Modern WisdomAlexei Navalny: Putin's Enemy Explained - John Sweeney | Modern Wisdom Podcast 273
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
110 min read · 21,944 words- 0:00 – 0:24
Intro
- JSJohn Sweeney
It's a fascinating and incredibly dangerous poker game between Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny. The odds are against Navalny. Inside Russia, inside a prison right now, is the future of Russia, the Russian soul at its best. The most interesting place to be right now is in prison with Alexei Navalny. (wind blowing)
- 0:24 – 3:00
Who is Alexei Navalny
- JSJohn Sweeney
- CWChris Williamson
Alexei Navalny is a guy who's been poisoned, imprisoned multiple times, had acid and green paint thrown on him, called Vladimir Putin a poison toad, and flown drones over his mansion on YouTube, and somehow not died. This reads... sounds like a spy novel.
- JSJohn Sweeney
It actually, um... I'm thinking of, um, um, a poem, um, by Lermontov, A Hero of Our Time. Actually, it's a novel. Um, I don't... wh- whenever I get into this, I want to drink vodka, and annoyingly I, I'm on gin. But he is a hero of our time, Alexei Navalny. Now, I've met him twice and I... the first time I properly engaged with him was in 2016. And this guy is challenging the Kremlin in a way which is extraordinarily brave, Chris. And, and, and people who say, you know, "What's he doing?" You know, "He's been poisoned. Why on earth is he going back to Russia?" People who, who ask... who say that haven't been paying attention. I... in very simple terms, I met... um, I've been going to Russia since '92. I did Russian O-level at school. I scraped through it. I don't speak Russian, but I love it. I love the culture. And when I used to work for the BBC, I would go there every two years, do something that would annoy the Kremlin. They would follow us around, and then I'd leave. And the last time, I did a film called Taking on Putin, and I, and I met Navalny for that twice. And he really is a hero. But, um, but here's the background, is that I met three Russians who were all critical of Putin at a time when the West was still trying to rub along with Putin. One of them, um, was Anna Politkovskaya, the second, Natasha Estemirova. Um, they were both great journalists, and the third was Boris Nemtsov. He was a journalist and a politician. Shot, shot, shot.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJohn Sweeney
So these three people who had the balls to stand up to Putin and to be critical of them were all shot dead. S- and... Navalny kn- knows this. He, he knows the history, and basically he's been challenging Putin's, you know, the poisoned toad's lock on power, lock on the Kremlin, for the past decade. And he knows that if you do that, you may well die.
- 3:00 – 7:15
Why is Navalny doing this
- JSJohn Sweeney
Um, so that, that-
- CWChris Williamson
The, the, the backlog doesn't look very good for him, does it?
- JSJohn Sweeney
No. Um, but he's doing it because I think it's perfectly possible for him to live a life in exile in Germany or the States or here, and then for one day a cement mixer to sort of cross over the road and knock him out. Um-
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJohn Sweeney
... that, that isn't... so what he's doing is, I mean, I think, you know, why the timing? I thought the timing was absolutely amazing because what he's done is he's got himself locked up on the day that, um, that Donald Trump, who was far too uncritical of Vladimir Putin, has gone and Joe Biden is, is now in place. And, and then the moment he's locked up, up pops the video. And the video is about Vladimir Putin's fancy new palace. It's a billion-pound house and it's disgusting.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJohn Sweeney
You know, there, there's... the detail I tweeted was that there is a... there's some kind of hookah bar, hookah, H-O-O-K-A-H, but also E-R, um, you would imagine. And I say that with a am-... with a fair bit of evidence because there's a stripper's pole in it. Now, it's... the other thing is if you go to Russia... so I did a film, whenever it was, 2005/6, for the BBC about, about vodka poisonings. What happened was that Putin hiked up the price of vodka, and, um, threefold, putting it out of, out of reach of a lot of ordinary Russians who were very, very poor. And the mafia moved in and started flogging, um, hand sanitizer, alcohol based, and basically, um, you have to put in a, a colorant. Nobody cares. People with alcohol problems didn't care. And this caused an epidemic of liver disease, and people turned yellow. And I went into the hospitals and the sticks, and God, it was bleak. So what you've got to realize is that Russia is far crueler and far more unfair, and wealth is divided far more unequally than anywhere in, in Western Europe or all the States, unfair as the States is. So that the idea that, you know, there, um... there are... ordinary people really suffer in Russia. But the idea that the... what Navalny calls the czar of corruption has built himself a new mansion, a new palace, is disgraceful. So it's a fascinating and incredibly dangerous poker game between Vladimir Putin and Alexei Navalny and, you know, the poi- poisoned toad in the Kremlin.... he's got the killing machine- machinery, the FSB, which is the new name for the KGB. He's got his lock on this monstrous corruption engine, the Russian economy, and he's got the oligarchs. And Navalny's in prison. Uh, he's in Remand Prison at the moment, facing trial. He can get locked up again. So the odds are really, really against him. However, Putin has been in power for 20 years and good Russians... I mean, there are... there's a new generation of Russians who've only known Putin in power, who are now 20, who've got the vo- vote, who've got energy, they've got belief. And at some point, the p- poison toad is gonna, um... is gonna run out of, um, of supporters, of money, of people willing to do the killing. So it's a... the bet's very much, you know, it's not a... the odds are against it, but my money isn't on the poison toad. My money's on Navalny.
- 7:15 – 10:37
Navalnys charisma
- JSJohn Sweeney
- CWChris Williamson
How would you define Navalny's political approach, his stance, and why is he important? Why is he popular?
- JSJohn Sweeney
He's enormously charismatic. I mean, um, you're a bit charismatic. I can shout. He'd knock us dead. You know, he's got kind of intense blue eyes. The only person... Actually, there are three... there are two other people I'm thinking about who I've met in my time. One of them is the Dalai Lama, the God King of Tibet, who, by the way, has got a fantastic laugh. Like, um, Sir James, when Barbara Windsor used to pop her bra, and he... So that's the Dalai Lama. (laughs) But he, he's got a real commanding presence in a beautiful way. The other person is Bill Clinton. When he walks into a room, Bill Clinton can command a room. The third person is Alexei Navalny. So he's got a real commanding presence. He's also... He's got a wit. Um, if you watch the video, which is... How many people have seen it now?
- CWChris Williamson
26 million people have watched the YouTube video he put up last night. So we're recording this on Wednesday, the 20th of January. Last night, on the, the 19th, he puts this two-hour-long video up. So it's not, like, something that feeds the algorithm to go viral. It's not just a short little clip. It's a full-blown documentary. And, um-
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... you're totally right. Like, the level of... the level of charisma that he's got, I, I can't work o-... I almost want to chalk it up to the translations, the captions, 'cause I'm like, "You can't speak this precisely with this much wit just on command. It must be the, the closed captions making him look cool."
