Navalny’s friends knew he was willing to become a martyr if that’s what it took to stand up to Putin.
Alexei Navalny’s long struggle against President Putin began with a humorous blog and culminated in repeated demonstrations of his willingness to risk his own life. According to the Russian authorities on Friday, he has now died in prison.
Russia’s leading opposition voice has been silenced.
Other dissident figures went into exile or died in mysterious circumstances over the past decade, leaving Navalny as the last national figure with a dedicated following.
Though he had been arrested many times before, Navalny’s defining moment in the eyes of many Russians came after the attempt to assassinate him with Novichok. He recuperated in the sanctuary of a German hospital but chose to defy Putin and return to Russia in January 2021, knowing full well he would end up in prison.
Don’t idolize people, especially don’t idolize politicians. He died for a generally pro-social cause but that is the extent of the take-away here
- Fuck Putin to death
- Explain to me why it’s good to idolize a public figure, you cowards
Navalny was xenophobic. You can’t replace far-right with another far-right, it will still be worse.
The only option is to pick someone who is inclusive of multiculturalism and LGBT people.
The only option is to pick someone who is inclusive of multiculturalism and LGBT people.
There is small problems with “inclusive of multiculturalism” part: namely Bashkirs, Buryats, Yakuts, Udmurts and others. Russia IS multicultural.
You can’t replace far-right with another far-right, it will still be worse.
24 years of “not getting worse”. Oligarch’s yachts are not getting worse for sure, but what about citizens?
American “left” says they will ask for partial debt relief maybe eventually, while Russian right demands increase funding of education, healthcare, social welfare and scientific research, tenfolding wages of teachres, doctors, feldshers, nurses, peofessors and public transit drivers. Along with providing students food, housing, decent stipend, decent pension for retired and more because if state can afford to pay endless hoard of polizai it sure can pay all mentioned before. And always-present anti-corruption stance because he was investigating it for last 10 years.
His presidency campaign also had redusing presidency term back to 4 years, full transition from conscript army to contract army, declassifying everything FSB did and lustrations, reducing president’s power, increasing parlament power, nationalization of assets of oligarchs that participated in loan auction or corruption.
Finally stopping paying Kadirov, returning army from Syria and other far-right isolatioanism stuff.
He also believed Crimea should be Russian, so I’m not happy he is dead but I’m sure as hell happy that he is not Putin’s replacement.
This is a mischaracterization of his statements and lacks nuance.
You can read more here: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/world/europe/navalnys-comments-on-crimea-ignite-russian-twittersphere.html
“I think that despite the fact that the Crimea was seized with outrageous violations of all international norms, nevertheless, the realities are such that Crimea is now part of the Russian Federation,”
Seems pretty clear.
Crimea is and will be always Ukraine.
The sacrifice was in vain, we know Putin is a shithead.
Which “we” are you talking about? Because a lot of Russians vote for him (and I don’t mean just the fake votes, but the real ones as well).
And did he change their opinion?
The Russian ballot box is a paper shredder that increments “Putin” by 1.
Votes don’t matter in Russia
They may not matter in a sense that you can’t elect anybody but Putin.
But they do matter in a sense of showing the incumbent they aren’t stable.
After successful re-election of incumbent, they fall into a sense of euphoria. This leads to creation of some absolutely horrific and unjust laws.
However, when the re-election is deemed unsuccessful (say 55% voted for “the right candidate”, but the second place got scary high 30-35%), they become timid.
That’s how informational autocracies work. And that’s why elections there absolutely do matter, as they directly affect quality of life. It’s the safest and loudest way of showing the government your middle finger.
They matter. You vote Putin or you vote Putin but the government notes your impropriety. Voting is a purity test.
Did he really need to sacrifice himself for that?
Is there seriously anyone who was in denial until they learned about Navalny?
Villaviciencio here in Ecuador also sacrificed himself. Yes, people do that…
Yes, but this is Navalny in Russia.
Sadly, yes. Russian State Media is the only source of information for a lot of “normal” Russians. Although that sadly also means that his sacrifice most likely won’t have a large impact on the Russian political landscape.
Then it’s worse than I thought.
Kind of strange that a culture with so many pariahs seems to also have a stranglehold on any dissent.
I guess China is the same way, so I shouldn’t be surprised.
Why the fuck are we celebrating this fascist?
