[asats]

> I don't know what to believe myself. I live and work in Silicon Valley. I have Russian heritage of which I am proud, and the ongoing smear campaign is disheartening, even if not entirely unsubstantiated. I am not on payroll of any secret service.

And yet you repeat official russian propaganda word for word, including not directly naming Navalny and using the Putin's favorite "blogger/YouTuber", "The blogger in question".

Only forgot to call him "that berlin's patient" and you are ready to work on russian state television.

Also that "smear campaign" was watched over 10 million times in 10 hours in russia, because actual russians that live in russia care when the government tries to murder it's critics.

[nzmsv]

This video is not what I think of when I say "smear campaign". I think of the election interference hysteria, the whole "enemy number one" business. US media, not Navalny.

I watched the video too so I am part of the 10M. It's very well made. Most people don't have a pinboard with string on it a-la Silence of the Lambs. I got a chuckle out of the tropes.

Look, you and I have to work for a living. Who pays Navalny's bills? And no, I don't believe him when he says it is "anonymous donors". Putin is scum, but I don't think Navalny is who he says either.

More importantly, I think this whole "Russian bot" meme is incredibly damaging. Dehumanizing your opponent is standard practice for war, and this feels exactly like preparation for one. I love both countries. I have ties to both. The last thing I want is for them to fight.

[asats]

I appreciate you not wanting to demonize russia, but it looks to me like you just don't understand the situation on the ground. Getting your "other point of view" about russia from sputnik and RT is not the way to go. I agree that the american hysteria is probably mostly unfounded, but the situation in Russia itself is pretty dire.

Russian duma is rubber-stamping insane restrictive laws literally every month, to the point that people have been calling it "a crazy printer". You can get arrested for posting memes on facebook or standing by yourself with an A4 piece of paper with a political message. The courts are corrupt and have a 99.8% conviction rate. Almost all real opposition is barred from participating in any elections through very restrictive requirements plus random denials that they cannot dispute because the court system is corrupt/broken. Opposition/journalist offices get raided monthly by the police that confiscate all of their electronics. Now people are getting shot and poisoned with increasing frequency. It's a real fucking dystopia here after 20 years of unchecked rule by a single guy and it's getting worse, fast.

I don't really care for Navalny aside from his willingness to stand up to all of that. All of his movements, accounts, connections, everything has been monitored by the government for over a decade. That's not a conspiracy, Putin himself confirms it all. If he had any dirt on him, it'd all be public and he'd be in jail for treason a looong time ago. An entire FSB team of 8 people has been tailing him for over three years, again, confirmed by Putin. Yet all they throw at him is that he's an "irrelevant blogger".

Also bots are not a meme, that's a thing. I don't know anything about the american election interference, but IRA office in Olgino has been a thing for almost a decade, Novaya Gazeta reported on them in 2013 (Six of their journalists have been murdered in the last couple decades btw). The people working in those buildings are not bots, but actual people getting paid to post pro government things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency#Saint...