- JSJohn Sweeney
He's... So he's got charm, he's got fire, he's got wit, and it's for real. Um, um, I mean, 20... I've done a podcast called Hunting Gulen, which I've just heard it's, it's now hit 2 million, um, downloads.
- CWChris Williamson
Link in show notes below. Go and listen to it. It was awesome.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Blah, blah, blah. This bastard, uh, Alexei, has got 13 times as many hits as that. I've got 2 million.
- CWChris Williamson
In a day.
- JSJohn Sweeney
And, and my stuff in a day... Fuck off. Sorry. Can we swear?
- CWChris Williamson
No. Fire, fire away, mate. Yeah, you're on the gin.
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs) But he, um... And he was really funny, really intense and, and, uh, sticking it, sticking it to the Russian... the then Russian Prosecutor General, uh, Chaika, saying all concerned deny any wrongdoing, but putting out the evidence that the, um, the prosecutor general and his family had benefited, um, from, uh, corruption. And the, the victim of the corruption who complained ended up dead. So Navalny's been doing this, you know, to my personal knowledge, um, uh, from 2016, but actually he's been doing it before that. And, and, and there's almost something monkish in the sense of there's a religious fervor that he's bringing this war against corruption.
- 10:37 – 14:58
Navalny is a dissenter
- JSJohn Sweeney
- CWChris Williamson
So Navalny is a dissenter. He appears to not really care about the powers that be, and he's just happy to continue on his path. I like how you said that he seems almost monkish. He's got this kind of religious fervor behind him that's compelling him. But really, all that is, is just values and integrity in a place where there isn't much.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Uh, many of your listeners might, might start falling off their chairs, but I'm gonna say it. He's a lawyer, and he believes in the truth of the law. Um, and he, he kind of reminds me of Sir Thomas More in the bit in A Man for All Seasons. I love Robert Bolt who wrote that, who was just a fantastic, um, um, writer. And there's a bit in, um, in, um, Thomas More, A Man for All Seasons, where Richard Rich says, "Oh," you know... s- s- I'm paraphrasing, "Screw the law. Doesn't matter." And, and Thomas More says, "No, you're wrong, because the law is... the law of England or England is planted thick with laws, and they're there to protect us. And if we knock them down, the devil can come for us. That's what the law is for." And so what Navalny does very cleverly, both in his videos and in his defenses, he says, "No, that's, that's unlawful."... and he uses the information, uh, that's available, uh, to him to, to nail Putin's illegality again and again and again. And anybody who knows Russia knows how crooked the regime is and how crooked the Russian state is. The Soviet Union was crooked too, but it had some sense of equality. I'm a little bit Soviet nostalgic in relation to the, um, to the late, to the late '70s because there was so much hope then. Uh, you know, I wasn't old enough to properly understand this, but I've heard this from, from, um, older Russians, that they had some hope that what replaced, um, the nonsense, the great big lie of Soviet communism would be better. And it's turned out that yes, um, uh, economic life has been better, but actually in reality, uh, political life is, is somehow darker because there's no hope and it's more joyless. I make a distinction, I, I've written a novel called, um, The Useful Idiot, which is about Stalin's time, about fake news in 1933. Boom, boom. And that's... That time was really dark, and Stalin looked good because Hitler was so bad, but Stalin was bad too. And, and, and, and what's happened is that Putin, Putin is more of an heir to Stalin than people think. I- not for nothing, the other day when he was arrested in the police station and there's a trial taking place in the police station, on the wall was a picture of this man, Beria, Lavrentiy Beria. Beria was Stalin's secret policeman. He was the mass murderer. He killed, uh, occasioned the death of millions of people who, who died in the gulag. Um, so there's a continuity of, of darkness, of, of evil empowered, which, which certainly Gorbachev and Yeltsin broke. Both of those men were good men, wrestling with all the contradictions of Russian power. Um, Gorbachev ineffectually, Yeltsin good to begin with, and then he drank himself into, into, into being a, a useful gibberer. Gibberish wasn't good enough. And the problem is, there's this awful dark moment of succession when nobody quite knows who's going to take over from Yeltsin, and then this, the poison toad, toad Putin appears. And-
- 14:58 – 18:47
The downside to Navalny
- JSJohn Sweeney
- CWChris Williamson
So, is, is-
- JSJohn Sweeney
Go on.
- CWChris Williamson
... Navalny, is Navalny juxtaposing his extreme integrity and extreme virtue, at least publicly, to create a contrast with Putin? Is that part of his appeal, do you think?
- JSJohn Sweeney
He always d- does it with a joke. So the downside to Navalny, and some of my Russian friends are worried about him if he does get power, is that around about 2007, '8, '9, he, he dallied with the Russian right, the nationalist right. Now, Russia is, for a whole series of reasons, it is... It... A center of its politics are almost, like, 10 or 20 degrees to the right than they are in the left.
- CWChris Williamson
I was, I was gonna say, the extreme right in Russia must be really, really right.
- JSJohn Sweeney
No, they're Nazis. And, and, and, and he wasn't one of them, but he was... He said he used language, um, in code, but the code wasn't very, wasn't very good, which was, um, talking about effectively, um, the purity of Russianness, uh, about Russian roots. And there's... Um, um, um, and this was politics to the other, and the other here being the mainly Muslim people from the south, um, people like the Chechens, um, who, who weren't, um... Who, who many Russians don't see as Russians. What happened was Navalny got locked up, and going to prison was the making of him because, uh, you know, he started, um, doing well, he became too well. He was too... He was on telly and people could see his charisma, and they switched off the telly and they locked him up for a short while. But while he was locked up in prison, he, he really got to know the liberal opposition, and he listened to their arguments and beliefs. And when he left prison, he, he had absorbed the arguments and beliefs of the liberal opposition, and allied himself with them again and again and again. And since then, he has, um, dropped the nationalist rhetoric, and, uh, you haven't heard that kind of language for... from him for a decade. So I think he's through that point, um, and, um, and, and that's, uh, in the past. Since then, he's done two particular things, and that he's... I, uh, I forget the details of it, but he's, he's... His family is mixed up Russian and Ukrainian, as many, many Russians and Ukrainians are. And he learnt, um, to speak Ukrainian. He's got... obviously had, uh, or has Ukrainian grand- um, grandpa and grandma, and loved them. Opposed Putin's war against Ukraine. Now, that's big potatoes because the Russian right doesn't like that.... and then the other thing is h- he has, he's the only, um, uh, serious figure in Russian politics who stands up for same-sex relationships, same-sex marriages, and that's super non-right. So the idea which the Kremlin put out, that he's a racist, I don't think that's, that's true, um, and hasn't been true for a decade. May not have been true back then, but I'm uneasy about the language he used back then. He doesn't use it anymore. What he's done-
- 18:47 – 25:07
Trump and Putin
- CWChris Williamson
What are some... What are some of the wars that he's got into over the last decade? 'Cause there's been... His brother's in jail in solitary confinement, and then he was getting locked up himself every five days 'cause he didn't have a permit to campaign, and summit with green paint and then em- embezzling and all sorts. Take us through some of those stories.
