A letter to RT’s (Russia Today) Ekaterina Karaseva following a request from her on my opinion of the
Alexei Navalny case
Dear Mrs. Ekaterina,
In response to your question whether or not
I am a journalist and how I relate to the Navalny case,
here my answer. I am not a journalist but have studied political science in the
USA and have attended classes in political science at the Free
University in Berlin, German where I am currently living.
Here my response to the Navalny
case: No doubt Alexei Navalny with his anti
corruption campaign has struck a nerve in Russian society. And the question as
to whether or not he himself was guilty of corruption should be left to an
independent judiciary. The problem is everyone who is against Putin and against
the present Russian administration, in and outside of Russia,
takes the opinion that the judiciary in Russia in
not independent. And outside of Russia it is simply taken for granted that
Russia under Putin has become something akin to a “failed state”, and that
corruption and lawlessness go hand in hand with the “perfect dictatorship” (lupenreine Diktatur - Spiegel
Online along with most of the German media) that Putin has established.
The failure of the Western press to mention
the reactionary rightwing tendencies of Alexei Navalny,
his regular participation in the annual nationalist mass
demonstration “Russian March” (Русский
марш) under the motto,
“Russia for the Russians”, or his video concerning the militants from the
Caucasus “The People for the Legalization of Weapons”
НАРОД за легализацию
оружия http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVNJiO10SWw
where he compares the militants from the Caucasus with cockroaches, insisting
that unlike cockroaches that can be killed with a slipper or a flyswatter the
Caucasian militants can only be killed with a pistol, shows the West’s failure
to present a critical view of this supposed “victim of Russian oppression”.
Lilia Shevtsova,
the Russian born and Russian educated “Kremlinologist” at the US based Carnegie Center in Moscow told the BBC
that "Navalny is becoming a martyr, a new
Russian Mandela". Can there be any greater distortion of reality than this
lockstep between a member of the Russian opposition (which she certainly is)
and this mouthpiece for US foreign policy in Russia?
Dr. Gesine Dornblüth, the correspondent for Deutschlandradio
in Moscow, who left out any critical reference to Alexei Navaly’s
rightwing reactionary policy in her radio broadcast, which initiated my
complaint to her and your subsequent inquiry to my attitude towards the Navalny case, insisted in her response to me, that her
intent was not to leave out Alexei Navaly’s rightwing
tendencies, but rather that the matter at hand was simply his right to a fair
trial in Russia. She further insisted that earlier in Germany
she was one of the first to reveal Alexei’s racist video, his participation in
the reactionary “Russian Marches” and to warn of this demagogue. This may very
well be so. And in the link to an earlier December 31, 2011 piece from her “Putin und die erwachende Opposition” (Putin
and the awaking opposition) she indeed backs up her
point. http://www.dradio.de/dlf/sendungen/themenderwoche/1641251/.
She even
concludes with the statement: “… Es
steht zu befürchten: Wenn dieser Rassist Macht bekommt, dann werden die Opfer
keineswegs nur die "Gauner und Diebe" in den Amts- und Parteistuben sein,
sondern es wird auch Andersdenkende und anders Aussehende treffen.” (It is to be feared that should this racist come to power, then the
victims will not only be the "crooks and thieves", in the offices and
party rooms, [Meant here are those in power in Moscow now, a slogan that Dr. Dornblüth simply takes over from
Alexei Navalny.] but also the dissenters and those who just
look differently.)
However, in her latest
broadcast from June 18, 2013 in Deutschlandradio
„Auf dem Weg in alte Sowjetzeiten - Russische Justiz verfolgt diejenigen, die
Korruption öffentlich machen“ http://www.dradio.de/dkultur/sendungen/kommentar/2183143/
(On the way to old Soviet times - Russian justice pursues those, who publicize
corruption), not only does she fail to mention Aleksei Nawalyn’s dark side but comes out sounding pretty mush like the BBC’s
reference to Dr. Shevtsova’s quote, titled in the
BBC’s article as “Alexei Navalny jailed: Russia's
Mandela moment?” It is simply seen as a given by her that Navalny
is being persecuted for his anti corruption stance and for his opposition to
President Putin. Here she is in total lockstep with most of the Western press. “Der Prozess gegen Aleksej Nawalynj war ein
politischer Prozess. Daran besteht kein Zweifel.“ (The court’s decision against Alexei Navalny was a political one, of
that, there can be no doubt.)
And: “Denn politische
Auseinandersetzung findet in Russland längst nicht mehr in Parlamenten statt,
sondern in Gerichten.“ (Since political disputes, for a
long time already, do not take place in Russia’s
parliaments, but in the courts.)
And: „Um Aleksej Navalnyj
hatten sich vor allem gebildete und wohlhabende junge Menschen und
Geschäftsleute versammelt. Sie haben daran geglaubt, das Regime mit friedlichen
Methoden und innerhalb des Rechtsstaates verändern zu können. Sie wurden heute Lügen gestraft.” (Above all, around Aleksej Navalnyj the educated and well-to-do young people and
businessmen had gathered. [No mention of his racist buddies here.] They
believed they could change the regime with peaceful methods and within the
constitutional state. Today they were punished with lies.)
