistic is to view the Ukraine-Russia War like the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s: two awful regimes bashing each other. May they both lose.
Navalny was openly a Russian nationalist, yet I am not sure who elevated him into “near-sainthood.” I don’t believe he advocated for a violent uprising or a coup; instead, he sought a way to a legitimate election. His predecessor Michael Khodorkovsky wasn’t a Russian nationalist but would have met the same fate had he not been released thanks to the outside interference.
Azov Batallion and Pravi Sektor are militant, ultranationalist right wing groups that, yes, have been compared to Nazi.
And while I agree that both countries are deeply corrupt and problematic, comparing Navalny to people running Azov or Pravi is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?
Navalny's statements that certain minorities are cockroaches, his gig dressing up as a dentist to extract the illness from Russia, show he is cut from the same cloth as other extreme nationalists in Ukraine and Russia.
He may not have had the organizational ability to turn those raw public statements into a coherent political movement like Azov.
Read all the recent obituaries on Navalny to see how they've whitewashed his past.
I'm not sure of the relevance of pointing out Navalny was preceded by non-extreme people of truly democratic convictions, other than reflecting badly on him.
I understand your overall criticism of the Western media's portrayal of resisting to Putin as martyrdom, regardless of the nature of the opposition, yet such distinctions are important. Putin suppressed ANY kind of opposition that challenged his ability to stay in power, be it Boris Nemtsov, Anna Politkovskaya (who reported extensively on the conditions in Chechnya), Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Aleksandr Litvinenko, or Alexei Navalny – all of whom are now dead, except Khodorkovsky. All these opposition leaders did have a coherent framework within which they worked, and nationalist or not they did not carry out their ideas the same way as Azov.
Actually Putin regularly attended receptions put on by Echo Moscow, a liberal and dissident radio station setup by Alexei Venediktov until the station was shut down at the start of the Ukraine war in 2022:
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-putin-s-war-changed-my-moscow-a-3b5049e7-93fd-4c2a-9c9f-742635ae2099
Compare with the unwillingness of Democratic officials to appear, in any context, at any event from Fox News.
I've been alarmed by the willingness to ignore any tendencies, even the most overtly neo-Nazi ones, by Putin's opponents in Ukraine and Russia in order to satisfy the geopolitical needs of the moment. The cure may be worse than the illness (remember the enthusiasm for arming Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to fight Russia's invasion?).
I used to listen to Yulia Latynina's Access Code, a program of Echo Moscow until she left Russia after multiple attempts that initially scared her with violent pranks and then openly tried to assassinate her when her car was set on fire. She left Russia before the Echo Moscow was shut down, fearing for her life. In short, I don't know which receptions Putin attended as none of it matters. That does not mean that it is ok for the Western media to willfully or unwilfully ignore the corruption or extreme tendencies that take place in Ukraine - a concern of yours that I share - but again, comparing Navalny to Ukranian militant groups or Islamic Jihadis is a stretch too far.
"comparing Navalny to Ukranian militant groups or Islamic Jihadis is a stretch too far"
Possibly, although not the Russia March he participated in.
But, excluding literary talent, Navalny could compare to Solzhenitsyn. He too was idolized in the West as a democratic opponent of the Soviet system, although some of Sakharov's associates wrote about his nationalist tendencies. Sure enough, after the fall of the Soviet Union, he laid it bare with his criticism of Western freedom and his anti-Semitic diatribe "Two Hundred Years Together".
Russian nationalists of any stripe are closer to Azov than they are to Western democracy.
Yes, I think the anti-Russian, anti-Putin tendencies are so deeply ingrained in the West that most anti-Putin dissidents are glorified to some extent. "Russian nationalists of any stripe are closer to Azov than they are to Western democracy." For sure they are not anywhere close to our understanding of democracy. Azov's tactics closely resemble Bolsheviks' dominance than any kind of democratic process.