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Alex Navalny: Would A "Russian Dissident" Do Better In The "Free World?"

By Gregory Hood

02/11/2021

Earlier: Conservatism, Inc. Cheers On Persecution Of Proud Boys And Dissident Right

Crossposted from American Renaissance.

Most Western media call Russian dissident Alexei Navalny a hero. Mr. Navalny is now in a Russian prison, and our most prestigious newspapers are cheering his anti-Putin crusade. These are official editorial statements from leading publications:

However, what’s most remarkable about the media campaign is its hypocrisy. It’s doubtful Alexei Navalny would be a hero — maybe not even a free man — in the “Free World.”

In 2007, Mr. Navalny made a video that compared people from the Caucasus to insects. To fight “infestation,” Mr. Navalny recommended not a “fly swatter,” but a handgun.

Mr. Navalny supported nationalist marches in the past (such as the 2006 “Russian March”). He has called for stopping subsidies to the North Caucasus republics. The New York Times reported that he had spoken alongside “neo-Nazis and skinheads” [Rousing Russia With a Phrase, by Ellen Barry, December 9, 2011]. He’s called immigration far more important than Russia’s conflict with Ukraine.

Even on foreign policy — the reason the West gives for opposing Russia — he’s no Euro-toady. “Crimea is ours,” he said in 2014 [Navalny Wouldn’t Return Crimea, Considers Immigration Bigger Issue Than Ukraine, by Anna Dolgov, Moscow Times, October 16, 2014]. He would hold another referendum in the territory to determine whether Crimea belongs to Ukraine or Russia, but he also said that he doesn’t see Crimea returning to Ukraine in the “foreseeable future.”

Mr. Navalny might be a more “nationalist” leader than Mr. Putin. He wants to control immigration, cut loose non-Russians from the Russian Federation, allow firearm ownership, and promote free speech. In the West, the media demonizes men who talk like that.

Whether Mr. Navalny would act like a nationalist in power is another question. What would probably happen is what happened to Ukraine after the “Maidan Revolution.” (That was a real insurrection. In 2014, Ukrainian protesters overthrew the pro-Russian government in Kiev. Democrats pretend that the tragic farce at the Capitol was an insurrection.)

Right-wing nationalists led the fight against Russia in Ukraine. One group was Right Sector, which saw the Maidan as just the first step towards a greater “European Reconquista” of the whole continent. Nationalists from around the world fought in the Azov Battalion, a once quasi-independent militia active in the fratricidal conflict in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.

The nationalist Right is not in power in Ukraine today. The president is a pro-EU former comedian. The Biden Administration is expected to give more aid to Ukraine than Barack Obama did, including lethal weapons. In response, Russia could move to annex eastern Ukraine. That could start another white civil war, which would benefit no one except our opponents. Washington and Brussels would exploit Ukrainian and pro-white patriotism to serve their own interests.

I am not convinced Russia is fundamentally different. I’ve been to the Donbass People’s Republic. A pro-Russian team took me around some of the areas that suffered during the conflict in 2015. I knew it was a propaganda tour, but what was most surprising was that Russian propaganda is essentially no different from the West’s.

Paramilitaries told me they were fighting “Nazis” and “fascists.” They described marginal elements in the Ukrainian government (such as the Azov Battalion) as sinister threats. Barack Obama’s America was something akin to the Fourth Reich. Soldiers in the field really believed they were fighting the reincarnation of the SS, not surprising given the ongoing celebration of the USSR’s victory in the Great Patriotic War. I then came home to a country where a once-serious magazine, The Atlantic, was claiming that Russia heads an “Alt-Right International” that is more effective than the Comintern.

The truth is that both countries act like Republicans and Democrats in the United States, each claiming their opponents are the “real racists.” Still, I hope Donbass and eastern Ukraine remain free of the “Western” orbit. “Our” leaders are the greatest threats whites face. The liberal world order sustained by American power might liberate Ukraine from Russian domination, but it would then make sure that the “last bastion of whiteness” would be no more.

National leaders always fight over economic and territorial interests. However, in modern democracies, leaders drape these squalid fights in moralistic and idealistic terms. Thus, we have Western media telling us Mr. Navalny is a freedom fighter — so long as he stays in Russia.

