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He seems to be popular enough for people to risk going out to protest in the tens of thousands. And "harsh" is pretty subjective. Witness testimonies from simil
by mekkkkkk 6y ago
He seems to be popular enough for people to risk going out to protest in the tens of thousands. And "harsh" is pretty subjective. Witness testimonies from similar penal colonies are pretty grim; guards beating inmates, sleep deprivation, demeaning chores. I'd consider that harsh, but YMMV.
That being said, Navalny probably won't suffer from actual violence or anything too explicit. The government isn't stupid, and they know he'll get the word out if it happens. And it doesn't really serve their purpose. They just want to shut him up. Keeping him locked up with restricted access to communication is probably enough.
I sort of agree with your last point though. Navalny does seem to have a checkered past to put it lightly. He comes from a nationalist background, and seemingly still hold some of those values. It's hard to reconcile that fact with his (in my mind) positive influence as a catalyst for change.
- anticodon 6y agoYes, he's not totally unimportant because CIA and MI6 pour hundreds of millions in information campaign dedicated to him every year. When you read or watch western media there's an illusion like he's the most important person in Russia. Same with many media sources in Russian funded directly or indirectly by CIA (Meduza.io, Radio Freedom, etc). Or he's last YouTube movie that was evidently badly translated from English (using words and sentences that native speaker would never use) and was aggressively pushed by YouTube amounting millions of fake views immediately after publishing. So, there's some amount of gullible people that go out to protests organized by CIA, but not many. Last protests were barely noticeable. I'm very happy about it because I see what happens to countries that fail to stave off CIA organized protests - they go to stone age immediately (Libya, Syria) or gradually (Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine).
- jonnybgood 6y agoHow do you know the protests are organized by the CIA?
- anticodon 6y agoThere's no hard evidence, CIA isn't that stupid. But most of of the current Russian opposition is funded by CIA. Sometimes it's evident (some of the opposition media outlets are funded directly from Washington), sometimes it's less evident (e.g. Navalny receiving millions of USD via "anonymous bitcoin donation"). Another indirect evidence is that their discourse is exactly aligned with western media discourse. They have no points of disagreement. If western media criticize something in Russia, we hear same criticism from Russian opposition. You can translate your Economist or CNN website, and you'll get Meduza.io or Radio Freedom. It's hard to believe that such 100% agreement in tiniest details is accidental.
- 3v1n0 6y agoOr maybe they just think the same because it's the right one? Far from being an American fan here, but doubting and not playing the CIA conspiracy theory card can help at times. Regimes live on this kind of support, so until there's no a critical mass understanding that something isn't fine, nothing will change
- anticodon 6y agoMate, you can read in official US documents that they spend tens, maybe hundreds of millions of USD on anti-Russian propaganda. It's just the amount that is openly admitted. Every year they open new organizations to "fight Russian propaganda", with huge budgets. It's not a conspiracy, you can find it in the open US sources. Even US embassies in Russia published information on how to join protests this winter.
- 3v1n0 6y agoI don't think that supporting positions is the same as conspiring against them, but I don't care what US gov does. But I don't think that it's a full conspiracy that involves papers, everywhere in the rest of the world.
- pestatije 6y ago