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the death of alexei navalny 16.2.24

Asking as a complete novice on the topic, Are these views a bit like the NF “aint no black in the Union Jack” message of the 70s / 80s?
I think such views are a lot more common in Russia then they would have been even in the darkest days of 70s UK. When I was in St. Petersburg, I was advised not to go outside on Hitler's birthday, as I was recognizably foreign.
 
That documentary where he got that guy to tell him over the phone exactly how they tried to kill him with novochok.. was quite something. Surprised it took them this long tbh.
 
Well I am sad to learn of his death at 47.
RTE news had it that he felt unwell after a walk and collapsed.
I know @Idris2000 you have jumped in there to point out his faults but he was also a better person than Putin in many many ways not least the fact he didnt murder people.

I cannot imagine anyone standing up to Putin the way he did now.

Good article from 2021 on the development of Navalny from opponent to Putin to his move towards ultra nationalism..
 
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Well I am sad to learn of his death at 47.
RTE news had it that he felt unwell after a walk and collapsed.
I know @Idris2000 you have jumped in there to point out his faults but he was also a better person than Putin in many many ways not least the fact he didnt murder people.
I don't know much about the bloke but saying he's 'a better person than Putin' feels like damning him with faint praise...
 
He just wanted to be the cunt in charge instead of Putin. Only thing that was "better" about him was his ballsy/suicidal approach to their fight. Putin is literally afraid of dirt these days.
 
Well I am sad to learn of his death at 47.
RTE news had it that he felt unwell after a walk and collapsed.
I know @Idris2000 you have jumped in there to point out his faults but he was also a better person than Putin in many many ways not least the fact he didnt murder people.

I cannot imagine anyone standing up to Putin the way he did now.

Good article from 2021 on the development of Navalny from opponent to Putin to his move towards ultra nationalism..

I think its often easy to forget that despite him making a video of him murdering a Muslim and advocating murdering Muslims that he actually didn't in real life murder Muslims.
 
Not one of the good guys, though he significantly changed his position in later years, according to that 2021 profile posted upthread

In 2015, the Polish journalist and former dissident Adam Michnik and Navalny recorded a series of conversations that Michnik compiled into a book. “My idea is that you have to communicate with nationalists and educate them,” Navalny told Michnik. “Many Russian nationalists have no clear ideology. What they have is a sense of general injustice to which they respond with aggression against people with a different skin color or eyes of a different shape. I think it’s extremely important to explain to them that beating up migrants is not the solution to the problem of illegal immigration; the solution is a return to competitive elections that would allow us to get rid of the thieves and crooks who are getting rich off of illegal immigration.”

Navalny’s political views have developed in an unusually public way over the past decade. He has never apologized for his earliest xenophobic videos or his decision to attend the Russian March. At the same time, he has adopted increasingly left-leaning economic positions and has come out in support of the right to same-sex marriage. This strategy of adopting new positions—without ever explicitly denouncing old ones—is probably the reason the suspicion of ethno-nationalism continues to shadow Navalny.


 
RTE news had it that he felt unwell after a walk and collapsed.

I thought it as weird how he was having a "walk" two days after he was sentenced to 15 days in a punishment cell, but he was apparently allowed outside at the coldest time of day

Apart from spending time in a frigid, cramped cell, inmates in punishment cells are also limited in their ability to exercise, spending time in a tiny walled courtyard with a roof of prison bars. In his new penal colony in the Arctic, for instance, Mr. Navalny was only allowed to go out in the mornings, while it was still dark and the temperatures were at their lowest point.

“It’s never been colder than -25°F.,” Mr. Navalny wrote in a social media post in January, describing his walks. “Even at that temperature you can walk for more than half an hour, but only if you have time to grow a new nose, ears, and fingers.”


 
Yep, one of the good guys he was not:


Angelo Giuliano is also definitely not one of the "good guys", given the antiSemitic nature of the posts he makes and his fawning apologism for tyranny.

As to the 2% claim, many of the Russians I teach seemed to prefer him to the current incumbent. I had tears in class today, which messed up the pairwork activity. She said it felt like the death of hope. I was surprised that hope had lived that long.
 
Angelo Giuliano is also definitely not one of the "good guys", given the antiSemitic nature of the posts he makes and his fawning apologism for tyranny.

As to the 2% claim, many of the Russians I teach seemed to prefer him to the current incumbent. I had tears in class today, which messed up the pairwork activity. She said it felt like the death of hope. I was surprised that hope had lived that long.
Well, this is embarassing. I had only tried to put in the video of N's anti-Chechen advert. I had not of this Angelo Giuliano before this: I defer to your greater knowledge of far-right apologists for tyranny and anti-semitism.

Just looking at RTE's coverage of Navalny's death this evening, it's still the same vibe as there was with Khodorkovsky - somewhere out there is the plausible westernising liberal, or liberal westerniser, who is going to save Russia from itself. I think that's delusional, and if there are Russian liberals who could delude themselves that way, so much the worse for them, though you'd have to sympathise if they feel like all hope is now dead. As for the stuff further up the thread about N moderating his views and trying to do missionary work among the Russian nationalists, to me that reads like flim-flam to keep his western admirers onside.
 
Not sure who mistakenly tripped him on some icy Arctic stairs. "Puťĺer" probably won't be crying a huge bunch of tears.

But as UA seems to be losing the key fortress of Adiivka near Donetzk and the Munich security conference on where Navalny's wife and UA President Zelenskyi are gracing the red carpet, he was also possibly today worth more dead than alive to Western interests.
 
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