from floofloof@lemmy.ca to world@lemmy.world on 15 Feb 15:10
https://lemmy.ca/post/60475737
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/55370711
cross-posted from: sh.itjust.works/post/55370708
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a remote Siberian prison two years ago, was almost certainly poisoned with a deadly toxin found in South American dart frogs, five European governments said Saturday.
A joint statement from Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands said they were “confident” Navanly had been poisoned after an analysis of samples taken from his body “conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine,” and that the Russian government was the likely culprit.
“Russia claimed that Navalny died of natural causes. But given the toxicity of epibatidine and reported symptoms, poisoning was highly likely the cause of his death. Navalny died while held in prison, meaning Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison to him,” it continued.
The five countries said they were reporting the case to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, alleging Russia violated the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Russian authorities had previously claimed Navalny, 47, died of natural causes while serving several sentences totaling more than 30 years at a high-security prison above the Arctic Circle.
“Scientists from five European countries have established: my husband, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned with epibatidine—a neurotoxin, one of the deadliest poisons on earth. In nature, this poison can be found on the skin of the Ecuadorian dart frog. It causes paralysis, respiratory arrest, and a painful death,” she said.
“I was certain from the first day that my husband had been poisoned, but now there is proof: Putin killed Alexei with chemical weapon. I am grateful to the European states for the meticulous work they carried out over two years and for uncovering the truth. Vladimir Putin is a murderer. He must be held accountable for all his crimes.”
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said the poisoning shows that “Vladimir Putin is prepared to use chemical weapons against his own people to remain in power. France pays tribute to this opposition figure, killed for his fight in favor of a free and democratic Russia.”
British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper added: "Only the Russian government had the means, the motive, and the opportunity to use that toxin against Alexei Navalny in prison. We are here today to shine a spotlight on the Kremlin’s barbaric attempt to silence Alexei Navalny’s voice.”
Russia announced Navalny’s death on Feb. 16, 2024, just as that year’s Munich Security Conference opened. On that day, Navalnaya delivered a speech, pledging that Putin “would pay for what they have done to our country, to my family, and to my husband.” After a weeklong dispute over custody, Russia released Navalny’s body to his mother.
#world
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All western propaganda and coincidence, I’m sure, as our tankie friends will point out. And he was a corrupt western plant anyway.
Just like how Prigozhin‘s private jet inexplicably exploded mid air, not far from Putin’s Estate, after Wagner’s definitely-not-coup-attempt. Happens all the time. And the Wagner boss was definitely a plant too, oh yeah.
One might think it’s odd that Putin critics die exotic deaths with such… regularity. Could there be some reason for that?
Nah, that’s just the US hegemony talking.
What I don’t understand about tankies is how do they square supporting Russia with being leftists? How does supporting an explicitly nationalist and extremist right wing country fit into a leftist world view? Like, they themselves explicitly say that they’re for all those things, you don’t have to listen to CIA plants on Lemmy or whatever, just read what people in the Russian government or eg Dugin say about what they think Russia is, and it’s very much exactly the opposite of what you’d expect a leftist to want or like
Because the focus is on the enemy.
Whoever’s pointing the finger is idealized. They’re the protector, the rebel, or whatever you want them to be. The focus is on “them.” That’s why every other breath of a tankie (or Trumpster, or liberal extremist or whatever) is whataboutism.
That’s how authoritarian nationalism works. Same thing’s happening in the US, and Europe. The US Army depicted it quite well:
archive.org/details/DontBeaS1947
Unfortunately, with current social media, that trick works very, very, very well. Algorithms are literally built to tell you what you want to hear (including Lemmy to an lesser extent), so it’s easy to fall into these spirals.
I’ve thought that it’s some sort of “residual Sovietness” that they attribute to Russia. Because the Soviets were “anti-imperialist” (they weren’t, but they said they were and stupid people believed them), so being the rightful heir of the USSR, Russia is also “anti-imperialist” and therefore good. Also, anything negative said about Russia is a NATO CIA Nazi reactionary lie (apparently even when the Russians themselves are saying it)
Just don’t ask them why are USSR’s borders are so suspiciously similar to those of Russian Empire’s and what Esd Army was doing in the 1920s.
They were liberating people from not being in gulags and the oppression of self-determination, of course
Tankies will be the first to tell you Russia isn’t communist and isn’t anywhere near being Communist. We have to say that because Russophobia constantly conflates Russian with Communist and switches between them seamlessly. It’s usually the rabid right wing chuds that think Russia is still full of commies.
Anti-imperialism is not an attribute, it’s a movement. It’s not something you are, it’s something you do. When Russia acts against the EuroCentric world order, it is acting in an anti-imperialist mannerby default and there would need to be some additional analysis to establish that this action against the imperial world order is somehow imperialist in itself.
