Democracy is worth fighting for
A myopic American electorate is quick to dishonor Navalny’s sacrifice
Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is dead, likely murdered by the Putin regime.
I’m hardly an expert on the man. What I do know is that he lent his smiling face to two ads that are even more racist and xenophobic than anything you could find in American politics. He was also somewhat sanguine about Putin’s seizure of Crimea before outright opposing the full-scale invasion in 2022.
People in conspiracy-minded Twitter, LinkedIn (yes, really), and other platforms had been harsh on Navalny for these facts for years, seeing his elevation in the media as a foil to Putin as some kind of psy-op. You’ll often see the departed activist sneered at as a CIA plant or something similar. Such unsubstantiated slander continues to this day.
Their criticisms, though, made a certain amount of sense: the primary antagonist to Putin is an American-educated, self-proclaimed nationalist who co-signs on illegally acquired territory? Some voices claimed that Navalny was just a part of the country’s “managed opposition,” and that the West had stupidly bought into the already-rigged game.
So, indeed, if all of those things were true, what good is it to the regime that the man is now a corpse?
It seems to me that what Navalny’s death signifies is that he was intolerable because of the one principle he stood for unwaveringly: democracy.
Vulgar nativism, whether opportunistic or sincere, doesn’t threaten the regime. It is in fact embraced when convenient. Investigations about misappropriated taxpayer money may be embarrassing and annoying to the regime, but the Navalny team’s documentaries just confirmed what generations have always suspected.
Had he just been media-savvy gadfly, he may well still be with us now.
But his demands weren’t for views or clicks.
He demanded democracy.
It was a principle that was worth fighting for, worth dying for.
And it was that, not Navalny’s other work, that it was worth killing him for.
Alexey Navalny leaves behind a wife and two children. He didn’t have to return to Russia, to certain incarceration and almost certain death. He chose to do this because he believed in democracy for his country.
It’s the kind of choice that inspires legends.
It’s the kind of decision that inspires change.
Contrast that with this headline about America’s 2024 election:
Saving democracy is central to Biden’s campaign messaging. Will it resonate with swing state voters?
The article quotes voters who are unpersuaded that a second Trump term would run roughshod over the rule of law, to say nothing of democratic norms. This is despite ample evidence of election tampering, voter suppression, instigations to violence, nepotism, etc. during his first term.
The 45th president’s actual incompetence in the office isn’t mentioned.
Americans are more concerned about gas prices, inflation, and border security. The white men quoted doubt that the country’s institutions will buckle under Trump, tacitly admitting that he’ll give authoritarianism a try. Latino and Black voters are more concerned about economic issues — though they are indifferent to the Biden argument because they are already convinced of the menace of a second Trump term.
As dire as the Biden team’s warnings are, this picture, of voters shrugging off warnings of imminent threats to their rights and liberties isn’t new.
Democratic campaigns tend to be long on numbers and, contrary to popular belief, short on emotion. Policy wonk Al Gore tried to debate George W. Bush on his budget, with the lattter dismissing it as “fuzzy math.” Voters that year simply liked Bush better according to many polls.
In 2008 John McCain admitted to coming up short on his understanding of economics, and his constituency was rabidly against Barack Obama because they felt he was somehow un-American, not because they thought his healthcare proposal was inadequately vetted.
American voters face the same choice every four years: one party favors moderation, technocracy, and incremental social change while the other wants to revive the Confederacy.
It’s not a hard choice to make, and it’s hard to believe that a country just 3 years from January 6, 2021, feels secure enough in its democracy to ignore it as a campaign issue.
