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Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

I love how naive and gullible most people can be... Just google past the first result and you'll see that he is a carbon copy of putin - they are literally the two sides of the same coin. His personal views were perfectly in line with the russian leadership for the past 300 years: believed in imperialism and ethnic superiority. He played opposition for one reason and one reason alone: personal gains. He softened down his tone internationally in the past decade just to buy himself some sympathy from the west(and sadly way too many people ate it like a fresh doughnut). But he was no different. Assuming there is such a thing as opposition in russia(which, I'm sorry, I don't believe for a nanosecond), I'd argue his contribution was to further divide it.

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I haven’t looked hard into this issue but that’s the more likely explanation in these kinds of situations. So you have a terrible kind-of dictator and you have a seemingly charismatic opposition. In a country stereo-typically ruled or co-ruled by oligarchs. What’s the most likely explanation? That the opposition is a selfless saint who only wants to liberate Russia (or tone it down to: wants reform, democracy, is kind of an egotist but is using his ego for good ends)? Or that he’s another shade of dark who is aligned with other factions close to or inside the power elite of Russia? And that Russia wouldn’t fundamentally change with one or the other at the helm—it’s still the same corrupt country.

Of course we The West jump to the fantastical conclusion that he, an opposition leader in Russia, wants everything that we want and would be the seedling of prosperity of Russia but also (most importantly) wants to be friends and buddies with The West.

Not surprised to see your comment at the very bottom of this thread by the way.

That's what I mean by naive. I doubt you'd find anyone from a country that was a member of the Warsaw pact with a functioning brain that would disagree with me. I'm saying that being a representative myself. And you really don't have to look all that far to see that what I said about him is true: being the other side of the same coin. Literally a few scrolls down the results page on google and you find this [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT0tCSaWZ9Q

He should not have been murdered in a Russian prison. But if he would have somehow become the ruler of Russia, he would have had to been ruthless or be toppled by someone else. The system in Russia can't be changed by one man on the top. That's like imagining a mafia could suddenly be transformed into a an open and democratic organization.

Assuming anyone wants to change it to begin with. You know the 5 monkeys experiment? In reality, russia is simply a large scale version of it - "this is how it is and the way it's always been".

> Assuming there is such a thing as opposition in Russia

Oh, that reminds me about people in russian internet who said that Navalny was managed from Kremlin. They kept saying this even when he went to prison.

Do you as well believe in the shadow government which controls every public figure?

> Do you as well believe in the shadow government which controls every public figure?

This is a trademark of the people who call themselves "free thinkers", or as the rest of the world commonly knows them, "tankies". I'm solely talking about the russian society: the same society that is unironically congratulating women for getting a new free coat after having their children killed. The same society that's gloating about 4 year old girls having their legs blown off by their rockets. The same society that left their country by the millions in recent years, not because they are against what they country is doing(and had been doing for centuries btw), but because they personally don't want to be sent to the front lines. Navalny was no different and you can easily confirm all that for yourself if you spend 5 minutes googling. Was he managed by the kremlin - unlikely. He just wished to be the next dictator and get his own mansions filled with golden toilets. Had he managed to achieve it though, nothing would have changed but the face of the operation. Navalny had 0 redeeming qualities.

all the corruption investigations his team did is a redeeming quality. No one else in russia did such thorough investigations

He had nothing to do with the investigations, he just made a youtube video about them. Join any OSINT initiative and you'll see that he brought absolutely nothing to the table - all his vlog did was to show things that were known for decades. More importantly all that "investigation"/vlog did was to outrage the non-russians. There are plenty of interviews with average russians who openly say "well yeah, of course putin has big and expensive mansions - he deserves them". And you can clearly see they truly mean what they say.

Looks like you have quite a grim outlook on russians, saying that Navalny would have ended up being the same dictator, that russians want war and want Putin as their president.

But why? I lived in Russia and even I can't be that certain. It's hard to talk about war with random people to understand their attitude. Because they live in environment where at some point you could be punished for calling this war a war.

Sorry, I've had my fair share of experience with russians, none of those were positive and I'm being extremely generous. And sorry, "you could be punished for calling this war a war" this is called being a chronic coward, assuming they do not support the war. When the special forces were beating people up to death on the streets a few kilometers from my home in the 90's, my dad picked up a crowbar and went out to fight back and my grandmother, who was 50 kilos went out to do the same with a wooden stick. They were both willing to do everything they can, even give their lives if it came down to it. This says one of two things about the current russian society: either cowards or psychopaths supporting genocide. But most probably both.

And yes, look him up on google, swap the face and the voice and you won't be able to tell the difference between the dictator and the dictator wannabe - they say the exact same things.

He was a realist and tailored his positions to appeal to the Russian mentality in the hopes of changing it from within. If he really wanted "personal gains" he wouldn't have gone back to Russia.

Now, we will never know, but historically, most people with such an outset emerge changed once at the top.

Yeah, he did it all for the immense personal gains of … getting poisoned, imprisoned, and dying in an Arctic prison colony before reaching 50.

Navalny being a Russian chauvinist should be utterly unsurprising: it would be significantly stranger for Russian opposition to be a stereotypical '60s hippie as opposed to, you know, Russian.

Personal gains as in hoping to become the next dictator - he gambled and lost. Nothing more, nothing less. As I said, I don't believe anyone in russia wants to change the system on either political level or social level. From what I can see, (almost) everyone strives for this lifestyle. It's only a question of who comes out on top.

I always wondered if he went back because he hoped to use his popularity after surviving the poisoning attempt to stir up enough chaos and somehow get into power. He probably felt if he even had a 5% chance he had to take it. Him being a narcissistic opportunistic politician makes a lot more sense to me than some heroic figure who risked his life for the Russian people.

American news media is all about the narratives and they love heroes and martyrs. I imagine in the next couple of weeks this guy will be turned into the Russian MLK of some kind, some comment here already made the comparison. It's just unreal how blatantly manipulative the whole thing is.

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