The logic
behind her thinking (and that of the West generally) seems to be quite simple.
Yes, Aleksej Navalny is a
racist demagogue [For those who know about it, since it is hardly ever
mentioned in the Western press], but he is by far better than that which is in
power in Russia today under Putin and his partly -
the "crooks and thieves"! And even though Dr.
Dornblüth earlier had written that it is to be feared that should this
racist come to power, then the victims will not only be the "crooks and
thieves" in the offices and the party rooms, but also the dissenters and
those who just look differently.
Regardless, of the possible merits or
demerits of the opposition’s case in Russia
(no judiciary is 100% free from political influence) what disturbs me most is
the almost unanimous across the board condemnation of Russia
from the outside. The mere possibility that Russia
can have an independent judiciary is simply denied. Or what a guest on your
program called the accusation of “telephone justice”. Putin picks up the phone
and simply says what the verdict has got to be.
Right after Navalny
had been freed from jail, pending an appeal, French television (France
24) speculated that perhaps there was a split inside the Russian
administration. The idea that there could be such a thing as an independent
judiciary in Russia just runs counter to their anti-Russian indoctrination. The Western
media (in lockstep with the anti-Putin opposition in Russia)
did the same thing during the Pussy Riot case.
From where stems this knee-jerk response to
condemn Russia, for just about everything it does, domestically or in terms of
foreign policy? No doubt this is partly a holdover from the Cold War, but more
importantly it is Russia’s foreign policy after the
Cold War. Russia refused (particularly under Putin) to go in line with the West’s
geopolitical policies.
Stephen Cohen, a Professor of Russian
history whom you’ve had on your program put it best when he said. “Whatever is in
the American interest, Russia should help promote. So, if America
decides to expand NATO to Russia’s
borders, Russia should accept this as a very good idea to its own security. If America
decides to build missile installations in Europe or on ships that threaten Russia’s
nuclear security, Russia should understand that that’s really against North Korea or Iran, and it doesn’t affect Russia.
If the US believes that the overthrow of Assad in Syria
will bring peace to the Middle East, Russia should agree.” Professor Cohen also added, “Putin pursues in a
world which I would call not an ANTI-American foreign policy, but an
UN-American foreign policy or a NON-American foreign policy.” I would add an
INDEPENDENT foreign policy.
Western Europe mirrors America’s attitude towards Russia.
The fact that Evo Morales’s plane was forced to land
in Austria, on the suspicion that Edward Snowden might have been on it, once
again shows how INDEPENDENT Western Europe is of Washington’s
policy wishes, i.e. its attitude towards Russia.
In your interview with Professor Cohen he
also stated that the USA came close to war with Russia in
2008 over the conflict in Georgia.
“Georgia began the war, no doubt about that. Russia
reacted by moving into South Ossetia. It began the fight with the Georgian army which was, in effect, an
American proxy army. We created that army. We armed it. We trained it. There
were American military advisors somewhere in the Georgia,
traveling with the Georgian troops. There was a discussion at the White House,
led by Dick Cheney, that the US should
bomb the Russian army in South Ossetia.”
And I would add that had Russia
not possessed nuclear weapons she would have had to fight a war that she would
have certainly lost, and for that matter, she would have long ago shared the
same fate of the former Yugoslavia, or more recently that of Libya.
This is something that the “opposition” in Russia
does not realize. It is Putin’s wisdom, however, to know this deep down in his
gut.
Or, as Professor Cohens
sarcastically stated, “If America decides to build missile installations in Europe or on ships that
threaten Russia’s nuclear security, Russia
should understand that that’s really against North Korea or Iran, and it doesn’t affect Russia.”
Putin, rightfully, begs to differ!
There is also a fundamental economic reason
for the demonization of Putin’s Russia.
In an article in the German progressive
Newspaper “Junge Welt” Rainer Rupp writes that the campaign against Russia began with the arrest of Chodorkovski. “The vehemence of the vicious propaganda
campaign against Putin reflects the anger of the western imperialists that he
thwarted their plans to acquire Russian raw materials cheaply. Ever since Putin
prevented the fraudster and Yukos boss Michail Chodorkovski from selling
the oilfields grabbed by the overnight billionaire (roughly one half of the
Russian oil reserves) to the west in a gigantic deal, the fronts have been
clear. Following the wild privatisation orgies under US fan Boris Yeltsin, Putin has since
taking power gradually returned the Russian resources to state control. The
western imperialists are furious at this suppression of capitalist ‘human
rights’, and so they take every opportunity to sell Chodorkovski
and now Litvinenko to the western public as martyrs
and victims of ‘Putin the Terrible’. ” (Junge Welt, December 20, 2006) Taken from http://www.currentconcerns.ch/index.php?id=362
Alexei Navalny stands
in a long tradition with anyone opposing Putin and the party in power in Russia as
being seen as martyrs for human rights, Mandela like people – this they are
not!
Thank you for your inquiry. It was a
pleasure responding to your questions.
Alant Jost
Berlin, Germany
July
21, 2013