Mr. Navalny allegedly incited violence with his “infestation” video. Emmanuel Macron’s French government is putting Marine Le Pen on trial for the alleged crime of posting pictures of Islamic State atrocities. The prosecution says she incited violence. What would the Republic do to someone who posted a video comparing Muslims to cockroaches and then brandished a gun?

The United Kingdom, Germany, and France do not have free speech. In the United States, we have a legal right to free speech, but can lose basic financial services if we say the “wrong” things. In practical terms, we have a “Social Credit System” that is worse than China’s.

Mr. Navalny may face repression from the state, but he enjoys support from Big Tech. His followers can spread his message on YouTube and TikTok. Nationalist dissidents including Nick Fuentes and Patrick Casey cannot. It’s true that Russian police are arresting protesters, but I have yet to hear that Russian police shot an unarmed woman in the neck. President Putin also isn’t calling his political opponents “insurrectionists” or traitors to the state.

The Washington Post reported in 2018 that videos from Russia showed blatant ballot-stuffing. The Associated Press identified “ballot stuffing, coercion, and gimmicks” as problems in Russian elections. In America, the Associated Press tells us suspicious videos are breeding “false claims” about voter fraud. The Washington Post cheered the decline of “misinformation” after Twitter banned President Trump.

Perhaps there was no ballot fraud in the 2020 election. I think President Trump lost the election because he didn’t do enough for white working-class voters. However, anyone should have the right to question the election. I also have good reasons to distrust the AP or Washington Post’s reporting about America, let alone Russia.

Even if there wasn’t voter fraud, the American election was “rigged” in a different way. Time magazine just published a story called “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.” This was a coordinated effort to change voting laws, create alliances between powerful groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO, and secure “hundreds of millions in public and private funding.”

That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream — a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information. They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.

This isn’t much different from the way the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s United Russia stay in power. How would Time report it if Vladimir Putin said he was just “fortifying” democracy? Or if it uncovered a “well-funded right-wing cabal” that “fortified democracy” by pushing Mr. Trump across the finish line. “In a way,” Time said, “Trump was right” about a “conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes.” It’s like the Great Replacement, either a paranoid conspiracy theory or an obviously good thing, depending on who is talking about it.

Since the 2016 election, many journalists have called for more restrictions on free speech. The New York Times published a column entitled “Free Speech is Killing Us” and recently called for a “Reality Czar” appointed by the government to stop “misinformation.” With no sense of irony, the Times also praises the Chinese social media platform Clubhouse because it allowed “cross-border dialogue on contentious topics free from the country’s usual tight controls.” This, from the same paper that reported the pro-Trump social media company Parler was briefly able to return to the net because of help from a “Russian company,” warning that all Parler content could be copied and sent to Russian authorities.

Here is what the papers cheering Mr. Navalny have to say about “misinformation,” that is to say, anything with which they disagree:

I see no reason to trust Western governments or journalists over Russians or Chinese. The Russians and Chinese aren’t trying to take away my rights. I’d rather take my chances and be exposed to Russian “misinformation” than be “protected” by the Biden/Harris Regime. If Mr. Navalny thinks the West is a true alternative, he should tell the Germans what he thinks about Syrian immigrants. Angela Merkel can lock up dissidents just like Vladimir Putin.

Who determines truth? The myth of racial equality is arguably the most destructive “misinformation” ever spread. Our cities, schools, and public institutions have been ruined because our rulers keep trying to force reality to fit egalitarian fantasy. We race realists provide facts and evidence to combat this fantasy. Our opponents use repression or physical force to stop us and create increasingly fantastic theories to explain away inequality. That’s the tyranny I’m fighting, not Vladimir Putin.

Egalitarianism and the “white privilege” conspiracy theory are far more dangerous to America’s survival than whether powerless whites think there was election fraud or that “QAnon” has a secret plan to save us. Mr. Navalny’s crusade is not our fight. Those who threaten our liberties aren’t in Moscow or Beijing; they’re in Washington and New York. If America’s rulers want to pick a fight overseas, draft the journalists and let them fight. If we must launch a foreign crusade to save civil liberties, let’s start with the EU rather than the former USSR.

Mr. Hood is a staff writer for American Renaissance. He has been active in conservative groups in the US. You can follow him on Gab and Telegram.

[Comment at American Renaissance.]

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