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Radio War Nerd EP #428 — Navalny and Limonov (Patreon)

Published:
2024-02-22 01:41:24
Edited:
2024-02-22 13:27:21
Imported:
2024-02
Tags:

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Content

Recorded: February 20, 2024

We look back at the life, politics & death of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, and the many ways he intersected with the radical writer and opposition leader Edward Limonov.

Texts cited:-"My Fear and Loathing" by Alexei Navalny, August 11, 2023-"ANALYSIS: Is Jailed Alexei Navalny Really Writing All of His Public Messages?" Kyiv Post, August 16, 2023-"Journalists, analysts, and opposition figures respond to Alexey Navalny’s manifesto on the wicked 1990s and failure of Russia’s democrats", Meduza, August 15, 2023-"'It wasn’t written by Navalny!’ Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny responds to those skeptical he writes his own posts" Meduza, August 29, 2023-His Butler's Story, Edward Limonov

*IMAGES:

*2006: (left to right) Limonov, Garry Kasparov, ex-PM Mikhail Kasyanov, leaders of the Other Russia anti-Putin movement

*2007: Navalny (right) with National-Bolsheviks member & author Zakhar Prilepin (left) and Yabloko's Sergei Gulyaev (left of Navalny) announcing NAROD's "national-democratic ideology"

*Navalny NAROD video, self-described as "accredited nationalist" the video ends with the slogan: "Think about the future. Become a nationalist!"

*Navalny after fight with heckler outside Club Gogol in central Moscow, 2007

*The heckler that Navalny shot and yelled racist pejoratives at (some say the heckler was related to an FSB agent; the heckler dropped all charges against Navalny so his identity was never known)

*Navalny arrested and detained after fight

*2008: Navalny (far right) with extreme-right Russian March umbrella group. left to right: Andrei Savalyev of Great Russia; Konstantin Krylov of Russian Social Movement; Alexander Belov (left of Navalny), leader of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI); and Navalny (NAROD).

*2011: Limonov and Boris Nemtsov, two main leaders of anti-Putin opposition, months before it explodes and Navalny becomes its new leader

*2012: Limonov goes after Navalny

*2017: Limonov's Other Russia party flyer mocking Navalny: "Protesting with Navalny is like sex without an orgasm! You wanna play with revolution? Play with the NatsBols — with us everything is authentic! Yachts-villas-wineries and every sort of consumerist bullshit — the result not of corruption [as Navalny claims], but of the criminal privatization in the 1990s. They stole everything before you were even born!...Does Lyosha Navalny bother talking about this? Lyosha Navalny will lead you around for the next 40 years from one city square to the next, until you'll wanna vomit from the thought of yet another protest at another city square..."

*from one of Navalny's last, and his most controversial letters, August 2023:

Total time: 1:45:04

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

*

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Sound production by Telescope Audio

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Files

Comments

Matt Henry

This is gonna be a good one..... What do Ames and the war nerd think of the work of John Helmer?

JoR

I think the Democrats' support of Israel is also generational thing. All the older, liberal and even left leaning members of my family (60+ years) barely know what's happening in Israel, but if they do have an opinion, they're basically Pro-Israel. This could purely anecdotal, but these same people are very apolitical. But they basically give the blank stare look when your describe what Israel is doing. It's just not computing in their heads, and that seems common for those from that generation, regardless of politics.

Matt Colston

I knew an episode was imminent

MoldyTolge

Deeply ingrained in the 40+ crowd. They don’t know much about foreign policy but they ain’t budging.

NYCM&AHole

You forgot Larry Summers’s dear friend Jeffrey Epstein!

Smalls

The sick men of Europe

Artem Romanenko

Hold up, your newspaper was publishing nazbols? Are we just gonna ignore that?

Artem Romanenko

Do Americans just support any and all Russian nationalists because they're the most likely to start a civil war

Dorst Savijeski

Russia is not a monolith, especially with what Navalny was doing he made enemies outside of the Kremlin. I don't think it came top down. I think someone took an 'idiot' executive decision to poison him. Many of the governor's are ex-fsb....

Sophia Monday

That's quite an amazing statistic about arrests in Germany. But I think it's worse than just a recent threat to diaspora Jews. What if that was a selling point for the creation of the state of Israel in the first place? I don't think I'm the first to say that, but is it a reasonable possibility?

