{"id":12911,"date":"2021-03-01T17:39:07","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T01:39:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=12911"},"modified":"2021-03-01T17:39:10","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T01:39:10","slug":"wests-wokeness-helped-russia-to-redefine-a-prisoner-of-conscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wests-wokeness-helped-russia-to-redefine-a-prisoner-of-conscience\/","title":{"rendered":"West’s ‘wokeness’ helped Russia to redefine a ‘prisoner of conscience’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By forcing the standards of \u201cwokeness\u201d on a Western institution like Amnesty International, the Kremlin has weakened Russian dissident Aleksei Navalny<\/a> as he begins his almost three years in a penal colony near Vladimir (190 km from Moscow). Everyone understands he is a political prisoner, isolated from Russian political life. That is the definition of \u201cprisoner of conscience,\u201d which Amnesty International has chosen to withdraw from his name<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Navalny, the major opposition figure to Vladimir Putin<\/a>, was a public relations challenge for the Kremlin even before his run for Moscow mayor in 2013. Through his Fund for the Battle Against Corruption (FBK), he has exposed the corruption and criminality of the Kremlin leadership. He barely survived the poisoning carried out<\/a>, allegedly, by the Kremlin\u2019s Federal Security Service (FSB); he returned to Moscow from treatment in Germany, only to be sentenced by a Russian kangaroo court to two years and eight months in a labor colony. To the Kremlin\u2019s irritation, Navalny has been nominated<\/a> for the Nobel Peace Prize by Poland\u2019s Lech Walesa. Amnesty International, itself a Nobel prize-winning organization, added Navalny to its list of \u201cPrisoners of Conscience,\u201d whose honor roll includes Nobel laureates Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kremlin could ill-afford to have a principled political prisoner in its penal colonies, revered Mandela-like by the international community. Therefore, its disinformation machine \u2014 masterful at discrediting persons inconvenient to the regime \u2014 switched into high gear. For Navalny, a young and attractive family man with teenage children, the usual charge of pedophilia would not have stuck. Instead, the Kremlin played on Amnesty International\u2019s \u201cown scruples,\u201d as one writer put<\/a> it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kremlin attacked Navalny for \u201cracist\u201d anti-migrant statements<\/a> he purportedly made a decade or so ago. The attack was handled largely through foreign journalists associated with RT<\/a> \u2014 a Kremlin-directed international news and TV network \u2014 in various countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill By forcing the standards of \u201cwokeness\u201d on a Western institution like Amnesty International, the Kremlin has weakened Russian dissident Aleksei Navalny as he begins his almost three years in a penal colony near Vladimir (190 km from Moscow). Everyone understands he is a political prisoner, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-3mf","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12857,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/navalny-proves-too-hot-for-poisoner-putin\/","url_meta":{"origin":12911,"position":0},"title":"Navalny proves too hot for ‘poisoner Putin’","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 13, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill On Feb. 2, the Moscow City Court sentenced Russian opposition leader\u00a0Aleksei Navalny\u00a0to two years and eight months in jail. Noted for its \u201ctelephone justice\u201d (verdict dictated by the Kremlin), the Moscow court\u2019s sentence revealed that Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0has\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12583,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-putin-getting-away-with-poisoning-another-political-opponent\/","url_meta":{"origin":12911,"position":1},"title":"Is Putin getting away with poisoning another political opponent?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 25, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The following article is from my colleague, Paul Roderick Gregory, in The\u00a0Hill Aleksei Navalny, the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation headquartered in Moscow, is one of the last-standing political opponents of\u00a0Vladimir Putin. His tightly researched, well-documented reports on the corruption of high-level Kremlin officials have been a thorn in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12607,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dont-expect-europe-to-hold-putin-accountable-in-navalny-poisoning\/","url_meta":{"origin":12911,"position":2},"title":"Don’t expect Europe to hold Putin accountable in Navalny poisoning","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 9, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"The following article is from my colleague, Paul Roderick Gregory, in The\u00a0Hill Vladimir Putin\u00a0is a notorious risk-taker. Many of his ventures have paid off for him, but did his luck run out when a suspected plot to take out opposition leader\u00a0Aleksei Navalny\u00a0veered wildly off course? Instead of being pronounced dead\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12795,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/russias-putin-and-navalny-collide-who-will-survive\/","url_meta":{"origin":12911,"position":3},"title":"Russia’s Putin and Navalny collide; who will survive?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 20, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill To understand the events of Russian dissident\u00a0Aleksei Navalny\u2019s near-fatal poisoning and his Jan. 17 return to Russia, you must know that there are two Navalnys: Navalny No. 1 is described by Kremlin-controlled media as a CIA agent, corrupt,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12917,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/do-bidens-tough-new-sanctions-give-putin-nord-stream-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":12911,"position":4},"title":"Do Biden’s ‘tough new sanctions’ give Putin Nord Stream 2?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 5, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"An article by my Hoover colleague Dr. Paul Gregory in The Hill Western\u00a0media\u00a0is greeting the Biden administration\u2019s Russian sanctions as \u201csignaling a tougher stance on Russia than under former President Donald Trump.\u201d\u00a0Vladimir Putin\u00a0likely thinks otherwise. It looks as if the Biden administration has blinked on Putin\u2019s key foreign policy objective\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11077,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/overlooked-in-putins-reelection-the-kremlins-challenge-is-from-the-left\/","url_meta":{"origin":12911,"position":5},"title":"Overlooked in Putin’s Reelection: The Kremlin’s Challenge Is From The Left","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Please read a new essay by my Hoover colleague, Paul Gregory. Paul Gregory \/\/ Forbes Vladimir Putin has destroyed his liberal-democratic opposition led by Alexei Navalny and the late Boris Nemtsov through repression. The March 2018 election reveals that danger to the Putin regime comes from a communist left reconstituted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Paul Gregory"","block_context":{"text":"Paul Gregory","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/paul-gregory\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12912,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12911\/revisions\/12912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}