I’m going to miss Alexei Navalny. He was a charming and skilled anti-corruption finagler before he sold out to racist Nationalism. Politicians like Navalny and Trump harvest up the very worst in people in order to fulfill their ambitions. They’re nemeses who deliver exactly what the people deserve. It’s difficult to resent a clever monkey for gathering low-hanging fruit. Anti-immigrant hate is an easy trough from which to feed a political career, Navalny couldn’t resist it. The video Navalny made where he shoots a Muslim “cockroach” in a burka and reminds Russians that only a gun can respond to Muslim immigration should shock people. It should shock Trudeau yet, somehow it does not.
Navalny was first and foremost a Russian Nationalist. Yesterday, Canadian media carefully leapt to censor anyone who dared mentioned it. Navalny said he would never return Crimea to Ukraine. Over the years he dodged American outrage by claiming Crimea belonged to Crimeans but, he could hardly hide the truth. No Russian Nationalist secures popular support without demanding possession of Crimea. By definition, Russian Nationalists demand Crimea’s return. It’s like an American Nationalist who would be willing to give New York to Canada or Texas to Mexico, they don’t exist.
Navalny was also an opportunist who surfed any wave that could carry him. The Hollywood liberal anti-Russian wave was too tempting to resist. With insipid heart gestures and anti-Putin soundbites, they ate Navalny up with a spoon and helped him push his most lavish narratives. His alleged Novichok poisoning never made logical sense. Russia had him in custody, why not simply kill him? Every moment alone with prison guards was yet another perfect opportunity to kill him, another day they could pull an Epstein and make it look like suicide. Why bother poisoning him? It never happened but, it made a great story.
Yasha Levine liked to muse that Navalny was the product of a Soviet era cloning project. When comparing a young Yeltsin to Navalny, the resemblance is uncanny. This is how I prefer to remember Navalny, as a highly entertaining yet tragic laboratory experiment. Abandoned by the mad scientists who created him, he became a pop culture darling (with a great sense of humour and kicking swimmer’s body) before succumbing to the inevitable expiration date which took his life. He had fulfilled his purpose as Boris Yeltsin’s heir and official thorn in Putin’s side. Had Navalny not been cloned from Boris Yeltsin’s epithelial cells, Putin would have needed to invent him.
