Dasha Navalnaya is the daughter of Alexey Navalny, the politician and leader of the Russian opposition to Vladimir Putin. Sharing the story of her father’s poisoning, persecution and current imprisonment, she details what it was like growing up under the watchful eye of government surveillance as her father led a decade-long investigation into the corruption of Putin’s regime — and shows why paying attention to what happens in Russia matters to everyone, everywhere.
Source: TED (YouTube), 13 October 2023
There’s been some discussion lately on what proportion of russians actually believe russian propaganda. The presumption is that a low number gives hope for the end of the regime. There’s a lot of problems with that logic. Firstly, domestic russian propaganda is very often very open about the crimes russia is committing as an imperial aggressor. So it’s nonsensical to talk only about whether russians recognise lies. What matters is the extent to which they share this imperialist mindset and chauvinistic attitudes. It doesn’t matter whether you can recognise lies if you still think of Ukrainians as your little brother speaking a funny dialect of russian who needs to be pulled back into line. The key question is what proportion understand Ukraine is an independent nation – all the way to Crimea – and has a right to exist and do sovereign things like choose its own security alliances. It’s definitely not 85%. Not even close. When it comes to russia’s lies – like the lie it’s fighting nazis – I’d estimate the proportion of russians who understand this to be a lie at roughly 100%. On some level, to some extent, literally everyone knows this is a lie. Consider this. Have you ever heard anyone ever express any confusion as to why wagner, founded by a neo-nazi, had a leading role in ‘denazification’. It was never hidden. And it does not make any sense if you believe the lie. But no one really believes russia is fighting nazis. This would be a very, very long thread if I went through all the examples of where no one ever expresses confusion when russia openly does and says things that are completely contradictory to much of its own propaganda. No one is confused because everyone knows russia lies. But that does not translate to not supporting the regime. Lying is an endemic feature of russian society. People accept lying as easily as they lie themselves because, in this case, they know the lies are necessary to advance the imperial agenda. When Navalny’s people speak to Western audiences, they play on the assumption that western values are universal in russia and that russians are yearning for a liberal democracy yet only being held back by lies told to them. This is nonsense. Think of russia like a sports team. When diehard fans see their players fake an injury to get a free kick, the fans will shout outrage to the referee in favour of their team’s free kick with no care whether that is fair or not. Would you wade into that crowd of diehard fans to tell them “actually your side cheated” and think this would end their support for their favourite team? On some level, those fans know their side cheated, but what matters is that they just don’t care about the truth despite their feigned indignation. Similarly, convincing russians their country is an imperial aggressor committing genocide does not mean they’ll suddenly want to become a rules-based democracy that stays within its borders. They already know what they are. They support it. Note that russia’s key lies, like the denazification narrative, are used far more prominently towards international audiences in just the same way as fans shouting at a referee. In both cases, the lies are part of the game to them. But this is why international attitudes to Navalny are more positive the further away from russia you get. From afar, it’s easy to convince yourself that exposing russia’s lies will lead to the end of the regime and the start of some happy liberal era led by whoever rules next, even though so much of the russian opposition reflects these same imperial attitudes. What really matters is the end of the russian imperial mindset and its ability to conduct aggression with impunity. For that, the world must support a victory to Ukraine and a Special Tribunal for russia. Give us a TED Talk about that. More importantly, do it.
