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I feel so cowardly compared to people like Navalny.
by CoastalCoder 3y ago
I feel so cowardly compared to people like Navalny.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- sneak 3y agoCompare and contrast Assange and Prigozhin and Nacchio. Or Kadyrov, for that matter. I’d rather be alive and unimprisoned. It’s not brave to get murdered or jailed. You can’t do the work from jail, Solzhenitsyn notwithstanding. I can’t believe Navalny went back to Russia, given the situation. They’d already poisoned him in Russia. Sure, maybe the FSB hits him with novichok in Germany anyway, but flying straight back into the lion’s mouth makes no sense. I think it was a strategic error, not bravery.
- flir 3y agoMartyrdom (IMO). Bodies upon the gears and all that.
- Giorgi 3y agoYou think wrong, if Ukraine and west succeed Russia is going to collapse into civil war, that's his chance. If anything it is very "conspiracy" alike that he arrived in Russia just before Putin made his last critical mistake invading Ukraine.
- nickff 3y agoI don’t understand your first sentence; Assange, Prigozhin, and Nacchio seem too different in background, objectives, and actions to compare meaningfully. What are you trying to demonstrate?
- sneak 3y agoThese are all people who tried to stand against the machinery of a powerful and lawless state, and got imprisoned or killed in the process.
- bsder 3y ago> I can’t believe Navalny went back to Russia, given the situation. Presumably they threatened his family. However, it's not like I would still go back given Putin's record on promises ...
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago[flagged]
- dang 3y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it a lot, and we've had to ask you this more than once already. Eventually we have to ban such accounts, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agoI think you are seriously overreacting. The guy armchair judges a man who deliberately takes on an oppressive regime and then it's against the policy to point that out in a way that is neither using insults and even leaves room for me being wrong? Go ahead and delete my account. Couldn't care less. I think you are doing a great job here - seriously - but you are not doing yourself a favor by wasting energy on such harmless comments like mine.
- dang 3y agoComments like that one aren't harmless—they're the sort of attack which would quickly destroy this forum if we allowed them. There's a common pattern where people underestimate the provocation in their own comments by (say) 10x and overestimate the provocation in the other person's comments by another 10x. Put those together and you get a 100x distortion in self/other perception. That's a lot of skew. I don't mean this in a personal way—as far as I can tell, we all have this bias.
- 2-718-281-828 3y agoalright, i'll try to keep it in mind but can't promise anything.
- timeon 3y ago> I think it was a strategic error, not bravery. It worked for Jesus.
- comprev 3y agoIf Putin wants someone dead, they ain't coming back!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- EA-3167 3y agoAs I understand it, and this is down to rumor I have to say at the start, he was told that he could return to Russia, or his friends and family would be abused/killed. In that context his behavior makes a lot of sense, he's angry, he has nothing to lose, and the only way to he can keep his loved ones remotely safe is to suffer through this nonsense.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mensetmanusman 3y agothere is a long history of people getting out of prison to run a country.
- comprev 3y agoNelson Mandela was nearly 30 years behind bars.
- ptsneves 3y agoIndeed, for all my convictions and philosophies of freedom of thought this is the price. The world is unfair and tough. In this Christmas I thanked not living afraid of warlords changing my way of life.
- zarzavat 3y agoThere's bravery and then there's stupidity. I'm not sure what he thinks he can achieve as a prisoner in an Arctic prison (and presumably one day, a corpse) that he couldn't achieve as a free man, but I don't find his choice very aspirational. True acts of bravery are done in the service of others, martyrdom is a pointless waste of human life.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cedws 3y agoWhat do you think Navalny would've been able to accomplish from afar? Him remaining in the West and subverting the Kremlin would have only fed the ideas that he's a Western agent. He made a courageous and respectable move. The ball is now in the court of the Russian citizens on whether they want to fight for justice.
- ithkuil 3y agoWhen the masses are called to choose between justice and patriotism they most often choose patriotism. EDIT: of course most people don't control what gets passed for patriotism
- simmerup 3y agoSomeone has to test the system and prove it’s unfair
- CapitalistCartr 3y agoMartyrdom is a "true act of bravery" that can benefit us all. Socrates Joan of Arc John Brown Maximilian Kolbe Folke Bernadotte Malcolm X Martin Luther King Jr. Each made the World a better place; each placed their work above their freedom, their safety, their life.
- thebruce87m 3y agoPeople have achieved things as corpses so that others can achieve things as free men.
- tetrisgm 3y agoIt's not cowardice to seek happiness.
- flir 3y ago"They enslave their children's children, who make compromise with sin." It's a recurring motif in Unsong (https://unsongbook.com/ https://unsongbook.com/) which gets linked here occasionally. I haven't been able to get it out of my head since I read it.
- BLanen 3y agohttps://youtu.be/hT0tCSaWZ9Q https://youtu.be/hT0tCSaWZ9Q So brave when he founded a far-right nationalist party and still supported its platform in 2011
- CoastalCoder 3y agoMy concept of "courage" doesn't hinge on my agreeing with the person's ideology. It's more about their willingness to risk injury to accomplish some goal.
- avmich 3y agoIn 2011!