The US government and elections in Russia

It makes sense to recall these claims in order to assess the reaction to the decision of Russian officials to prevent Alexei Navalny from participating in the upcoming presidential elections in Russia. In the American and international press this step was met with hypocritical condemnations. The newspapers published articles praising Navalny as a "fighter against corruption" and a "democratic" face of the "people's opposition" to Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

The Washington Post published an editorial that condemns the ban on Navalny before the elections. The newspaper said that Navalny's "real crimes allowed him to become the head of the opposition" to Putin's "authoritarian" government and "in this [2017] year to bring to the streets tens of thousands of supporters in cities throughout Russia with the condemnation of the regime"

Hypocrisy and cynicism of these words are just off scale. While the alleged Russian "interference" in the American election is financing for Facebook advertising in the amount of several tens of thousands of dollars, Navalny is almost entirely the offspring of the US State Department. 

Navalny is a graduate of the "Yale World Fellows Program". On the Yale University website, he is listed as a co-founder of the Democratic Alternative movement, an organization that, according to information from one diplomatic telegram ( https: //web.archive.org/web/20120504092545/http: / www ...), received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, associated with the US government. This fact was hiding because of "the fear of exposing ties with the American side." 

The World Socialist Web Site does not in the slightest degree support the use by the government of Putin of harsh measures against the political opposition, but the desire of the American press to portray itself as a defender of "human rights" and "democracy" is absurd. The United States, the state with the highest level of social inequality and the most undemocratic political system among the developed countries, is the main source of war and dictatorship around the world, and they have no right to lecture on "democracy" to others.

There is no other country in the world that interferes in the political affairs of foreign countries so directly, regularly and shamelessly as the United States. American foreign policy represents a single massive intervention in the policies of other countries, from propaganda, destabilization, financing of opposition parties, electoral fraud and coups to military bombings and occupation, all of which have been killed by more people than any other government with times of Nazi Germany.

Professor Dov Levin of the University of Carnegie Mellon collected a database that recorded 81 Washington's interference in elections in other countries between 1946 and 2000. This number does not include military coups or regime change operations after the election of candidates against which the United States has acted - in countries such as Iran, Congo, Guatemala, Chile and many other countries. 

The interference of the US government and President Bill Clinton personally in the course of the Russian elections of 1996 in order to ensure Boris Yeltsin's reelection was so unceremonious that on the cover of the Time magazine of July 15, 1996, a cartoon was placed on Yeltsin holding an American flag that accompanied by the headline "Yankees to help" (see: https://vk.com/wall-56875478_3025 ).

For its part, the US electoral system - with the enormous influence exerted on it by billionaires and corporations, as well as by the labyrinth of anti-democratic rules that create huge obstacles for candidates who do not belong to the two dominant parties - leaves no room for the voice of the overwhelming majority of the population The States were heard. 

Reporting on his visit to the United States last December, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights stated: "There is no other developed country where such a large number of voters are deprived of civil rights ... and where ordinary voters, ultimately, so little affect the political results. "

Despite substantial evidence that the entire Navalny campaign is an attempt by the US intelligence services to intervene in the course of Russian politics, the American press found a way to link Putin's actions against Navalny with the assertion that the Kremlin is undermining American democracy. 

"Even when he outlaws political competition in Russia, Mr. Putin continues to manage attempts to undermine and distort the elections in the West," the Washington Post wrote in an editorial. - For him, democratic competition is a vulnerable place that should be avoided at home and exploited abroad. In this sense, Western governments and Russian democrats have a common cause to fight Mr. Putin. "

According to the statement of special services, the mouthpiece of which is the Post, the Russian government tried to influence the outcome of the American elections by promoting "outside" candidates (representing not the Republican or Democratic party). At the end of December last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee announced that it would conduct an investigation into the candidate for the presidency of the Green Party, Jill Stein, on the grounds that her election campaign received coverage on RT (formerly Russia Today, Russia Today ) - the Russian international television channel. In this you can see nothing more than the desire to intimidate the "outside" parties and their adherents.

While doing incredible sabotage, the Post condemns Russia's prohibitive measures against one of the candidates, legitimizing at the same time in the United States attempts to declare the supporters of the Green Party as actually state criminals. 

There is another problem with the official image of Navalny as a voice of the people's opposition to the Russian oligarchy. This is the fact that he is a right-wing extremist, supported only by a small part of the Russian electorate.

Masking his right policy with a comprehensive struggle against corruption, Navalny is a figure who has long advocated extreme nationalism, has established connections with neo-Nazi groups and spreads racist views. In one video on YouTube, he compares national minorities in Russia with "cockroaches", adding that although cockroaches can be killed with slippers, for people, he recommends a gun. During the Russian-Georgian war of 2008, Navalny repeatedly called Georgians "rodents" and demanded the expulsion of all Georgians from Russia.

On the Salon news website, Daniel Ryan noted that while the US-friendly press praises Navalny as a hero, "what is less known about Navalny is its nationalistic sympathies, links with neo-Nazi groups, xenophobic comments and extreme anti-immigrant views. The references to Naval's nationalism in the West are usually concealed or ignored, while the front pages of the newspapers sing to him praises. " 

The money of the State Department is unequivocally supported by completely uncritical support in the American and international press. The New York Times published 387 articles referring to Navalny, the Washington Post published 344 similar articles, and the British Financial Times - 299.

According to a recent independent poll, despite widespread coverage of his campaign in the world media, as well as mass hostility to social inequality, which is almost as high in Russia as in the United States, Navalny is supported by only two percent of Russian voters. 

The political conflict between Putin and Navalny, in the final analysis, is a struggle within the Russian kleptocracy, which the United States is persistently trying to intervene. However, to sweep Putin and the oligarchy, on whose behalf he rules, should not be the US State Department and the CIA, but the Russian working class.