- JSJohn Sweeney
So, um, the... By the way, I'm a bit wired because Donald Trump has, um, has left and Joe Biden h- has come, and so you're hitting me with, asking me details so I'm apologizing, uh, to your listeners in that I can be better than this, but I'm too excited about what's happening in America. I'm also excited because of this queasy relationship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. That's over, folks, and Navalny knows it. That's why the timing. So, um, in a rough and ready way, what happens is that, um, that Putin has been i- ineffective, the boss of Russia, for two decades, and that's against the Constitution because borrowing from the American Constitution, you can only do two terms. I think four years, four years, which got you to 2008. At that point, it's arrivederci, Mr. Putin. You're out. What he does is he does a switch with this guy called, um, um, I- I'm gonna... Um, what's his name? Dmitry... I've, um, I've got the wrong name stuck in my head. But he's the... He becomes the president and Putin is the prime minister. The reality is all the power sticks with Putin. Um, there's, um, a wonderful, um, friend of mine who's written a great, um, book, uh, Stalin and His Hangmen, um, and I've forgotten his name too, but never mind, I'll, I'll... It'll come back to me. Memory pops up in a wonderful way. And he described, um, the president, it's Dmitry... Damn, I keep on wanting to say Lebedev, but it's not Lebedev. Dmitry... It means the bear in Russian. Dmitry, the president described by my friend, uh, um, Donald Rayfield, Professor Donald Rayfield, author of Stalin and His Hangmen, is Al Capone's lawyer. So Al Capone's lawyer is the President of Russia for four years until 2012, and then in 2012, guess what? The Constitution is rewritten and Vladimir Putin pops back up again, this time running for president. He wins, but the whole thing is a joke. It's a lie. It's an undermining of the, the true spirit of democracy. And Navalny, coming as he is from the right of politics, allies with the liberals, and there they start a big series of demonstrations, a big... And the two great cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow, but there are shadow, uh, demos across the country. Remember, it's huge, nine time zones. And it's a big threat to Putin's power. Eventually what happens is the demonstrations die out, um, people, they can see that power isn't shifting, Putin's there to stay. And also, um, once the, um, the big noise on the streets has quietened, then the regime starts locking people up, and one of the people they lock up is, of course, Navalny, who gets locked up inside... We- And, and he gets to know people like Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov is fantastically funny and, um, would have been a wonderful president of Russia. I interviewed him for the Russian, uh, Olympic, Winter Olympics, and the, Putin's cronies had built a road between Sochi, which is on the coast, and the ski resort up in the mountains, and it cost $5 billion, which was more than the, um, the Mars lander that NASA put on Mars. And it was so expensive, Navalny said to me, "It would have been cheaper to pave the road with Louis Vuitton handbags." Um, he was from Sochi, he was born in Sochi, um, Nemtsov, um, which is kind of like Russian Brighton, uh, and, um, lots of gay bars. So there's an issue in that will gay Olympians, when they come to compete, will they get persecuted? Because, um, the law in Russia is fabulously and i- it's disgracefully, um, anti-gay. And I interviewed the Putinist mayor of Sochi who says, "It's not a problem in Sochi because there are no gays in Sochi." And I put this to Nemtsov, and he said, "What?"
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) I'm not sure that's a solution.
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs) "There are no gays in Sochi? Then why are there so many gay bars?" And actually, it's a point I made to the, the mayor of Sochi because, well, that's funny because I went to a gay bar last night, kind of deliberately. Anyway, um, that was the kind of lovely humor that, that Nemtsov had, and then he's shot dead 100 meters from the Kremlin. Uh, and, um, and of course-... he's a big friend of Navalny. Navalny knows this. Navalny knows that challenge Putin, you may die. But, you know, he carries on. Then the ru-... The Kremlin bring a case of embezzlement, that he's got a corrupt business with his brother, and what happens is his brother is put inside the slammer and he's held in horrible solitary confinement. And all... I've interviewed prisoners who've been tortured, um, cruelly in all sorts of awful places: Algeria, uh, Syria, the dark bits of Africa, all sorts of ghastly places, Iraq. The worst thing is solitary confinement where you don't talk to anybody,
- 25:07 – 27:41
Solitary confinement in Russia
- JSJohn Sweeney
and they kept Alexei's brother in solitary confinement. He's driving me up.
- CWChris Williamson
He's still there now, right?
- JSJohn Sweeney
No, he's out. He's out. He's out.
- CWChris Williamson
Is he really?
- JSJohn Sweeney
So w-... So b-... So part of the game... He's out. Uh, part of the game with Putin is that Putin affects to be a democrat, um, who follows the law. But in reality, the system is rigged. Uh, it's a joke democracy. It's a veiled tyranny, a tyranny with gloves on. The gloves are fine. They're made of the, the best goats' leather, but nevertheless, it's a tyranny. And, in particular, Angela Merkel, the West more feebly, but Angela Merkel, who was brought up in East Germany, who spoke Russian as you had to as a little girl, she speaks good Russian, and she pushes Putin on stuff. And every now and then, Putin, um, sort of backs down when Angela gets on the phone and says, "What are you doing about this?" So anyway, he got done for embezzlement. I think part of the aspect of that trial ended up him going to Strasbourg, winning his case. That's where I, uh, met him in 2018. So this is a constant background hum to this. Um, now the other thing that happened was that he was, uh, uh, you know, he's let out and he pushes and he, he set up this wonderful, clever thing which is basically the policy of the opposition is to unite in opposition to Putin's party, which he calls the party of thieves and crooks. And he, he... His Russian is really... It's really beautifully and powerfully expressed. I'm, I'm... If people can remember, um, the plays of Dennis Potter where, um, one of the characters speaks so beautifully. That's kind of the force. You can hear the force of Navalny's rhetoric. He talks so beautifully and so powerfully. Um, and what you've got then is Navalny never stops and he's a bit like a, a n-... A Duracell bunny. Um, and, and there is... I mean, there is this kind of monkish belief in him, but set against that, there is a sense of humor. So for example, Putin has made it a policy never to refer to, um, Navalny by name.