If I may quote https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/16/obit-navalny-putins-archenemy-and-anti-corruption-champion
Beginning in the late 2000s, Navalny used racial slurs when describing ethnic Georgians, called for the deportation of Muslim migrant workers and delivered speeches at Russian Marches, annual rallies of far-right nationalists, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
“It was a long time ago,” Alexander Verkhovsky, head of the Moscow-based Sova hate crimes monitor, told Al Jazeera in 2021, describing Navalny as “a different man now”.
https://www.rightsinrussia.org/aleksandr-verkhovsky/ doesn’t seem like a pro-fascist (although I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody made such a story up, now that he has defended Navalny), so I’m supposing his opinion in this is good enough. Calling Navalny a fascist at this point seems like a tankie talking point specifically designed to denounce the message he was putting out in his last years.
“We become just by performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions, brave by performing brave actions.” – Aristotle
So your argument is that he was fascist but not anymore?
I love how everyone is dogpilling without giving any arguments.
Fuck off russian sock puppet.
The fuck makes you think i’m supporting russia?
Should I feel bad for Wagner because they opposed Putin?
Your name suits you, brain dead cultist
I hope you’re dead.
Nah, sorry man. You must be severely mentally challenged to respond to a months old comment that no longer exists. Hope you get well soon fascist.
Him being the opposition was apparently good enough. Never mind that he was a Russian nationalist that definitely supports the annexation of Ukraine and the ethnic cleansing of Caucasians. A real meat old boss, same as old boss situation.
Under what rock did you live for last 10 years? This doesn’t look like support.
Finally a sane take. The enemy of your enemy is not your friend. I hate how western media is whitewashing the likes of Kissinger and Navalny.
Everybody know that Putin is a monster, except for the Russians. They need a revolution!
They know. They just don’t care because he’s “their” monster. Nothing will change in the wake of Nelvany’s death.
This is a harsh lesson in allowing the cult of personality into a democratic election. Everyone should have learned from Hitler’s example but memories are apparently short lived. Now we have people like Netanyahu, Putin, and Trump and a world war is inevitable.
“They” do not hold any particular position. That would be because “they” hold a multitude of positions, at its extreme as many as there are people in the particular society we refer to as “they”.
And lose the drama, because:
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There are always such people.
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Putin became president in 1999 and the last arguably democratic election in Russia was in 1996.
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About Hitler - I think somebody skipped their history and doesn’t know that European states didn’t immediately cease to be colonialist just cause WWII ended and the new reality ensued. And Europeans would behave pretty hitleresque in colonies, think of French in Algeria or maybe Indochina.
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It’s spelled Navalny.
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That didn’t end well last time though
It sadly did end. Now another fucking imperialist is in charge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_empire
At its peak, their empire was roughly the same size as the British Empire, 35 million square kilometers. Slightly more than half of it was just Russia, though, of course, which makes this a bit of an orange vs apples thing. But USSR definitely had an empire-like thing going on.
But USSR definitely had an empire-like thing going on.
… important parts of which were (declared and even attempted) meritocracy, scientific and social progress, and a promise (which seemed realistic enough) for the future of the whole world.
This doesn’t have anything in common with any big state’s ideology now.
I suppose originally it was, and I do think original goals are important to consider.
Stalin brought an early end to many progressive dreams, though, and it doesn’t seem like Soviet Union ever really recovered from his regressive regime.
Man, Lenin set fire to a good chunk of his own dreams during the Civil War.
The betrayal of the SRs and Makhnovists, the butchering of Kronstadt, the subjugation of local soviets and trade unions to centralized top-down rulership, and nationalization of previously independent cooperatives all helped bring down the dreams of equality and liberty. Lenin created all of the infrastructure that Stalin then used to horrifying ends. IMO this is an inevitable outcome of vanguardism and a “dictatorship of the proletariat”, but that is a topic for another day.
Some of the things mentioned above did manage to survive post-Stalin. There was immense scientific progress in the USSR and the education was the best in the world. Homelessness wasn’t a thing. Everyone got food, though it was poor-quality and standing in line for it was universal (again, post-Stalin).
Homelessness wasn’t a thing.
Homelessness was illegal in Soviet Union. USA has plenty of problems that are objectively worse in this area, but I’m not sure if just declaring it illegal and sending vagrants to labor camps is a very good solution either.
I meant 60s and 70s.
The point is that even aggressive attitudes of Soviet leadership were constructed very differently.
