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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33770 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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We have a fair number of Russians and Russophiles in here, so I thought I’d ask for opinions about Alexei Navalny.

He’s the subject of a documentary (one that could win an Oscar next month: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navalny_(film)) which I watched recently, and I followed it up with a video mentioned near the end of the doc that his team made about Putin’s lucrative circle of corruption. As a skeptic, I know not to believe everything I see, hear, and read, but I was wondering if there is a deeper counter-argument to Navalny’s narrative and positions than, “He’s a tool of western governments/the CIA to besmirch Putin and Russia.”

In the documentary about Navalny (on HBOMax), he’s depicted as a jovial but committed critic of Putin, and one who has so annoyed the Russian leader, that Putin won’t even deign to mention Navalny’s name on TV, but refers to him only in the form of “that person.” Navalny is questioned briefly about his past appearances with questionable nationalist/racist political movements and he’s unapologetic, explaining that he’s trying to build a coalition that can challenge the establishment and can’t afford the luxury of turning anyone away (which is similar to how some supporters of Trump’s 2016 campaign explained his flirtations with Alex Jones and some less savory radio personalities). I don’t put much stock in official Russian accusations that its enemies are racists or Nazis, anyway, as I see those as arguments made in bad faith with the sole intention of eroding opposition enthusiasm and not as issues that Putin’s racially diverse and sensitive supporters actually care about. Its arguments-as-soldiers on top of pot-calling-kettle.

The documentary then depicts the aftermath of Navalny’s poisoning with a nerve agent, which hits him while in-flight across Russia, the fatal consequences of which are only averted by an emergency landing and, after some political jostling, his eventual release from a Russian hospital to seek care in Europe. While in recovery, Navalny teams up with a Bulgarian hacker to reveal the identities of the assassins, and they even trick one into discussing the details of the plot over the phone. It’s a bombshell scene, if it can be believed. (The filmmakers contend that the scientist who was tricked by Navalny’s impersonation of a post-mission auditor disappeared shortly after their conversation was made public.)

When Navalny returns to Russia, he is detained at the airport, and has been in prison ever since. But a couple of days after his arrest, his team drops a two-hour YouTube video titled “Putin's palace. The story of the world's biggest bribe” (https://youtube.com/watch?v=T_tFSWZXKN0&authuser=2), which details the formation of Putin's network of graft and embezzlement and how it has poured billions in state funds into the construction of a lavish secluded palace, in addition to providing jobs and housing for Putin’s mistresses and their families. Again, maybe it’s all false, but it’s densely reported and has a sheen of credibility.

So am I a fool falling for wholly concocted neoliberal propaganda besmirching the world’s only remaining champion of traditional values? What’s the direct counterargument to Navalny’s claims about Putin’s corruption or attempt to assassinate a pesky political opponent? I’m certain that Navalny is flawed, as are we all, and I am loath to trust any politician. But I like Navalny – he comes off as a “happy warrior” with a worthy cause – and he seems honest. Without resorting to ad hominem non sequiturs, tell me why I shouldn’t take him seriously? Even if he is a Nazi, is he wrong about Putin?

So am I a fool falling for wholly concocted neoliberal propaganda besmirching the world’s only remaining champion of traditional values?

Putin and his cronies are grossly corrupt but can still be in favor of traditional values. It's not mutually exclusive. There's no such thing as a perfect, flawless leader. Lee Kwan Yew cratered his country's fertility for instance, even while he did economic development very well.

By and large, Putin did a good job in mitigating and correcting the horrendous, catastrophic damage inflicted by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. If you look at Russia's industrial output in the 1990s, you'd assume they'd suffered a small-scale nuclear exchange. Yeltsin made Jan 6th look like a tempest in a teacup, directly shelling the Russian equivalent of the White House with tanks and killing 147 people! He's like the inversion of the leftist nightmare version of Trump who directly cratered the country's economy, reduced the standard of living by half, launched a military coup and won extremely dodgy 'elections' with US assistance. How could we possibly delegitimize liberal democracy in Russia any more than we already have?

I'm not really a Russophile so much as a 'not-my-problem' foreign policy proponent. We should not interfere in matters that don't affect us. Benign neglect. Supporting a cartoonishly villainous leader in Yeltsin was a bad decision. It has not won us friends in Russia, the one country that can destroy the West in an afternoon. We should not have a policy on Ukraine or the Caucasus or whether Russia is a democracy or not. Not our problem. If Russia invades Ukraine it doesn't affect us in any way. The only valuable things there are farmland (which we have plenty of), gas pipelines to Russia and Soviet-era industry. If they take Ukraine or Georgia, so what? NATO supposedly has large and strong militaries and nuclear weapons, we can defend ourselves just fine regardless of whether Russia gets the T-80 production line in Ukraine back or not. If they drive south into the Middle East, then we should fight since the oil is important and we can't risk a monopoly. But they're very unlikely to do that.

We should not interfere in the internal problems of other countries, especially powerful or important ones. Russia is very powerful and important, picking fights over trivialities like LGBT, democracy, corruption or Ukraine is unwise. We've spent around $100 billion on aid to Ukraine, massively raised prices via the energy boycott and made Russia angry with us over the conflict. They can cause all kinds of problems. More military power is tied down in Europe as opposed to where it's needed in Asia. Reserves of munitions are depleted and we have wedded Russia and China together against us. Our policy choice has been a disaster.

Our interference in other countries caused the problem. Putin wanted to be our friend, he cooperated in the early stages of the war on terror. It was only that we kept messing with him (NATO expansion aspiring towards including Georgia and Ukraine, bombing Libya and voiding Russian gas contracts there, trying to overthrow his ally in Syria). Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. If Russian resources sustain China for a long war or open up a second front in Europe, we have only ourselves to blame. It's ridiculous and infantile to base our policy on the fundamental belief of 'we can invade countries for made-up reasons but nobody else can'. The West may be somewhat stronger than Russia or China but they can still inflict costs on us. We should leave them alone unless they pose a serious threat to our interests.

Putin and his cronies are grossly corrupt but can still be in favor of traditional values.

Putin is per his own words a Soviet and Bolshevik, Accordingly I think it's safe to assume he only supports "traditional values" in so far as doing so furthers the Bolshevik cause.

??? Since when has Putin endorsed Bolshevism?

Anyone who doesn't regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart, Anyone who wants it restored has no brains.

Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself.

People in Russia say that those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain. We do not regret this, we simply state the fact and know that we need to look ahead, not backwards. We will not allow the past to drag us down and stop us from moving ahead. We understand where we should move. But we must act based on a clear understanding of what happened.

This is the closest he gets to endorsing the Soviet Union, let alone Bolshevism. He's clearly not one, he regrets the collapse of the Soviet Union seeing as it led to a decade of complete disaster. I reckon your average leftist (or perhaps ilforte) would have a breakdown upon hearing that Putin was a Bolshevik or a Soviet. He's a grossly corrupt economic liberal, a Russian nationalist. What does any of that have to do with Bolshevism?

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday compared modern Western values to Bolshevik dogmatism during his speech at the Valdai club forum and called for “rational conservatism.” The president recalled that the Bolsheviks showed an “absolute intolerance” to any opinion other than his own, they tried to destroy the values that were formed several centuries ago. In this sense, he stressed that “looking at what is happening in various Western countries” now, we see the practices that Russia left in the distant past.

I swear some American coverage of Putin and Russia generally is at least 30 obsolete. Times have changed!

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