- 27:41 – 30:58
Putins policy on Navalny
- JSJohn Sweeney
It's also-
- CWChris Williamson
Calls him the bl- the blogger, the vlogger, doesn't he?
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yeah, the, the blogger. And, um, so I, I said to... When I'd finally caught up with Navalny properly and interviewed him in Moscow in 2018, I called him, um, "So, you know, Putin never calls you by name." "Ah, you mean Lord Voldemort never calls me by my name." (laughs) Like, I just went bang in there. But it's funny. I mean, like, I would, you know... Um, we can't because of lockdown, but if the three of us were in a pub, Navalny would be fascinating. His English is, is good. It's way better than my Russian.
- CWChris Williamson
I, I'll tell you my favorite, the f- the favorite thing that I found from him. So he is doing a march somewhere or doing one of his parades, one of his speeches, and someone comes up to him and throws green paint in his face, right? They ta-... This happens twice. First time it happens, it's green paint, and the second time, I think it's green paint with acid in it. And he's sat there and the doctor's saying to him, "Mr. Navalny, you may need to accept that you might not get eyesight back in this eye." And he's recalling this tale in English to someone in this interview I watched today, and he says, "So he te- he tell me I may not get my eye back, so what I think is, is not so bad. Maybe I become, like, a pirate, you know? I can wear a patch."
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
And I just thought, "Fuck me." (laughs) The same as before this flight, that he's just been arrested getting off the other day, someone says to him, uh, "Mr. Navalny, like, are you not worried about being arrested?" And he says, "Me? Arrested? No." And you're like, "Okay."
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Like, this guy, this guy really understands humor.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yes. He, he, he's... Um, so I worry for my Russian friends be- because of this dalliance with the far right a decade ago, he ends up in some kind of, as some kind of new Putin figure. I don't think so because of something I, I've observed. I, uh, as, uh, people may know, I fell out with the Church of Scientology when I did a panorama with them, and I got interested and fascinated by cults. There is a cult of personality in Putin. And there was a wonderful, um, Professor Robert Lifton who was a great American military psychiatrist who, first of all, treated American GIs who'd been brainwashed by the Chinese communists during the Korean War when they'd been caught in North Korea. These are American GIs who became prisoners of the Chinese communists and they brainwashed them. And it's the origin... He wrote a book which became the origin of, um, The Manchurian Candidate. The novel was based on this guy's research. And he said the enemy of the authoritarian mind, of the cult, is tolerance of mockery and a sense of humor.... and, and so I treasure Navalny's humor because it's proof to me that he has got inside his head somebody who's taking the piss out of him, and he plays with that, and it's also his shield as well. And so I... that's why I think he won't become... if he gets power, uh, he won't become another Putin. Prove me wrong. But I think his sense of humor, a sense of ri- ridi- of the ridiculous saves you
- 30:58 – 31:39
Navalnys sense of humor
- JSJohn Sweeney
from believ- from doing what I think Trump's ended up doing. Is believing he can't do something.
- CWChris Williamson
You can't, you can't believe your own bullshit, can you?
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yes. I mean, but... and if you do, I mean, it's a problem because in power, there are a lot of people out to afflict you all the time. So you have to have some belief. But to have inside your, your sense of mission, which he's got, no question, something that's, that's mocking and funny and aware of irony, then that's, that's, that's a fantastic and beautiful safety valve, and he's got that in spades.
- CWChris Williamson
So we roll the clock forward, he's doing these marches, he's getting a lot of young people to go along with him, and then he was poisoned last summer and survived,
- 31:39 – 34:44
Navalnys poisoning
- CWChris Williamson
and then gets one of the assassins to admit to the poisoning on the telephone and then posts it to his YouTube channel.
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
What's going on?
- JSJohn Sweeney
So what happens is, um... so the way Russia works is none of this could happen without Putin. Who's responsible? Now, um, I'm gonna take you a little bit back, um, too because we talked about the blinding in the eye, because I met the group that did that for this film I did, um, called, uh, Taking on Putin. And I met these people and they went along... and Radion Nemtsov, who I knew and admired very much, was shot. Local people who lived in his bl- apartment block put up a, a, a shrine to him, a little, a little, um, uh, plaque and with a wreath over it. And they came along and took the wreath down, threw it away, put it in the bin, because he actually lived in the next building along, but the owner of the next building along wouldn't allow the plaques, so it was the nearest thing the locals could find. And these are... anyway, what happens next is that, um, that we are detained and sent to the Moscow, um, police station. We're inside the Moscow police station when the Kremlin media said that I had desecrated Nemtsov's shrine. Um, our cameras and our tape can prove what happened. Um, so this gives you a... and lo and behold, stories, um, about us appeared in the Moscow media, and then my passport, my cameraman's passport appeared on Russian social media. And, and we'd obviously given our passport to the police. Hello? How did that happen? It gives you a flavor of it. So what we heard was that there... and, um, there's a wonderful, uh, couple, uh, Andrei Soldatov and his Mrs. Irina, they've, they've written a fantastic book called The Compatriots, blah, blah, blah. But he told me that the work here is done by an organization called Center E, which is the counterterrorism police. But the group that, um... one of the members of the group threw the green dye with something like acid. It was the thing that, that, that scarred his eye. We don't know what it was exactly, but whatever that was was effectively controlled by Group E, by the counterterrorism police. And they're the same people... so what happened to me was, after we got detained, my passport was, um, taken by these police officers and go, and bang, up it goes on social media, and, and, uh, I had to cancel the passport because of that. You get some flavor. What's happening here is that Putin's goons are using administrative law to deny that natural justice again and again and again. And Navalny, being a lawyer, is fighting them all the time, all the time, all the time.
