One of the main principles behind my political thought is that of leadership of ideas rather than people. While, at some point, I may have written a post about this, many people have found my comments about the death of Alexei Navalny¹ inconsistent and confusing. I think that the idea of leadership of ideas may help put my comments in context.

We debate or fight for certain political beliefs such as freedom of thought, anti-racism or wider political philosophical ideas such as communism or capitalism. It is possible to do this by following a certain person or group of people that hold, or claim to hold, these ideas or by purely supporting the ideas themselves.

These different ways of doing politics is easily demonstrated by comparing the authoritarian communists groups that are named after great men (plus Rosa Luxemburg) – Leninist, Stalinist, Maoist, Trotskyist – and the anarchists whose groupings are based around organisational structure – anarcho-communist, anarcho-syndicalist, anarcho-collectivist.

This is similar to the way that theories are discussed in the hard sciences. If you believe in the ideas of Einstein, this does not make you an Einsteinist. However, there is a tendency in other sciences such as psychology and sociology for the ideas to be strongly linked to individuals.

I see politics – how we make decisions and organise society – similarly to the way in which I see scientific problems. It is not about my or other people’s political identity – a subject that I touched on in a previous post.

Navalny

Having given this preamble, I can now state some of my related opinions:

• I do not think that people should be imprisoned or mistreated for their beliefs. I therefore support campaigns against such mistreatment or wrongful imprisonment.
• I support campaigns fighting against corruption and misuse of power in all countries.
• I do not believe in capital punishment, and in particular extrajudicial execution.
• I am against war and support anyone who campaigns against it, whether they be in Ukraine or Russia

However, I would now like to make some comments about the specific case of Alexei Navalny.

There are many political prisoners in Russia. For example, Boris Kagarlitsky² who has just been sentenced to 5 years in a penal colony for “justifying terrorism” for comments he made about the attack on the Crimea Bridge in October 2022.

The case of Navalny is less clear, since there is some evidence that he was being supported by a foreign power. This is not clear, and personally I believe that part of the reason for his imprisonment was for political reasons. I could try to go into this further, however, as I have stated before I am more interested in ideas than particular cases and people.

What I do find reprehensible is that fact that Amnesty International stripped Navalny of their prisoner of conscience status³. This was because of some racist statements that he made, including the one below⁴:

Amnesty clearly thought that he was imprisoned for his beliefs. The fact that he was a racist is irrelevant, since he was not imprisoned for that belief. Basic human rights apply to everyone irrespective of what we think of them, or else they are meaningless. This does not mean that I think that his racist comments are acceptable and I fail to see how anyone can support him given his unrepentant racism.

Navalny is portrayed as a strong freedom of speech and anti-corruptions campaigner. There are those who would argue that he was not in favour of freedom of speech for Muslims and was actually slightly corrupt himself. But from my political standpoint, this is irrelevant.

There were claims by Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon (‘Tommy Robinson’ – British right wing activist)⁵ that he was stopped from using his right to freedom of speech. I am not saying that I did, but I might have looked into it and thought that he had a valid point. This would not make me think that Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon is a great freedom of speech campaigner or that I support him. Neither would I use him as an example of how the freedom of speech is being denied – there are plenty of other examples of this.

It is unclear if Navalny was against the war in Ukraine, but was supportive of the annexation of Crimea⁶. Although I am not a pacifist, I am strongly against how ruling elites in states use normal people as cannon fodder to further their internal and external aims.

“Leadership of Ideas” – its weakness is its strength

While I do not support Navalny, I also do not ‘support’ Gandhi, Nelson Mandela or Rosa Luxemburg. This does not mean that I do not agree with some of the ideas and analysis they put forward, I may quote them if they express a point of view well.

There is a natural instinct to imitate and follow people that we ‘look up to’. This is part of the way that humans learn and develop social skills, with our parents often being the role models in early life. This makes it easy to promote a particular political idea by putting up some person as an icon. However, it also makes it easier to manipulate and control people and sometimes leads to the opposite of what was originally intended.

While I do not expect that any of us can avoid being influenced by what we think of the people who put forward political ideas it is always good to try and look at the ideas themselves.

People such as Putin and even Osama Bin Laden have said things that I agree with. I will not dismiss them just because of who said it. This is important even by the fact that this is often how they get support.

Further Comments On Navalny

Although I do not remember his name specifically (I am not that interested in leaders), I would have come across him when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. At the time, many people said that it could lead to Putin being overthrown. However, when I looked into it, I could not find any credible evidence for this. While some opposition (e.g. Navalny) did have some support, they were not nearly as popular as Putin.

This could be put down, in part, to Putin’s control of the media and his treatment of opposition groups. However, I do not see this as relevant. He is popular⁷, and it is rather arrogant for outsiders to say that the Russian people “do not know what is good for them”.

Putin has partly portrayed the war in Ukraine as being against Fascism. I would be surprised if he would not make use of the Western support for a racist such as Navalny to further this image. Particularly when many see the West not respecting the lives of Muslims in Gaza.

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¹ What we know about Alexei Navalny’s death in Arctic Circle prison; BBC; 20 February 2024 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68318742)

² Russia: Anti-terrorism legislation misused to punish activist Boris Kagarlitsky; Amnesty International; 13 February 2024 (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/02/russia-anti-terrorism-legislation-misused-to-punish-activist-boris-kagarlitsky/)

³ Amnesty strips Alexei Navalny of ‘prisoner of conscience’ status; BBC; 24 February 2021 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-56181084)

⁴ Has Alexey Navalny moved on from his nationalist past?; Aljazeera; 25 February 2021 (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/25/navalny-has-the-kremlin-foe-moved-on-from-his-nationalist-past)

⁵ Tommy Robinson (activist); Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Robinson_(activist))

⁶ What Putin nemesis Alexei Navalny is, and what he is not; Anatol Lieven; Responsible Statecraft; February 2021 (https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/02/02/what-putin-nemesis-alexei-navalny-is-and-what-he-is-not/)

⁷ Do you approve of the activities of Vladimir Putin as the president (prime minister) of Russia?; Statista (https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/)