Seth

Long shot, but does anyone have a hardback copy of It’s me, Eddie they’d be willing to part with for (much) less than $500?

j

German general in charge of special operations KSK was fired over a decade ago for questioning the utility of Israel’s bombing campaign in Palestinian areas. There will be no tolerance of anything that could be spun as anti Israel in Germany…

Jeremy

I remember showing people the extremely racist and anti semitic comments of navalny, only to be called a “Putin simp”. Replacing one problem with a worse one, classic American geopolitics.

Hans Anders

Then again, there is something brewing in Germany. Comments on the website of the Suddeutsche Zeitung are tending against Israel. And even though that’s a left liberal newspaper, I’ve never seen that tendency among German left-liberals before

Dec

Perfect classic RWN. Knowledge and storytelling regarding Russia is, as always, unmatched

Jonathan Penn

My small addition to a very helpful episode- if my friend B's storage room is any indication, a basket weaving operation could be very profitable. They are used by almost every mail order gift company to arrange, display, and ship their products. I don't get many such baskets, but they are a "go to" solution for what to send to mark such occasions as funerals, births, etc.

Tyler Berglund

Great analysis, lots of details I haven’t seen in other takes. I want to push back on something though; I wouldn’t use the term ‘CIA agent’ to describe Navalny. However he is a product of western interference and influence. He was active with DA! (Democratic Alternative) which were bankrolled by the NED. Just because hes complex and expressed some regrets and blunt realities from prison, hes not then off the hook as a western backed regime change agent. I think John was right to ask what spurred Navalnys change of heart, perhaps it was prison. But this question is more an exploration of his personality and motives not his direct links to US regime change operations which cannot and should not be trivialized. DA!s NED links evidence here: https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/06MOSCOW12709_a.html His work with DA! is even mentioned in WIKI.

LPO Crane Jefferson

Showing my father the bloodshed I see on all my social media platforms day in and day out didn't matter to him. Saying that the Democrats and Republicans alike are responsible for the Palestinian genocide didn't matter to him. No evidence I could present could shake him from his obsession with loving Joe Biden and absolute hatred for Donald Trump. The older generations are being extremely shielded from the horrors of the Palestinian genocide and they just cannot square that this is happening under a democratic president. They won't have it. All they know is Orange Man Bad.

LPO Crane Jefferson

And then I was promptly called a radical and antisemitic for being critical of zionism from the most antisemitic person I know, which is him lol.

j

Exceptional, thank you.

JoR

This did feel like a prime, 2016 era episode. In a good way

MoldyTolge

That’s a good point… comment worthwhile reading

JoR

Great point. These same family members of mine are pretty low on Biden but just want the dems to win. But I get that same reflexive feedback if Israel is bought up. "yeah, it's not good but look at all the antisemitism in America!". These same people would never believe in things like "reverse racism" and aren't even very pro war by any means. But it's a law of nature that Israel is simply defending itself from existential threats. It's still a losing strategy from the Democrats perspective, but I imagine there's legimitate public pressure from the 50-80 demographic of the party. Maybe not the vocal, online ones, but the regular everyday "silent majority" equivalents

Schaeffer Mallory

Could y'all speak to this insane line from Israel defenders that "95%" or "the vast majority of Jews around the world are Zionists, therefore being anti-Zionist is anti-Semitic." Not so much to refute it, it's an insane logic, but more to speak to its origins.

Doug Cartel

The only other time I heard of sudden death syndrome for an adult was a dude playing Wiifit who just dropped dead But again he was 47 in russia, in a prison camp, so chances were probably high of stroking out (I am assuming the Novichok bullshit was bullshit because why the fuck would you poison a guy and then send him to Berlin for medical treatment)

Doug Cartel

I will take your word for it that navalny was "courageous" because the only other things I know about him are his bigotry towards muslims and his ties to NED I could just be making the mistake of conflating courage with moral good

Jess

I really knew nothing about him except that he was lauded by people who would have loathed him had he actually come to power. This helped me get to know who he was past the symbol, thank you!

HarshMalarkey

If a RWN intro is lacking in Dolan Body Horror I'll take that as code that you are under duress 🚨

j

Me neither… they broke something this time I think… despite the permanent „spontaneous „ demonstrations against afd and the far right the middle is tending way more conservative than some would like…

Jack Ross

any recommendations for Limonov books/this time period in Russia in general?

CR

Those people vote. The people most opposed to what Israel is doing don’t. Biden may be functionally brain dead but he knows that.

