Berlin, Germany (Weltexpress). Navalny has never renounced his dubious “career” as a right-wing extremist and violence-preaching racist. Even in 2021, he defended his pathological ideology to a British newspaper. These facts conveniently went unmentioned in the Western tributes to the dead “Russian freedom hero”.
“De mortuis nihil, nisi bene.” I learnt this as a child in Latin class and it means: “Nothing should be said about the dead unless it is good”. I have stuck to this rule all my life. In the case of the published obituaries for Navalny, however, the ambiguity of the Western politicians and their trashy media, who act as moralisers, makes my hair stand on end to such an extent that I have to drag Navalny’s inhuman side into the light.
The deliberately ignorant obituaries are intended to make us believe that the blameless, tragic “Russian freedom hero” and alleged “opposition leader” Navalny sacrificed his life for democracy or for “Western values”, i.e. supposedly “for all of us”. Unfortunately, he tragically failed to fulfil his mission to slay the evil dragon Putin and seize power in Moscow, according to the Western narrative.
In fact, Navalny never had the slightest chance of gaining even one per cent of the Russian vote. This shows how insane the constant claim in the West that Navalny is an “opposition leader” is. Where was he supposed to be? In cloud cuckoo land of Western wishful thinking? The reality is different.
In the last Russian parliamentary elections in September 2021, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) received 18.9 per cent of the vote and thus secured a considerable number of seats in the State Duma, the Russian parliament. This made the CPRF the second largest party in the parliament in Moscow after the ruling United Russia party. You hear virtually nothing about this opposition in the Western quality media.
Navalny could only dream of a seat in the State Duma. Yet Navalny was not unknown in Russia. The Western media had already made sure he was well known, suddenly taking a keen interest in him after Navalny’s return from the USA. This takes us back to 2010, when the promising young man received a scholarship for an exclusive course at the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Programme, which is affiliated with the US prestigious Yale University, through the American embassy in Moscow. This alleged educational centre for international students has since been identified as a CIA recruitment institute.
After his return to Moscow from the USA, Navalny no longer acted publicly as a racist agitator, but as a clean man who founded an organisation to fight corruption with the help of generous donations. His US supporters and mentors had probably made it clear to him that he could be built up as a hero in the West in his fight against corruption, but that he would have no chance as an explicit racist.
The plan worked and Navalny was stylised in the Western media as a fearless opponent of the Putin system and its corruption. Then, in 2021, came the strange episode of the hero’s alleged poisoning by Putin, his recovery in a German hospital and his heroic return to Russia, followed by his conviction to a long prison sentence for a whole series of criminal offences.
Apart from the current hype, that was the last time Navalny was used for a gigantic anti-Russian political and media campaign. And in this very situation, when everyone, but really everyone, was being called upon to demonstrate against the evil Russians because of Navalny, Amnesty International had demystified the “non-violent political prisoner” and ripped the do-gooder mask off his face. A violent, racist agitator emerged from underneath.
It all began when Amnesty International revoked the poor alleged “victim” Navalny’s status as a “Prisoner of Conscience”, i.e. a “non-violent political prisoner”, in mid-February 2021. The organisation had granted this status to the Russian political thug and self-confessed racist Navalny a month and a half earlier because Amnesty had initially taken the wild Navalny predator story of poisoning etc., which was spread by Western government propaganda as pure truth, at face value.
Interestingly, this unexpected step towards demystifying Navalny came from Amnesty’s regional office for Europe and Central Asia. Navalny is known as a dangerous, racist agitator, especially in the Caucasus and Central Asia. His violent videos and irrational racial hatred are directed in particular against dark-skinned Russians from the Caucasus and people from the Islamic former Soviet republics in Central Asia, whom he describes as vermin. In these countries, they know what kind of fascist spirit speaks from Navalny.
So if Amnesty wanted to retain any trace of credibility in the Caucasus and Central Asia, the organisation could no longer maintain Navalny’s status as a “non-violent political prisoner”. Denis Krivoshiv, Amnesty’s deputy director for Europe and Central Asia at the time, explained that the organisation had made its “decision … in light of comments made by Navalny in the past”.
Krivoshiv went on to say that Navalny’s previous comments and his “advocacy of violence and discrimination” amounted to hate speech. Above all, Navalny had never distanced himself from these comments, thus contradicting Amnesty’s definition of a non-violent political prisoner who is only imprisoned for reasons of conscience. Next, Aleksandr Artemiyev, Amnesty’s media manager for Russia and Eurasia, confirmed his organisation’s decision against Navalny to Zona Media and referred to his racist activities, from which he has still not distanced himself.
To illustrate the “contradiction” between the noble character that Western politicians and media ascribe to the “freedom hero” Navalny and the ugly reality of the right-wing extremist Navalny, here is the description and link to a well-known Navalny video from 2007 in which he describes Muslims as vermin that should be killed like cockroaches.
In his video, Navalny stands in front of a table wearing a black T-shirt. On it lie a slipper, a fly swatter and a pistol. Navalny looks into the camera. A screen can be seen to his left. A film is playing on it, with pictures of bugs, cockroaches and other vermin.
Navalny then says into the camera that only slippers and fly swatters help against “flies and cockroaches”. He then asks: “But what should you do if something bigger comes into the house? A giant cockroach, for example?” — At this moment, a huge “cockroach” appears. It is a person dressed up as a cockroach in a black cloak. The person enters the frame with his back to the camera and walks towards Navalny. The video suddenly goes pitch black: nothing can be recognised, then shots are fired and flashes of light can be seen.
Then it gets light again. The human “cockroach”, now recognisable as a Muslim woman with her face partially covered, lies shot across the table and Navalny stands next to her, pointing at the dead woman with a gun in his hand and saying: “Only the gun will help. Firearms must be allowed.” Navalny’s “cockroach” video has also been circulating in the West since 2021.
Navalny did not regret this and other videos of this kind in an interview with the British Guardian in 2017, but continued to defend them as correct. This lack of remorse seems to have been the decisive factor in Amnesty’s decision. A defence of Navalny with the usual arguments in such cases, such as: “It was all a long time ago, sins of youth, but now he is an adult and ‘reformed’, a decent member of society”, is all made impossible by Navalny’s adherence to his true fascist convictions.
In the Western “quality media”, there was icy silence over Amnesty’s revocation of Navalny’s status as a “non-violent political prisoner”. Even now, obituaries continue to pay homage to the incorrigible racist and violent extremist as the noble “Prisoner of Conscience”, a martyr of the neoliberal world order.
The experts in the NATO and EU psychological warfare departments had great difficulty finding a way out in 2021. The best option at the time seemed to be to keep the racism issue quiet and consign it to the memory hole. After all, attempts on the internet to blame the Russian media for the dismantling of Navalny by Amnesty International came across as too hollow. Moreover, they did not want to arouse any more public interest in the case. And the US/NATO/EU were successful in this endeavour, otherwise the current political and media hype surrounding the incorrigible racist and right-wing violent extremist would be unthinkable.