Politburo really made collective decisions.
The Communist party and the ministries and local councils and all that could function in obscure, weird and undocumented ways, but they did generally follow laws and rules.
I mean … it really was an empire. Very inefficient and it eventually failed, but still.
Today’s Russia is just an entity of a lower order.
Today’s Russia is just an entity of a lower order.
Indeed it is, but in many ways it’s just a legacy (even if a deeply warped one) of the earlier. Putin was a KGB man, and repeatedly mentions how he thinks the fall of USSR was one of the greatest geopolitical tragedies.
I mean, they deposed a monarch, so that’s good.
Russians know it to, they just can’t do anything about it.
Not a care in russia. As long as there is some vodka and sausage, nobody’s moving a finger.
There are wives protests with slogan “I’m tired, return my husband”. But yeah, no big protests in Moscow. Only police closing brony convention.
As long as there is some vodka and sausage
Huh, Guess I’m Russian then.
Unfortunately I don’t think his sacrifice is gonna achieve much. I’d love to be proven wrong though.
It will teach people not to do the same thing in the future.
“Bravery” points on reddit-like forums don’t mean much in the real world.
I think a good analogy is Claus von Stauffenberg. A german army colonel who in July 1944 tried to assassinate Hitler and very nearly succeeded.
He was not a great person given his position, but did a very brave thing eventually and is now revered as somebody who at least tried.
I always questioned why he went back to Russia. I thought he could have done so much more outside of a Russian prison. Intentionally in the middle of nowhere, cut off from his supporters and fellow Russians
But he loved his country and held steadfast in his principles. He is a greater man than many. Could you trust yourself on how you would act when tested the way he was.
He seems like a true patriot in a land of nationalists
Could you trust yourself on how you would act when tested the way he was.
Absolutely. I trust that I would run away like a little bitch. Dude had balls of steel and I truly hope he managed to show the Russian population what a tyrant putin is.
I truly hope he managed to show the Russian population what a tyrant putin is.
He did. And I recoomend you to watch it. Dude investigated his own poisoning.
Absolutely, most people that think they’d take the high road and do the right thing in this situation are not being honest with themselves. As much as I’d love to believe that I would sacrifice everything to fight tiranny, I just know that when the time comes I would choose the easy way out and espace somwhere for a better life.
I thought the same, couldn’t figure out why he returned to Russia when he could do more when he was free. Still, his courage is admirable, I wouldn’t have been able to steel my nerves to do what’s right in the face of these dangers.
Going back to be locked up, abused, and die isn’t exactly “right”.
What’s better is to live another day to continue fighting.
There have been examples of the past where martyrs did change the direction of history. Maybe he hoped it would be similar and I guess we are at the find out stage.
Yesterday it was Alexei standing up to tyranny. Tomorrow, maybe some else. If we’re lucky, more and more.
Even Lenin stayed out of Russia when the government set it sights on him and waited for a more oportune time to come back. Here’s to hoping Martyrdom will change things, but Russians are very very used to things getting worse and just taking it on the chin.
Happy endings are banned in Slavic history
Be careful who you praise:
Navalny took part in the Russian March, an annual demonstration in Moscow that draws ultranationalists, including some who adopt swastika-like symbols. In 2008, Navalny, like an apparent majority of Russians, supported Russian aggression in Georgia. In 2013, he made illegal immigration from Central Asia a central theme of his campaign for mayor of Moscow. In 2014, after Russia occupied Crimea, he said that, while he opposed the invasion, he did not think that Crimea could be just “handed back” by a post-Putin Russian government.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-evolution-of-alexey-navalnys-nationalism
Better than Putin. Navalny was at least a step in the right direction, despite his many flaws.
Better in the sense that there were Nazis less crazy than Hitler? Dude supported the invasion and annexation of part of Georgia, and said Russia shouldn’t give back Crimea to Ukraine in 2014.
He apologized later, but when he was running for president he was still a bad dude.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin’s_law
What does Navalny have to do with Adolf and his Nazis?
Do you have a better Russian candidate in mind? Should we just let Putin take the reigns until a Russian Ghandi presents himself?
How is a Nazi a “step in the right direction”? There is a lot of opposition to Putin that’s worth supporting, Nazism isn’t one of them
What makes you think he was a Nazi? I really hate how watered down the word Nazi is these days. You’re being hyperbolic.