Duff Huster

I want the Decrepit Dolan super cut, just pure misery.

Mark Ames

Emmanuel Carrere’s biography Limonov is a good start.

etienne

funny that the Anti Deutsche movement wasn't mentioned

AshRei

I'm looking for a source on the "Jews make up 37% of 'antisemitic' arrests in Germany" claim. I believe it but can't find much on first search.

William

If mark was a real one, he’d podcast til he couldn’t talk, then start podcasting in morse code

Mr Bean

Yes! The nature of the search terms make it very difficult to find

a clash of purple

Dolan and Ames have mentioned Limonov many times before, but this is my first time seeing a picture of him. Am I the only one who thinks he looks like he's trying to look like Trotsky? Or am I just seeing things?

Hans Anders

Most recent German reports about antisemitism (very broadly construed) rely on figures from the Bundeskriminalamt. But I haven’t found any recent published data from them yet. Nor did earlier reports specify how many suspects were Jewish

Sean

Waited almost 70 minutes to hear the critiques of this scratched liberal.

Sean

Waited almost 70 minutes to hear the critiques of this scratched liberal.

Mark Ames

Putin was put into power by the US government's two main Russian assets in the 1990s: Anatoly Chubais (who brought Putin into the Kremlin in 1996 and got him the chief of FSB job), and Boris Yeltsin (who appointed him PM and then president). So you could say Putin owed his rise to the presidency to US power/money, and a lot of people initially dismissed him as just another in a line of neoliberal lackeys.

Tyler Berglund

Very true. If I recall correctly theres Whitehouse memo between Yeltsin & Clinton where Yelstin is making the case for Putin, which shows the Whitehouse as a, sort of, superior rank to Yeltsin and Putin. I think the key difference is that Navalny pretty consistently operated in the US interest, and against the interests of an independent Russian State, while Putin *eventually* did the opposite. *After trying to join NATO and the War on Terror.

Jack Ross

Thanks Mark, also in this episode you mentioned that the National Bolsheviks made up a left wing to Navalny when he was doing stuff with ultra nationalist parties. Did Limonov’s contingent basically dominate the right wing of the nazbols for this to happen?

Mark Ames

Yasha wasn't at that debate at Gogol, but like me he remembers the incident well. It was the first time both of us had heard of Navalny, but we hadn't put the two together until after Navalny got big in the 2011/12 protests and we started looking into the story. The ep he did a few years ago was very good.

Arielle Curtin

Hi guys, not trying to be argumentative but as a reader of John Helmer’s Dances with Bears, I thought Navalny was diagnosed at Charité in Berlin as heavily dependent on benzodiazepines and lithium, which led to his collapse. Also, isn’t Novichok supposed to be lethal? I’d love your comment on this.

Aiden

I went back to hear the Gettleman on Africa ep. 100. Whoa. Vapid and self important.

Jason Thompson

All your descriptions are painfully accurate. Lemme add one. There’s the blind liberal Israel fanatics you describe— the default position for Baby Boomers whose brains are stuck in WW2 and cannot imagine a situation where Israel doesn’t equal all Jewish people doesn’t equal the most endangered & righteous side, and who generally hate Arabs and/or Muslims, even if some of them have torturedly convinced themselves they don’t. And I have lately also been talking to folks closer to my own Gen X age who are progressive and sorta anti-Israel, but they are SO consumed with fear of Trump they can only say “But Trump would be worse” in response to anything

Jason Thompson

Holy shit— I just realized— is that the same Jeffrey Gettleman who just wrote the insanely fabricated “Screams without Words” Israel propaganda piece???!!! 🤯

Mark Ames

Not sure I understand your question.

MoldyTolge

My opinion is that the original poisoning might’ve been some nerve agent but not Novichok. The previous cases of its use make it sound far too lethal to “wound” you. There was a Russian business man killed by it and when his secretary came in only brief contact with a trace of the stuff it killed her too. It all comes down to dosage so I suppose Navalny could’ve gotten a very very weak exposure, but for a couple years it seemed like Novichok was being blamed for every time a politically dissenting Russian experienced unexpected illness.

MoldyTolge

Oh my god we need to get Brenden on the personal injury Mega Compilation

Mao Zedong Superstar

I’ve revisited this like 5 times, great episode. It pointed toward some sources for my capstone thesis on the NBP - and as of a few days ago, I found out it got me into grad school! Thanks RWN :)