- 34:44 – 40:39
Navalnys courage
- JSJohn Sweeney
The poor man is blind, you know, half blinded. He was gonna lose his sight and he makes a joke of it. So there's something about his courage which is exceptional. Really exceptional. So last summer, he f- he's on a plane, he's in, um... what he's doing is he's going to the sticks. The way it works is that most people in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, if there was a free and fair election, would vote against Putin. They would vote for Navalny. The problem is in the sticks. Um, um, you get people who can... who don't get the internet properly, who just watch state TV, who believe the nonsense that it's Putin or the devil. So he's going to the sticks on a regular basis. He was in Tomsk or Omsk, I forget where, um, and he's doing a thing. And what happens is the goons go into his hotel room, and they put Novichok, which is the poison that was used in Salisbury which killed Dawn Sturgess, meant to kill, um, Skripal and almost killed that poor police officer in Salisbury. The same nerve agent. And by the way, you cannot buy this in a shop. This is something that's made in a poison factory. Um, and the wonderful people of Bellingcat have, have, have, um, dug and found pretty sh- pretty damning evidence of where that poison factory will be. It's a state-owned poison factory. And what happened in the next morning, um, uh, Navalny put on a fresh pair of blue underpants.We know this because... I'll get there. And he's flying in the plane, it's whatever it is, a five-hour flight, um, from Tomsk or Omsk to Moscow, and suddenly he feels violently ill. Screams in pain, knocks out. The pilot heads the plane down. He's gonna save the guy's... And he saves the guy's life. And there's some nonsense about... about the airport being closed, and the pilot doesn't take it. He lands the plane. The moment the plane lands, the emergency people jab him with the stuff that you give to somebody who's got some kind of, um, they can give it to, to, to junkies. It's kind of standard first aid, but it's good, and actually work. And exactly the same effect happened in Salisbury. So, really quite quickly, the immediate people in Russia did the right thing. The pilot and the emergency people straight away. Then he's in the hospital, they keep him there for slightly too long, the point being for the n- Novichok to die away so they can't see it, and then he's flown to Germany. In Germany, the best, um, um, doctors and scientists in Germany find the, um, find Novichok, and then that's... I think there are... it's tested by other labs, I think one is in, uh, France, one is in Switzerland or something like that. So three separate state-level labs find Novichok poisoning, the same thing, the same incredibly rare nerve agent used in Salisbury, used against Navalny. Navalny then, um, gets in bed with Bellingcat, which is this wonderful organization of British nerds, or it's led by a British nerd. Um, and it beautifully, they, they use various holes and opennesses inside the Russian system to identify everybody who was on that plane flying with Navalny to and from as he was on his travels around Siberia. And they've seen the same names coming up again and again and again, and then they tracked them back three years and they un- discover an assassin's crew of the same FSB, and then they find that they're FSB and they all work for the FSB, and some of them are connected to the poison factory. Then, um, they find their telephone numbers and they give this information to Navalny, and Navalny goes down a list of, like, 20 possible people in the assassin's crew. And on the last call, he gets to some goon. And said, you know, "Hi, it's, uh..." And then Navalny's pretending to be a, a high-up in the, um, in the security people. And he said, "What went wrong?" And the guy said, "Well, boss, everything went wrong." And the guy talks for about an hour on tape to Navalny, explaining what happened. And says, "So we put it on his underpants," and Navalny didn't know that. The wo- Because, um... And so what happened, beautifully, I mean, it was, it, it was like, Chris, it was like following a burglar's footsteps in the snow. You know, like, guilty, guilty, guilty. Now, what I, what I would have done is to stop there and, and just waited until Putin goes, but Navalny knows that if he's not in Russia, he's not, he's no longer a player, he's just been sidelined. He's o- out of the game. So, he sticks this out, he flies back to Russia, he's arrested and bang, he pops up the video, which he's been doing while he's in recuperation in Germany, of Putin's latest palace. It's an extraordinary fuck you. I mean-
- CWChris Williamson
The guy is,
- 40:39 – 42:04
The new mansion
- CWChris Williamson
the guy, the guy is super rigorous. Like, you can't-
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... you can't fault the level of precision that his team is going through this.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Mm.
- CWChris Williamson
So he had this two-hour video done about a billion-pound palace of Putin's with the hookah and hookah bar in, and the-
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs) It's funny, it's, you're from the Northeast, own it. Hookah.
- CWChris Williamson
Hookah. Hookah.
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
It's a hookah bar. And, um, he's using... This is the thing, right? This is, I, I, I've only looked into it this week ahead of our episode today, and the sense that I get is he's kind of like a, sort of a, a 21st-century jokey trickster using modern technology, using drones and YouTubes against this sort of old, clunking behemoth of the Russian state. And they're sort of playing Whac-A-Mole with this, th- the sort of, the old tools of the old world. Whereas, N- Navalny made this YouTube video about the new mansion by fl- by getting drones, and literally flying drones over the top of 63 hectares of land, and then there's 3D CGI imagery that shows you, this is where the tunnel goes, this is where he can have his coffee on a morning, 'cause this is where the, the, um, mezzanine level is that looks out over the beach. Like, it, it really does feel like two worlds kind of colliding. Do you get that sense?
- 42:04 – 45:59
Russias cruel past
- CWChris Williamson
- JSJohn Sweeney
Uh, very much so. And, and there's something beautiful about it too, because what this is, is it is Russia's cruel past fighting Russia's potentially bril- brilliant future.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Now, when I made the film, when I met Navalny, I met some of the people around him, and they're astonishingly brave. And as I said, the three critics I spoke about earlier, um, um, shot, shot, shot. These are, uh, Navalny supporters. One man was tasered, then stabbed, another man was...... uh, beaten senseless, beaten unconscious by, um, by thugs who never once said anything. Is that special forces? When you beat somebody up, you- you- you say, "Fuck you." Whatever, you swear. You... These people beat him up in total silence. What he was doing, by the way, was monitoring an election with a video, wa- wa- watching I think either an election or a demonstration from a video in real time from the Navalny people and they- they sourced him because it was, um, in real time. They found him videoing and then they- they beat him senseless, um, almost, uh, un- till he was in a coma and they never said a word. And then, uh, Navalny's office manager was hit over the head with an iron bar by an assailant and then, um, he put in a, um, a- a- a- a quite properly, he, uh, made a, um, a complaint so that his, um, a- the man who attacked him would be charged and he was accused of wasting police time. Now I've been there in that I filmed (laughs) somebody taking a wreath off Nemtsov's shrine and then I was accused by it and I- and I suffered to a limited extent. I understand what's going on. I- I am very moved by Navalny's courage and by the people who will support him. So this Saturday, people will come out in the streets. He's asked them to do so. We're in the middle of a pandemic. Russia's numbers have been, uh, fake but they're bad. Um, it's freezing cold and I'm gonna be fascinated to see how many people turn up. He's inside for 15 or 30 days, then he- he will be tried for b- because they're saying that he didn't comply with the terms of his previous release. And therefore, um, um, the, uh, uh, they can hit him with the long sentence. That's very likely. But the world has changed, Chris, because, um, Trump has gone and Biden is, I think, in no mood to play Mr. Nice with a man who he believes, with evidence along with the CIA, interfered with America's democracy or at least-
- CWChris Williamson
Are you gonna have... At- at this stage though, this is something I was thinking about increasingly as I read this story and it reminded me of the, I can't pronounce it, Uyghur Muslims in China. Like if-
- JSJohn Sweeney
Uyghur. Uyghur.
