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Notes -
Ilforte's characterisation is a bit too rosy, in my opinion.
Russian politics is like professional wrestling. Whatever goes on in public, it's all kayfabe. When you get into the ring, you already know when to take a dive and how. There's a real layer underneath it, the layer of money and connections, but it has nothing to do with your track record in the ring. You go to the Old Square and talk with whoever the local equivalent of McMahon is in the presidential administration.
Navalny really, really wants to win, and this means two things:
he has been an unabashed populist (I think isolation in prison might force him to come up with a more stable program), trying to ride every wave
he rejects the whole idea of kayfabe, because according to the rules of the league, fighters from the vaguely defined liberal corner always lose.
This means the real reason one should support Navalny is to make everyone in Russian politics engage in wrestling that looks like gay sex, everything else is negotiable.
The problem with making this claim explicit is that too many Russians belong to the reverse cargo cult: they think politics work like that everywhere, and anyone who pretends otherwise is either a naive idiot or another agent of the deep state used to con naive idiots.
(I really need to stop trying to write longer replies on my phone. I already want to edit this heavily)
My personal objections to Navalny have all been adequately expressed by Lenin himself in his "advice of an onlooker" 105 years ago: don't start what you don't know how to finish. If you collect underpants, you'd better know how to make a profit. If you ask people to take to the streets, you'd better know how this ends up with you holding the nuclear briefcase and act on this knowledge. Navalny didn't.
I assume there's a missing "don't"?
Otherwise, this advice is badass, but insane.
Thanks, fixed it
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