Excusing evil
Alexei Navalny's death brings out the worst in the post-American New Right
After years of deteriorating health, his body could take no more:
Alexei Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's most formidable domestic opponent, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the "Polar Wolf" Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence, authorities said.
The death of Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, robs the disparate Russian opposition of its most courageous leader as Putin prepares for an election which will keep the former KGB spy in power until at least 2030.
There are now no opposition leaders of such prominence left in Russia. For some young urban Russians, Navalny offered hope of an alternative future to Putin, who has served as Russia's paramount leader longer than anyone since Josef Stalin.
Navalny rose to prominence more than a decade ago by documenting and speaking publicly about what he said was the vast corruption and opulence among the "crooks and thieves" running Putin's Russia.
The Federal Penitentiary Service of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said in a statement that Navalny felt unwell after a walk at the IK-3 penal colony in Kharp, about 1,900 km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.
He lost consciousness almost immediately and died shortly after despite efforts by the prison's medical team and ambulance staff, it said, adding that resuscitation attempts failed.
This is the latest in a series of recent Russia-developments on the world’s radar screen.
There is US House Speaker Mike Johnson’s pronouncement that his chamber would not be “rushed” into passing Ukraine aid just because the Senate passed a bill approving it.
There’s also House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers’s request that the Biden administration declassify information related to a “serious national security threat” from Russia.
Then there’s Tucker Carlson’s recent sojourn to Moscow to interview Putin (who was not as impressed with the disgraced American yay-hoo as said yay-hoo had hoped) and to wax rhapsodic about the subway system and Russian grocery stores.
So far today I’ve come across two stinking rotten attempts to draw parallels between Navalny’s death and the spate of legal troubles in which the Very Stable Genius finds himself. Both former Congressman Lee Zeldin and Dinesh D’Souza, producer of movie 2,000 Mules, which peddles an unfounded conspiracy theory about Georgia election tampering, posted such attempts utterly lacking in any subtlety or nuance on Twitter / X. They both use the same phraseology, accusing Democrats of wanting to “ensure [Trump] dies in prison.”
To draw an equivalency between the courageous champion of freedom who died this morning in a penal colony and the most unfit, infantile, solipsistic, reckless, rudderless and vindictive figure in US political history is an exercise in obscenity that must disqualify those who perpetrate it from being taken seriously on anything ever again.
The 2024 New Right is so desperate to shove actual conservatism off the stage that it has embraced a regime that has this as an aim:
The Kremlin is overhauling Russia’s military in anticipation of a “prolonged confrontation” and possible war with NATO within a decade, according to a newly released Estonian intelligence assessment. The overhaul allegedly involves a buildup of Russian forces on Estonia’s border, likely doubling the presence from the 19,000 troops that were there before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian military reorganization also likely encompasses the formation of new armies to fight in Ukraine and a Russian buildup near Finland, in response to the country’s recent accession to NATO, according to the Estonian assessment.
The Estonian foreign-intelligence service released these findings on Tuesday as part of its 2024 annual report.
Trumpism is our day’s demonstration of the horseshoe theory, which posits that, at their extremes, left and right meet in a confluence of visions.
That the likes of D’Souza, Zeldin and Carlson would sign onto a laudatory assessment of Putin’s Russia after each of them had embarked on their paths in public life with quite ordinary right-of-center credentials demonstrates the perils of celebrity, both in terms of being brought to their knees in awe of the rise of someone like Trump, as well as being the recipients of flattery from Trumpist corners for their unwavering devotion.
The safe place to be in the 2024 post-West for those who have the same principles they did when they formed their worldviews is at the margins - or, as we say here at Precipice, with feet firmly planted on the infinitesimally narrow sliver of terrain.