- CWChris Williamson
Uyghur, that's it. Sorry. Um-
- JSJohn Sweeney
Uyghur, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
If someone commits a crime against a citizen of their own country, there's no one else to step in if the state doesn't do it. Like America isn't coming to the aid of Muslims in China, and Germany isn't coming to help Navalny. Like, uh, is it realistic to expect that the American president would say, "I don't like how you're running your country over there even though it's not affecting your relation with us." Is that realistic to see that happening?
- 45:59 – 47:44
We live in the same world
- CWChris Williamson
- JSJohn Sweeney
Well, I think the idea of a nation state can do what it p- damn well pleases went out with the Holocaust. That went out with the Nazis. The- the virus, you know, underlines the point, we live in the same world. Um, and so the rule of law, respect for life, a fair trial is, um, a right for all of us, not just people who live in the happy and relatively happy and safe and prosperous democracies. And Navalny is pushing it. Now I- I'm, um, I mean, it's another conversation for another day about what's happening to the Uyghurs. I've done a film about them when I was at the BBC, um, talking to a- a- a couple of people in, um, in Istanbul who've managed to get out and that story is grim. For the moment, fingers crossed, I hope he's gonna be okay. But Navalny's story gives me tremendous hope. It's also, it's a kind of von Stauffenberg thing, Chris.
- CWChris Williamson
What's that?
- JSJohn Sweeney
When people- people say, "Hey, you know, the G- the Germans, they were all Nazis." No, they weren't. Von Stauffenberg tried to blow up Hitler. So he didn't succeed but he tried and he got killed and all of his friends were treated horribly, but they tried. There were good Germans who tried to kill Hitler.
- CWChris Williamson
What's your prediction? What do you think happens? You've got 30 days, the next 30 days where he's potentially back in Russia. He's in jail.
- JSJohn Sweeney
So, uh-
- CWChris Williamson
He had this fake mock trial thing in the police station.
- JSJohn Sweeney
I think,
- 47:44 – 50:37
The oligarchs
- JSJohn Sweeney
I mean all- all of that pantomime will continue and it'll be cruel. Meanwhile, ordinary and extraordinary people, in particular young people, the kind of people who are watching this, there, will come out on the streets and they'll get beaten up and bashed and they might lose their jobs. And I think it's our duty to stand by them and to do something to help them. And now Navalny's put out, his people have put out a- a- a thing. They're saying we should have, um, the West should, um, should act against some of the oligarchs who've ended up here or concerned in any- any wrongdoing. But we've heard some of them. Roman Abramovich, the guy who owns Chelsea. Alisher Usmanov, who was a part owner of Arsenal, who's still- still a big player in Britain. Um, th- uh- the- the, uh, Navalny doesn't mention them but I will, um, the Lebedevs, they own the Evening Standard and the Independent. Yevgeny Lebedev has just been made a Lord by, uh, Boris Johnson.They're striking people because they, you know, you would appear, uh, it would appear that they're, they're independent, they don't do what the Kremlin does. None of them have said a word about this, not a word. Yevgeny Lebedev, Lord L- Lebedev, Baron Siberia, has not said anything about it and he's a British lawmaker. Is he beholden to a foreign power? But essentially, our bit, what we should do, if I was in Parliament, if I was in the House of Lords, Lord Sweeney of gin and tonic right now, would say this, that, that we should, um, we should, uh, that Putin is there, he's been there for far too long. He has rigged our elections and he's locked up the effective leader of the opposition, his goons having poisoned him and his goons having poisoned Dawn Sturgess in S- Salisbury. Let us cut convertibility between the ruble and the pound and the ruble and the dollar. That makes life much more difficult for the rich people in Russia to run their lives like they have. Because they don't want to spend their money in Siberia. They want to spend it in London and in Rome and in the South of France. But if you make that much more difficult for them, then the calculation, if you're a Russian oligarch, "My life is better with Putin in charge," isn't so clear and obvious. If-
- CWChris Williamson
So that's the, the, the leverage that needs to be used, is to make the status quo, which is being maintained by a careful structure of money and power and enforcement, you need to make the world that potentially could be offered by Navalny, like genuine democracy, more attractive than the current situation with all of these restrictions in?
- 50:37 – 51:39
Sanctions
- CWChris Williamson
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yeah. So what you say... And I'm, there, there is a, um, there are sanctions on at the moment. They're not really hurting and they're not hurting the rich people. So, you know, you, um, you zap, uh, the oligarchs wallets and their calculation of "Putin is our man" may change. And that, uh, that's, that's something that we could do and we should do, and th- that's what I'm arguing, um, here. All concerned deny any wrongdoing. I mean, when I, the last time I was in Russia, when I came back, uh, my neighbors said to me, they, you know, "That was great, John, but we're not going to accept any of your Amazon parcels anymore." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
I was gonna say, yeah. Especially not if it's a pair of blue pants. What's it gonna take to-
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
What's it gonna take for Navalny to get into power? Like is there... There's no chance that you're gonna be able to-
- JSJohn Sweeney
No.
- CWChris Williamson
... with some 18 to 24 year olds, like, TikTokking in the street and doing a few parades with some signs, there's no way that you're gonna knock down Putin with that, is
- 51:39 – 52:55
Putin in trouble
- CWChris Williamson
there?
- JSJohn Sweeney
As I said, um, uh, towards the start, it's an, uh, the odds, uh, are against him, but, but, but my money is with the challenger, not with the poisoned toad. I think behind the 18 and 24 year olds, there's a whole bunch of middle-aged and old people who get it that he's been in power too long, who've seen Trump's in power, now Trump's gone. That's the benefit of American democracy. It changes, the tone will change, they will see all sorts of stuff about Biden, who's plainly a decent man. Well, why can't that happen in Russia? It can't happen in Russia because Russia never changes. I don't think that is sustainable over time, so I think Putin's in trouble. He's on, in trouble, number one, because oil and gas are boring and they're damaging the planet. The other day, I started listening to David Attenborough's, um, a, A Life on This Planet, and it was s- so good and yet so depressing. I-
- CWChris Williamson
He's pulling on some heartstrings at the moment, man. David, every single time. He got, he goes on Instagram and he's making everybody cry and he's saying, "I don't have long left for this world," and he wants to try and-
- JSJohn Sweeney
I d-
- CWChris Williamson
You just think-
- 52:55 – 54:48
Russian oil and gas
- JSJohn Sweeney
But, uh, uh, well, I listened to the man and my p- Okay, we don't need Russian oil and gas. We actually don't. We're not flying, um, the amount of... I mean, it's lovely to see, um, people on their, their crazy e-scooters. I mean, I used to see cars. I don't see cars outside my, uh, my place in London. I see people on e-scooters and bikes. We don't need Russian oil and gas. So Putin's got a problem in that he's, he's a sort- he's a political dinosaur sitting on a dinosaur economy. Still strong, still massive, still frightening and cruel, but there are limits to it. And there are limits to the loyalty of his people, but we've got to work harder at doing that. But the odds are against Navalny. But what he is doing is the idea that Russia is a kind of boring, far right, um, authoritarian stasis where no one is challenging the Kremlin. That's not true. Inside Russia, inside a police station, inside a prison right now is the future of Ru- Russia, the, the, the Russian soul at its best. The most interesting place to be right now is in prison with Alexei Navalny, if I was Russian. I'm kind of... I can't because of lockdown. But if I could, I'd fly straight out there, get into a fight, get locked up and, and, and I'd, you know what, what a-
- CWChris Williamson
Have a chat with him next door.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yeah, what a pleasure, and say, "Hello, I mean, it's been quite a while, but here's your first inside jail interview." And somebody would smuggle it out, because remember, even in the palace stuff, the r- the hookah room... Say it again in your funny Northeast accent.