He compared the people from the region of Caucasus to cockroaches who should be shot and had skinhead and neonazi affiliations.He also supported the invasion of Georgia in 2008, comparing Georgians to rodents. He regularly attended marches of a racist which the slogan is “Russia for ethnic russians”, posted a video where he called for deportations of immigrants…
It’s not a case of exaggeration, he was anti Putin because he wanted a racist in power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qucpwhtWFjk
It’s still on his Youtube channel. He even shoots a woman in hijab in it! But all his useful idiots will ask you to ignore these dog-whistles. This is of course from back in the day when he was the co-funder of the ultranationalist party National Russian Liberation Movement, that among other things wanted South Ossetia and Abkhazia be made independent from Georgia alá Donbas.
It’s still on his Youtube channel.
No?.. How? He didn’t even create his channel until mayor campaign. This video was made years before that?
He even shoots a woman in hijab in it!
Where?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=qucpwhtWFjk
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
“Navalny released YouTube videos in which he likened Islamic militants to cockroaches, called for the deportation of immigrant workers, and vowed to defend the rights of ethnic Russians in Russia.”
This is a pretty mainstream view for a lot of countries.
Anti immigration doesn’t mean you’re a racist.
For context on militants: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamil_Basayev
I’m not sure if you’re right or wrong. We are talking about comments made over 15 years ago.
Let me put it to you this way - would you rather Putin or Navalny in charge of Russia?
He compared the people from the region of Caucasus to cockroaches who should be shot
Navalny: *talks about how terrible for Russia Kadirov’s personal army is*
Americans: He must be a racist!
Kadirov’s personal army: *Joins war in Ukraine. On Putin’s side.*
Americans: Navalny is the worst!
In the same way that Biden is preferable to Trump. Biden is far from perfect, has lukewarm political leanings, only advances soft-left policies to better his own election chances and keeps a cop as a vp.
But Trump is an actual war mongering lunatic wannabe fascist. Sometimes it’s about the lesser evil.
Yes, you could say there are plenty of people more worth supporting than these two old farts, but none of them are on the ballot are they?
It’s that situation with Russia. Putin is an actual, proven warmonger who kills his own countrymen to hold on to power. Someone who doesn’t do either of those things and respects the will of the people is a step up, regardless of their politics, because that person can be voted out.
You’re only saying that because you know what Putin is like in power, with his racist remarks and Nazi affiliations you don’t even know how worse it could have been with Navalny
A lot of people on the internet think there’s an electable Abraham Lincoln instead of what the reality is
“It was a long time ago,” Alexander Verkhovsky, head of the Moscow-based Sova hate crimes monitor, told Al Jazeera in 2021, describing Navalny as “a different man now”.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/16/obit-navalny-putins-archenemy-and-anti-corruption-champion
he did not think that Crimea could be just “handed back” by a post-Putin Russian government.
It is interesting way to rephrase his “Crimea is not a sandwich with sausage to return it back and forth”. For context in 2014 propaganda was talking about annexation as “returning” Crimea to Russia.
If Russia is like the US with trump, then there’s the active population who are supporting Putin, because even if he’s a bastard, at least he hurts the right people. Then there’s an apathetic horde, who don’t care or are too beaten down to do anything. Then there’s the group that know what’s up and wants change.
The question is if Navalny’s death meant anything. The people who care are already at a disadvantage because of the authoritarian State, the supporters aren’t going to change, and the apathetic don’t have time to care. IMO he would have been better off, alive, outside of Russia and criticizing Putin.
What you said could be true of any event, but reality is, each of these events influence apathetic people to either become supporters of the regime or anti-establishment.
At least, that’s my theory. If not, there would never have been any progress in human society, if things are as static as you theorized.
I think progress comes from young people, not apathetic people who have had changes of heart.
Apathetic parents lead to angry kids, angry kids look for answers. Some of them will find the right ones.
Apathy is not age related; it is a state of mind. You have very energetic grown ups, and very apathetic youth and visa versa.
I think the point is, that he might have been able to influence more, if he was alive, and maybe even free, outside of Russia
Hthhhhh%hhhdqhh%ud
Sergei Magnitsky already did this in 2009, but I suppose we needed a reminder.
The day we all knew was coming, sadly. The day he set foot on that plane back to Moscow from Germany, it was not a question of if but when this would happen.
Who’s not happy can go here https://neputin.org/ And maybe even here https://shtab.navalny.com/