This debate over whether the annexation of Crimea and the invasion 7 years later constitute imperialism hinges on one’s position on Russian security concerns. Those who see Russia’s actions as anti-imperialist believe that Russia’s claims of national security concern are real and salient. Those who see Russia’s actions as imperialist believe that Russia’s claims of national security concern are both totally not real and also cynical cover for imperialist ambitions.
We don’t have to have that debate here, but you should understand the position of your opponents at least as well as they understand yours.
There’s a lot of history here, particularly around Stalin. There are many things said of Stalin that are both Western lies AND ALSO were said by the Soviet leadership. Both things can be, and are, true. But that requires an understanding of Kruschev, his program and ideology, his political ambitions and goals, and how it was received internally and internationally.
NATO being a Nazi reactionary body is a claim that comes from a couple places. First and foremost is the fact that the US selected Nazi officers to run NATO when it was formed. Second is Operation Gladio, the NATO program of funding, arming, training, organizing, and coordinating Nazi, neo-nazi, and adjacent reactionary movements all over Europe in the hopes they could use them to run revolutions anti-communist revolutions.
But anyway, tankies spend a lot of time understanding your positions in order to argue against them. You should do the same if you’re going to try to argue against them.
That’s great because I never said anything about modern Russia being communist?
I cannot think of another interpretation of “Residual Sovietness” other than “residual communism”.
Sounds like a “you” problem
Could be. Let me think of the other things it could mean?
Well, in Russian, “Soviet” means “Council”, so maybe what you meant was that tankies attribute some sort of residual council-ness to Russia. No, that’s probably not right since councils were the fundamental democratic building block of the communist government, and that would be residual communism.
Maybe you meant Soviet as in Soviet Russia, which was communist, so no, that’s not what you meant.
Maybe you meant Soviet as in “the other” in a war with the West. Tankies wouldn’t think like that because that’s a Western framing and not a communist one.
Hm. Yeah, maybe it is a me problem. I can’t think of anything you could have possibly meant that would make any sense unless you were using the words purely for their vibes.
Anyone that claims that America is their “enemy” is an honorary communist and must be unconditionally supported.
Even though the US and Russia are currently the closest of allies.
The entire concept is called “critical support” for the precise reason that it is NOT unconditional.
Because they are more concerned with relitigating the cold war that actual politics and statecraft. The failures of socialist states cannot merely be failures of socialist leaders, or socialist ideals, or the lack of material conditions for implementing socialism - it is the collective effect of western imperialism keeping socialism down. As such, the first order for international socialism is to subvert western imperialism, at which point socialism will be able to rise from the ashes.
Like many things, there is some truth to these claims, but to the extent that it prevents them from confronting their own historic failures, it is one of the most toxic aspects of leftist thought, and is typically rejected or at least heavily qualified by most actual academics. However, because of the nature of online spaces, this idea tends to be overrepresented in discussion forums, where authoritarian leftists are able to sustain combative and pushy behaviors which are not tolerated in the real world, which tends to push everyone else out of the bubble.
This is more of a continuation of the university system being a tool of empire than it is representative of which ideas are worthy of merit. We cannot forget the role that American medical colleges, like Harvard, played in the propagation and development of race “science” to justify slavery, nor can we forget that these academic institutions not only have not engaged in full truth and reconciliation about their past but actively fight against any such movement.
We see today the university system fighting against pro-Palestinian movements and we think somehow that they are bastions of independent thought after a century of not merely purging their ranks during 2 red scares and a yellow peril but actively engaging in the development of academic anti-communism, academic Russophobia, and academic yellow peril?
Zizek is a really good example of the way Western academia and anti-communism work together to control what is considered “valid” discourse. Zizek is promoted as a “leftist”. Meanwhile, he was a literal anti-communist in Slovenia. But, in American academics, he styles himself as a lefist. How are we to interpret this? Well, through his conclusions, which always support American and European imperialism, no matter how brutal, and always oppose any movement that is against the interests of the West.
This is the state of academia. Where someone like Michael Parenti could never secure a position but Chomsky can. What are the major things that separate Parenti and Chomsky? 1) Chomsky was a linguist and Parenti was a historian 2) Chomsky critiqued empire but sided with it while Parenti critiqued empire and did not side with it 3) Epstein.
Western academia is not separate and apart from Western empire. On the contrary, it’s an integral part of the maintenance of empire. Revolutions, generally speaking, do not come from academia, they come either from the military or the masses. And when they come, academia goes through a purge precisely because it is a tool of the ruling class.
Truth is most tankies don’t care about Russia.
Go touch grass. Speak to your local collectives or join an organization.
Im not a tankie but I do talk with them a lot IRL and I’ve yet to hear a single one talk about modern-day Russia. This is a lemmy boogieman.
