For me it was Cheater Bennington. Linkin Park music helped me through some hard times and I know some of the more impactful lyrics came from him and what he experienced.
Knowing he couldn’t take it anymore definitely hit Me hard particularly as someone I looked up to from young age …
Who was yours ?
Are you referring to his earlier nationalist and anti-immigration politics? That criticism is real, and I’m not pretending otherwise. But reducing him to ‘racist ultranationalist POS’ also erases that he became the most significant anti-corruption and anti-Putin opposition figure in Russia. If you want to criticize him, be specific about what part of his record you mean.
I’m not sure if it took you a night to come up with that whitewashing or if you really act in good faith and have simply absorbed our western propaganda about this ‘democratic activist’ and don’t know any better?
I will go over the points:
“the most significant anti-corruption and anti-Putin opposition figure in Russia”
That is the image created here in the west.
Mislabeled a citizen activist/ anti- corruption journalist.
He was not a journalist, having a Livejournal/Wordpress, etc and posting on it doesn’t make you a journalist.
In reality he was a rich businessman making money from the stock market.
That of course sounds less sympathetic.
while not on oligarch level himself, he certainly worked for them.
And like many of that type of people he was corrupt and consequently convicted.
And he was certainly not ‘the most significant anti-Putin opposition figure’
The biggest opposition in Russia are the communists followed by the liberals.
Navalny was at best locally known in Moscow, his best result was losing the mayoral elections (27% to 50%+) there.
Outside of Moscow people barely knew of him, and if they did he was generally disliked.
This for his views.
“nationalist and anti-immigration politics” you call it.
That sounds so innocent compared to my “racist ultranationalist POS”.
When you organize fascist marches, call muslims cockroaches and shooting them in videos the second definition is the accurate one.
All this is nicely swept under the carpet in our press mouthpieces.
What matters is the anti-Putin part and that he could be bought.
He was the chosen western puppet.
After all we’re not going to support left-wing opposition are we?
They cleaned up his image, just as they did with the barbaric headchopper Jolani we supported as a proxy.
Cut his terrorist beard, gave hime a suit and even a new name.
And just like that he is acceptable and our democratic leaders can shake hands and do business with him.
Navalny got the same treatment.
Also his second in command was filmed meeting an MI6 agent where they talked about him getting money to organize protests and cause troubles.
This is how the western regime change system works.
And somehow our neutral and free democratic press never wrote he was all for invading ukraine, and a whole lot more BTW, as these extreme-right great empire types do.
Another inconvenient fact.
Can’t really blame western people from supporting this awful guy when they only get to know what our regimes want.
And anti-Putin must be automatically good in the simplistic view of the public if they don’t look any further.
Our governments know exactly what he was, but then again with the US already near fascist and the EU not far behind it’s to be expected.
You’re loading in a lot of Kremlin-friendly conclusions that go well beyond the parts of the criticism that are actually fair.
Yes, some of the criticism is fair. Navalny did have a nasty nationalist/xenophobic streak, some of his older rhetoric was ugly, and his Crimea position deserved criticism. But that still does not make him “just a Western puppet,” and it does not change the basic fact that he was the most visible anti-Putin opposition figure in Russia. Not the only opposition, not universally loved, not some flawless democrat dropped from heaven. But anti-Putin in a real, consequential sense, and willing to pay for it with prison and ultimately his life.
You also seem to be slipping from “he had bad politics in important ways” into “therefore anything the Russian state said about him must be basically true.” That is where this starts reading less like principled criticism and more like reflexive pro-Russia filtering. The Kremlin spent years trying to turn every opponent into either a crook, a foreign puppet, or a fascist depending on what was most useful. Repeating that whole frame is not the same as being critical.
And no, I do not think Navalny was going to magically save Russia overnight. No one person was. But politics does not work like that anyway. Sometimes a deeply imperfect opposition figure is still a beginning, a breach in the wall, a stepping stone toward something better. In a system as closed and repressive as Putin’s, even that matters.
So yes: criticize his nationalism, criticize his rhetoric, criticize his blind spots on empire and Ukraine. All fair. But pretending he was just some irrelevant Moscow nobody inflated by the West is its own kind of mythmaking.
You’re grossly minimizing his racist, fascist ultra-nationalist tendencies.
Just because the POS happened to be anti-Kremlin doesn’t make him OK.
He was conspiring with MI6 on video, and he had another MI6 person with him on the plane to Germany.
There’s plenty more showing he is in fact a western puppet.
He wouldn’t be promoted and made a big deal here otherwise. Now that was myth making.
Also the reason why people, and you, wrongfully think he is “the most visible anti-Putin opposition figure in Russia”.
I gave you facts about his insignificance in elections and the general view of the population on him.
I think you’re doing a lot of projection here with your “reflexive pro-Russia filtering”.
The western audience likes him because he is anti-Putin (like myself BTW) so he must be automatically good and the rest is simply Russian disinfo.
The facts are there that he was a racist extreme-right POS. To ignore that is called delusion in psychology.
In what way could this awful person be a stepping stone to something better?
But of course the west, being the fascist USSA and near fascist EU would never support a left-wing or truly democratic opposition would they?
They never have.
They have a documented history of supporting the most brutal fascists that overthrow the same left-wing or democratic countries and put in their puppets.
As we speak they are glazing the son of a torturing shah they put in place earlier in Iran or the headchopper Al Qaida terrorist who they put in a suit and changed his name.
Now he’s a respectable puppet that gets welcomed with the red carpet treatment.
Machado, the extreme-right ghoul from Venezuela and Aung San Suu Kyi, another brural mass-murderer get the nobel prize from our ‘rules based order’ and free democratic west’.
Maybe you should see a pattern here and learn to see through the BS you’re parroting.
Despite all the propaganda and censorship in the west shoved down my throat, I have learned, simply from facts, we’re not the good guys.
You can call me pro-kremlin for that whatever you want, IDC.