Navalny Is a Political Prisoner, Trump is Not
Comparing Russia’s system of government with America’s rule of law is not only wrong, but dangerous.
On Twitter (or whatever we are supposed to call it) the other day, I recently wrote the following:
“Strong leaders defeat their opponents in free and fair elections. Weak leaders arrest their opponents.”
That statement generated a ton of attention – 431,500 views, 1,000 reposts, 6,000 likes, and 866 comments – but partially for the wrong reasons. Many believed I was writing about Mr. Donald Trump, and others were joking that I was. Those comments were truly insulting to Alexey Navalny and dangerous for American democracy.
Of course, I was writing about Russian leader Alexey Navalny, not Trump or the four new indictments that Special Counsel Jack Smith released, charging Trump with “conspiring to defraud the U.S., conspiring to disenfranchise voters, and conspiring and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding.”
Days after this tweet, Navalny received yet another prison sentence. This time he was accused of, among other things, creating and financing an extremist community – his Anti-Corruption Foundation. Consequently, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Putin and his regime need to keep Navalny in jail – and, equally important, keep him silent (Navalny was earlier forbidden to write letters or use writing materials) – because they know that the popularity of Putin, Kremlin policies, and dictatorship is not as solid as opinion polls suggest. If Navalny were just a marginal political figure in Russia, why lock him up for decades? To live in freedom again, Navalny must outlive Putin. As he said after the hearing:
“19 years in a special regime colony. The number doesn’t matter. I understand very well that, like many political prisoners, I am serving a life sentence. Where life is measured by the duration of my life or the life of this regime. The number from the verdict is not for me. It is for you… They want to frighten you, not me, and deprive you of the will to resist. You are being forced to surrender your Russia without a fight to a gang of traitors, thieves and scoundrels who have seized power. Putin should not achieve his goal. Don’t lose the will to resist.”
In the meantime, Mr. Trump is still a free man, and is in fact, preparing for his defense regarding these new (and previous) indictments. Navalny and Trump have nothing in common.
First, Navalny was arrested and imprisoned because he sought to restore free and fair elections in Russia. Mr. Trump’s most recent indictment was issued because he allegedly was trying to disrupt a free and fair election.
Second, Putin arrested and imprisoned Navalny for obvious politically-motivated purposes. Navalny broke no laws. In Russia today, there is no rule of law. Trump was indicted not for political motivations, but because he allegedly broke the law by trying to disrupt the processes of American democracy. President Biden did not indict or arrest Trump. An independent Special Counsel appointed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) did. To those absurdly claiming that DOJ Special Counsels are beholden to presidents, please google “Archibald Cox,” “Kenneth Starr,” or “Robert Mueller.”
Moreover, Jack Smith could not indict Trump alone. He had to convince a Grand Jury to do so. Biden had no say in appointing Smith or selecting the grand jury, or influencing the grand jury. This is how our system works. We still have the rule of law. In Russia, Navalny was not indicted by an independent prosecutor or a grand jury.
Third, we still do not know if Trump will be convicted of these charges. A jury of peers will make that decision, not President Biden or the Department of Justice. In Navalny’s court cases and hearings, the outcome has been known well before the trial even started. That is a huge difference between Trump’s situation and Navalny’s fate.
Claiming that both Trump and Navalny are “political prisoners”, therefore, is ridiculous. It is exactly the message Putin’s propagandists want you to believe (and they are succeeding!). Just watch this clip or this clip and see for yourself. Or read this article by Kremlin-funded RT.
Making such false analogies between Russian autocracy and American democracy is dangerous. Doing so erodes the legitimacy of American democratic and legal institutions. These kinds of false claims build on a longer track record of the decay of U.S. democratic institutions that Trump and his enablers have spearheaded and continue to spread. Most alarmingly, Trump has convinced millions of Americans that President Biden did not win the last election freely and fairly. When losers in elections do not accept election results, democracies collapse.
Russia and the United States are partially similar in one regard: both Russia’s elite and members of the Republican Party stayed complacent when their respective presidents eroded democracy at home. Twenty years ago, silence was the response of Russia’s elite in the early years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. Because Russian elites benefited from Putin’s policies like cutting corporate and personal taxes and liked Putin’s pledge to make Russia great again, they looked the other way when Putin gradually began to weaken checks and balances on presidential power. Russia’s elite did not speak up honestly or aggressively about Putin’s anti-democratic actions until it was too late.
I see a similar trend in American politics today. Many in the Republican Party have been reluctant to criticize Trump’s anti-democratic ways, including most tragically his encouragement of protesters during the January 6th Capitol riots. Over 5 years ago, right after Trump’s inauguration, in the Washington Post op-ed called “We Can’t let Trump Go Down Putin’s Path,” I wrote,
“Let us not end up in the position of those Russian democrats, both inside and outside government, who later wished that they had stood up to Putin’s autocratic ways earlier, when it was easier and they had more power to do so.”
Comparing our rule of law to Russian autocracy does not defend American democracy but erodes it. Opposing Trump because he can’t win, as so many Republican elites do now, is not the same as opposing Trump because he represents a threat to our democracy. Believing or even joking about the parallels between the Russian and American systems of government, as so many did on my Twitter thread last week, could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
All quite true. Mr. Navalny has a tweet out today in which he asks for help in overcoming the "hate and fear" he now feels towards the elites who allowed Russia to miss the opportunity for democratic reform in the 1990's. They fell into the trap of the "end justifies the means," even when the means, e.g., rigged elections, unjust prosecutions, a politicized court system, were clearly wrong. My response to Mr. Navalny was that his hate and fear over the corruption and injustice he has seen in Russia and in his own unjust imprisonment are quite in order. But hating the unjust deeds is not the same as hating the authors of those deeds. Were those same authors under his control by some twist of fate, he would hopefully not seek vengeance but only their just desserts under a fair rule of law. I feel the same about Mr. Trump. I would not resort to the same sort of vilifying speech and tactics he employs against his opponents, nor would I seek vengeance for the harm he has caused to our system. I would not excuse it, however. He should be held accountable if proven guilty for what he has done under a fair set of laws, which we should all seek to uphold and preserve.
Sorry. Posted that before I was finished. The other part is that there is also a profound ignorance of what Russia is today. The use of socialist and communist to describe the Putin regime is puzzling. I have students refer to Russia today as the Soviet Union even though it has been gone for over thirty years and they were born more than a decade after its collapse. They are picking this up somewhere... It is a level of disinformation to demonize the left, but also to insulate the far-right, fascist ideologies...
But just plain historical ignorance is also a big problem. Or, they watch one video on social video an social media and are convinced that Biden is as repressive as Putin. I almost dread the start of a semester where I have to disabuse them of these notions without losing it.