No, that’s just not true, I moved from ml to world because I made one fucking comment about Russia being a right-wing authoritarian country and some asshole followed me to every thread calling me a capitalist pig, even on shit like dog photos and memes. There’s no getting Lemmy to critical mass while ml is the flagship.
Edit: Yes, I know I could’ve also made a new account on ml to shake them off, but at that point it became a question about the ethics of indirectly supporting the people there.
You really don’t understand anything about the people you claim to oppose, do you?
I’ve never seen a tankie deny that the Russian government kills its opponents. It’s well documented. Everyone’s aware. This particular article is a little strange because it’s openly anti-Russian governments making an anti-Russian claim, and we wouldn’t generally accept that in journalism if the tables were turned, but it’s honestly not an extraordinary claim and certainly in line with Russian intelligence MO. It’s even been analyzed that they do things like use rare and exotic poisons to signal that it was their intelligence that did it (although that gets dicey with copycats).
Tankies will say he was a corrupt Western puppet any way. That’s pretty normal, though. Just like Machado, Guaido, Pinochet, al-Julani/al-Sharaa and so many others. The US has puppets in nearly every single one of its targets. This is not a specious claim.
The same is true of your strange take on the tankie position on Prigozhin’s death. There’s two possible takes, none of which make your strawman. Either Prigozhin was compromised, acting against Russia for anti-Russian interests (like the US) and he was assassinated for his actual coup attempt. Or Prigozhin was Russian counter-intelligence and cultivated a relationship with anti-Russian influences to smoke out sleeper cells through a managed coup, at which point he was either extracted and his death faked, or he was burned.
Calling Prigozhin a “Putin critic” is a little silly though isn’t it? The man ran tanks against the capital. At face value, that’s a traitor. It’s a legit reason to kill someone. The fact that he was killed in the way he was killed had far more to do with the impact it would have on the reality of the networks involved in the coup attempt than some sort of personal vendetta.
This is exactly what I’m talking about in another reply. Its what I was trying to make fun of in the original comment.
“The people I oppose.” Us vs them, the enemy. This thread immediately going to a bunch of shit the US did (which, to be clear, they absolutely did) is “How to think like a tankie 101.”
Putin is an open murderer, and I’m not veering off into whataboutism to paint him as some kind of unfairly treated victim.
Uh. You literally set this up as “tankies” versus whatever you identify as. You set up the othering from the jump. You clearly oppose tankies. But you also clearly don’t understand anything about their positions.
Oh look, you did it again.
You ignore the all of the content of the debate and you argue against its FORM. Your demand that everyone just ignore history when passing moral judgment is a major problem here. The reason “tankies” constantly raise up the history of what the US did is because it provides explanatory context for why certain actions are being taken by certain actors. When why plantation owners strung up uppity slaves, they all said things like “I can’t understand why that slave would have done something like that”, and then turn around and sell babies to rapists and torturers. A slave killing their master is open murder, but the context, I’m sure you would agree, actually matters.
If you require that no one ever talk about history or context so that you can pass pure moral judgments, people are going to disagree with you. Your solution to that disagreement has been to other the people who disagree with you by giving them a derogatory name, dehumanizing them by reducing their intellectual agency, and then dismissing the entire category of people as irrelevant.
Obama is an open murderer. Truman was an open murderer. Reagan was an open murderer. Both Clintons are open murderers. Thomas Jefferson was an open murderer, rapist, and slaver. Trump is an open murder, rapist, and slaver.
We’re not talking about whataboutism. We’re talking about a conflict between open murderers where claiming one of them is a murderer doesn’t actually provide any moral clarity whatsoever. If everyone’s an open murderer, and you oppose Russia because Putin is an open murderer, than you must also oppose the US and NATO because they are run by open murderers. That’s the only consistent position.
I love how the top comment is about non existent tankies in this thread and everyone just joins in the circlejerk. Can yall get an anti-tankie circle jerk instance or even a sub going and satisfy your urge to self-fallate there?
So an opposition leader is poisoned in an authoritarian state which has not even pretended to be socialist in checks watch more than 30 years and I should be concerned about tankies in the comments.
Anyways how’s that userbase growth going lemmy? Surely could not be related.
I have used Lemmy for years and only very infrequently run into anyone who could be called a tankie, yet some people seem to imagine tankies are everywhere and preemptively argue with them. I see that on Lemmy far more than actual tankies.
Yeah I noticed that too. Yeesh. Do you think it’s authentic (albeit self-absorbed) commentary, or deliberate well-poisoning?
Holy shit my brain is broken…I read the title as “Navalny Poisoned With ‘Dog Fart’ Toxin, Europeans Say”
My dog could have killed with what came out of his butt.