- CWChris Williamson
Hookah. Hookah.
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- JSJohn Sweeney
But in the
- 54:48 – 56:00
Russia has proper soul
- JSJohn Sweeney
hookah room, there is somebody who's given that to Navalny.... so the, so the, the, the, and that is the thing about Russia, is that it's got, it's got proper soul. There is a proper sense of the people in, around him that this is a war they're fighting, and it's a war where truth and justice and the law is on their side, and the people in power are rigging the thing again and again and again. And what Navalny is doing is proving that in a way which is, it's kind of beautiful. I want everybody who's listening to this nonsense, it's not nonsense, to watch the, the Navalny video 'cause it is-
- CWChris Williamson
It'll be linked, it'll be linked in the show notes below.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Can you just give us the, what's the, the cliff notes on this new mansion video and why is it important?
- JSJohn Sweeney
It's disgusting. It's disgusting.
- CWChris Williamson
But is, is that, is, is the, is the issue that he, President, uh, Lord of Russia, Vladimir Putin has no class and style? Is that the issue or is it the issue-
- JSJohn Sweeney
No.
- CWChris Williamson
... that he's spent so much money? Is it where it is? What's going on?
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yes.
- 56:00 – 1:12:39
Putin squanders money
- JSJohn Sweeney
Uh, uh, uh, so the, the, uh, uh, the primary issue is everybody is suffering because of the, because of the virus, also in Russia too. Um, and for him to squander a billion pounds on this absurd palace when he's got plenty of other palaces, um, beautiful ones, um, historical ones. He doesn't need this. He doesn't need this at all, and yet he, he squandered this money, and that is the fruit of his corruption, and that is a criminal waste of money. So, what it shows is that, is that Vladimir Putin is the Al Capone of Russia. He's the Gambino crime family, uh, and he has, his, his family have gotten richer and richer of Russia. He is the Ronnie and Reggie Kray of Russia, two ghastly twins in one unwholesome, poison-toed body. I, uh, I mean, uh, another thing I haven't talked about but I will, um, I did a report for Panorama about MH17. This was the plane that was shot down by a Russian, um, rocket launcher, f- uh, lent to the pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels, and they thought it was a Ukrainian fighter jet, but they shot it down, and 298 people died. And I went out there, um, um, for Panorama, and we, and I did a piece to camera in the dying of the light surrounded by, um, engine oil and broken engines and broken plane, the, the nose, and other people's luggage. And the worst thing is, Chris, is the, um, those little, um, things that kids, the little mini suitcases with little wheels that a toddler sits on while mom and dad run them along, and they're, they were in the fields, the airplane oil burnt fields of, of the middle of nowhere in Ukraine. And whenever I go through Gatwick or Heathrow, and I see one of those and I, and I start welling up. I start to cry because it triggers that. 10 Britains died in that, a ton of Australians, lots of Dutch people, Malaysian people, 298 people, and the person ultimately responsible for that, because you cannot buy a rocket launcher in a shop, was Vladimir Putin, and he got away with that. Um, Dawn Sturgess died of Novichok in Salisbury. It feels like Putin's got away with that. And, and, you know, there's a certain point at which we've got to stand up to this man, and also, we should help this beautiful, brave, slightly crazy guy called Alexei Navalny. Watch his stuff. Write your MP. Push it.
- CWChris Williamson
What is your opinion or what is your estimate for the next 10 years in Russia? Where do you think it's heading? I know where you want it to head, but given the, the realism and the power and the money and the state and all that stuff, what do you think is gonna happen?
- JSJohn Sweeney
(inhales and blows) Right, so most likely, um, Navalny, there's some accident happens to him in prison. One of the other psychos kills him. There's a trial. Putin stays in power, stays in power, stays in power-
- CWChris Williamson
How, how old is Putin now? He can't stay in power for that much longer.
- JSJohn Sweeney
He, he's, um, he's seven... He can stay in power for as long as he bloody wants.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, as long as he's alive.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Uh, yeah, um, but that's the thing. If, if, so that's the most likely. What I'm hoping for, what I want to happen is that the, the soul of Russia wakes from its slumber, uh, sparked by Alexei Navalny's heroism, people get out in the streets, and at the same time, uh, Joe Biden, who's seen his country defiled by Donald Trump, but also in part by Russian interference in American democracy, does stuff. Um, I'm skeptical whether Boris Johnson would do anything. He's the man who's an- ennobled one of Vladimir Putin's olli- oligarchs. I feel that w-... I, but I feel that change is in the air, and that- and as I said at the beginning, my money is on the challenger, not the poisoned toad. It's- I said this about my, about uh, Ghislaine Maxwell, that story that was a dark, thorough story, and this is too, but I'm- I- it is a dark story in that you've got the- you've got the charismatic guy who's gone into the lion's den. He's gone back into prison knowing he's going into prison. And it- it's kind of like, um, (sighs) Steve McQueen in, um, uh, in The Great Escape, though he's sitting in the cooler. But boy, boy, you know, if you've got a heart and soul, whose side are you on? You've gotta be on- on the side of the prisoner. There's one more thing is that, in- in '88 as a- a- a young reporter for The Observer, I went to South Africa when Mandela was still in prison, and I got, you know, gassed by the, um, South African apartheid police. Apartheid was still in power. But you could tell that they were more afraid of the prisoner, that the- somehow the politics, the- the shape of power had been switched, so the prisoner was more trouble in prison, and that they were- they were finding a way of getting him out. Now, that- the- the problem is that Putin is different, but if Putin has a stroke or Putin drinks the wrong cup of tea, then who knows what happens? So once again, my money is on the challenger, not the poisoned toad.
