While Navalny’s death has become issue number one in mainstream media news and Navalny is glorified as the champion of Russian democracy against the autocratic Putin, very few voices seem to recall that Navalny himself had pretty right-wing and anti-democratic views—and yes, you can call him a Nazi without being far from the truth.
One of those few honest voices in Europe is NachDenkSeiten, a German website with 65,000 daily viewers edited by former SPD politician Albrecht Müller. In a Feb. 20 podcast, NDS author Tobias Rigel stated: “For all their differences, no one deserves the kind of treatment that the late Russian activist Alexei Navalny received. And regardless of his political content, Navalny’s fearlessness could often impress on a personal level. But—despite all reverence—it must also be noted: Navalny was a radical right-wing provocateur; his emotional exaggeration in this country is disconcerting, especially in view of the current ‘fight against the right.’”
That last is a reference to the German government campaign against the opposition, alleging a “threat to democracy” represented by the AfD party and especially the AfD’s Thuringia leader, Björn Höcke. “To put this into perspective: In comparison with Navalny, Björn Höcke from the AfD should actually be described as ‘moderate,’ but many Western journalists ignore these relations,” the podcast says.