- CWChris Williamson
Anyone that can deliver 26 million YouTube views in the space of 24 hours shouldn't be messed with.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Absolutely not. That's dangerous, man. I mean, it's- it's- I was looking at- I did a little bit of crunching on the stats on the back end. His YouTube channels had a quarter of a million subscribers added in a day. It's absolutely terrifying. And then the- when you look at the total plays across his channel, the trickle-down from people finding that one video, which is probably trending across Russia and, you know, Eastern Europe, uh, has trickled into everything else as well. So, I mean, if there's any aspiring YouTubers listening and you want to go and look at some ridiculous stats, just go on SocialBlade and search for, uh, Navalny's account, because it's absolutely terrifying. But, uh, I- this is the most interesting time. I can't imagine what it's like to be inside of- I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to be inside of Putin's head most of the time, but I certainly can't imagine what it's like now when you have this- this new weaponry, rhetoric, and- and, um, charisma that's being, uh, utilized, uh, and promulgated through a channel which you don't use, and you're fighting with sticks and clubs and this person's come in with, like, a laser sword and has decided to use that. It very much does feel like David and Goliath, old against new. There's definitely some archetypes going on, which I think is what makes it so interesting. What I found fascinating, and you may have noticed this if you watched one of Navalny's videos, is that he's got some hard-coded adverts partway through, and this- it's this y- young guy who hosts the channel and he's letting him speak, same way as we've been tonight, and he goes, "But first, like, a word from our sponsor," and it cuts to him talking about the sponsor. The first thing he says is, "50% of people aged between 18 and 24 in Russia say that they want to leave, to go and work somewhere else." And his campaign is, "Don't leave. You don't need to leave Russia. You can work for these c- these different countries, companies from within Russia, but you need to learn English, and I learned English with this particular company." 50% of the population aged between 18 and 24 w- don't want to be in that country anymore. Like, that- the fact that you have that in- it's- you don't think of Russia- I know that w- there's jokes made about it being a dictatorship, but you don't think of Russia in the same league as North Korea. But when you think that half of the people who are probably the- the most up-to-date, the m- most informed about what's going on, and also have sufficient time left to be able to make a choice, given the freedom without the, uh, restrictions of family and debt and all the rest of it, and they don't want to be there anymore. Like, that's pretty terrifying.
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yes. Well, I'm- I'm- but it- it's a logical consequence, um, the number doesn't surprise me, that if you, um, want to, um... If you apply for a permit to do something, you have to pay somebody off again and again and again. If- if you annoy somebody in power or, you know, like, you've got a relationship and then, um, you're in love with somebody, but then somebody else, um, who's in power who's a policeman or- or worse, an FSB officer, fancies your woman, then you could get- you could locked up. You could get into trouble because of this. Tha- those are real world things there. So-
- CWChris Williamson
So crazy.
- JSJohn Sweeney
... it- it- it's a dark, dark place. Now nor- I've been to North Korea, um, and I'm not, you know, I'm telling you the truth. When I got to Beijing, I thought, "Thank God I'm just in a region with real authority."
- CWChris Williamson
Somewhat tolerant. (laughs)
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs) Yeah, well I feel like there were people with pink hair, I thought, "Tha- thank God I'm in a, um, only slightly fascist China," uh, as opposed to that place. Because, by the way, left and right, in places like North Korea and China and Russia, they- they kind of fuse, but- but actually, um, these days, Russia is- is way m- oh, it was under Stalin, the story of... I try and tell my-... my Thriller, The Useful Idiot, is that Stalin's Russia was close to Nazi Germany long before the, uh, the midnight pact of '39. They were doing deals, the Nazis, um, and the Nazi sympathizers and the Soviet states from '31 onwards. So, and, and also remember that the Russian state has been funding the far right. It, it helped, it helped Trump get elected. It's been helping the far right in Britain and across Europe. Um, that is what the Kremlin's doing. That's where the money's going. So in part what we should be doing in helping Navalny, at least watching his videos and becoming incentivized to his, uh, to his heroism, is also we're trying to defend our common democratic values, which is... that's a universal thing. The other thing I'd say to you, um, everybody who's watching, when we can travel again is go to Russia. Go to... by the way, go via Belarus. Um, take a copy o- of 1984, Animal Farm, leave it in a bar. Um, go, you know, if you can, if Navalny's still doing it, um, I hope he is, go on a demo. Um, if your, um, if your family's got money and, uh, your dad's got access to fancy lawyers, get arrested. You know? (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs) It sounds like, it sounds like, it sounds like a wonderful holiday. I'm actually going to-
- JSJohn Sweeney
(laughs) .
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, Ukraine, Lviv-
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... uh, and then going St Petersburg and Moscow-
- JSJohn Sweeney
Mm-hmm.
- CWChris Williamson
... this summer with my friend Michael Malice, who is a podcaster and a, a media personality in his own right. But he's born in, born in Lviv and is going-
- JSJohn Sweeney
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... going back to his homeland for the first time ever. I'm going with him. We're gonna do a full video series.
- JSJohn Sweeney
It, it's, uh, fantastic. Uh, w- weirdly, um, because I lost my temper at the Church of Scientology and I did this panorama rubbishing Scientology, I'm a pinup for psychiatrists the world over. And when there was a, um, uh, the Royal College of Psychiatry threw an international symposium for psychiatrists, um, I was the, uh, the funny man before the drinks at the ExCeL Center, and I got 5,000 psychiatrists to dance to, um, Saturday Night Fever with John Travolta, who is of course a famous Scientologist. And I got the, the then-head of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Sir Simon Wessely, to pretend to be John Travolta and dance, and he did terrible. Anyway, never mind this. What happens is as a result of that, I got an invite to give a talk at the Ukrainian College of Psychiatry in Lviv, and, um, and they flew me out there. And it's a wonderful place. Formerly Austro-Hungarian, then, um, um, then, um, then Soviet, but was always a center of re- resistance to Soviet groupthink. And it's a fantastic place, but so is Russia. I mean, uh, it is an inc- I mean, um, the thing that gets my goat is that when I'm accused of being Russophobic, I love Russia. I love Russian culture, Russian books, Russian poetry. There's a wonderful phrase, uh, by Lermontov, "The restless, he begs for storms as though in storms there is rest." Incredibly beautiful culture, fantastic alcohol, vodka, freezing cold in the snow. You won't get that, but you can... anyway, eat, you'll, you'll have the time of your life.
- CWChris Williamson
I'll ask you-
- JSJohn Sweeney
But-
- CWChris Williamson
... I'll ask you for some recommendations, John. You can send me-
- JSJohn Sweeney
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... some of the-
Episode duration: 1:12:39
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