Category: Free Speech

“He Lived as a Free Man and Died as a Free Man”

(p. A1) Thousands of people crowded a neighborhood on Moscow’s outskirts on Friday [March 1, 2024] — some bearing flowers and chanting, “No to war!” — as they tried to catch a glimpse of the funeral for Aleksei A. Navalny. The outpouring turned the opposition leader’s last rites into a striking display of dissent in Russia at a time of deep repression.

. . .

After a procession to the cemetery, Mr. Navalny’s coffin was placed next to his freshly dug grave. Video live streamed from the site showed his family members and then other mourners kissing him goodbye for the last time. Then his face was covered with a white cloth and the coffin was lowered to the Frank Sinatra song “My Way” and then the final song from “Terminator 2,” which Mr. Navalny considered “the best film on Earth.” Mourners slowly passed by, each taking a handful of dirt and tossing it into the grave.

. . .

Outside the church, people chanted, “Thank you, Aleksei” and “Love is stronger than fear,” according to videos from the scene. As they gathered next to the cemetery, mourners cried out, “peace for Ukraine — freedom for Russia!”

. . .

(p. A8) Some people traveled from far away to attend the funeral. Anastasia, 19, had flown in from Novosibirsk, 1,800 miles from Moscow, to be present.

“I came here because this is a historic event,” she said in a voice message from the neighborhood where the church service was held. “I think that he is a freer man than all of us,” she said of Mr. Navalny. “He lived as a free man and died as a free man.”

In Russia, it is considered bad luck to give living people an even number of flowers in a bouquet — those are reserved for funerals. But Anastasia said that many mourners carried bouquets with an odd number, “because for them, Navalny lives on.”

For the full story, see:

Valerie Hopkins. “Crowds Flood Moscow Streets Over Navalny.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 2, 2024): A1 & A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 1, 2024, and has the title “Thousands Turn Out for Navalny’s Funeral in Moscow.”)

3.7 Million Russians “Flocked” to Film Satirizing “Tyranny and Censorship”

(p. C1) By all appearances, the movie adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s cult favorite novel “The Master and Margarita,” in Russian theaters this winter, shouldn’t be thriving in President Vladimir Putin’s wartime Russia.

The director is American. One of the stars is German. The celebrated Stalin-era satire, unpublished in its time, is partly a subversive sendup of state tyranny and censorship — forces bedeviling Russia once again today.

. . .

“I had an internal belief that the movie would have to come out somehow,” the director, Michael Lockshin, said in a video interview from his home in California. “I still thought it was a miracle when it did come out. As for the response, it’s hard to expect a (p. C2) response like this.”

More than 3.7 million people have flocked to see the film in Russian theaters since its Jan. 25 [2024] premiere, according to Russia’s national film fund.

. . .

State networks didn’t promote the movie the way they normally would for a government-funded picture. And the state film fund, under pressure after the release, removed the movie’s production company from its list of preferred vendors.

The antics spurred a new wave of moviegoers, who rushed to theaters fearing the film was about to be banned.

“The film amazingly coincided with the historical moment that Russia is experiencing, with the restoration of Stalinism, with the persecution of the intelligentsia,” said the Russian film critic Anton Dolin, who has been branded a “foreign agent” and fled the country.

. . .

“The movie is about the freedom of an artist in an unfree world,” Lockshin said, “and what that freedom entails — about not losing your belief in the power of art, even when everything around you is punishing you for making it.”

. . .

When Putin launched his invasion two years ago, Lockshin opposed the war on social media from the United States and called on his friends to support Ukraine. Back in Russia, that put the movie’s release at risk.

“My position was that I wouldn’t censor myself in any way for the movie,” he said. “The movie itself is about censorship.”

. . .

The film’s verisimilitude was unmistakable for many moviegoers.

Yevgeny Gindilis, a Russian film producer, said that he had crowded into a Moscow theater near the Kremlin to watch it, and sensed some discomfort in the hall. At the end, he said, about a third of the audience erupted in applause.

“I think the clapping,” Gindilis said, “is about the fact that people are happy they are able to experience and watch this film that has this clear, anti-totalitarian and anti-repressive state message, in a situation when the state is really trying to oppress everything that has an independent voice.”

Gindilis recounted how one of the most uncomfortable scenes for people to watch in Moscow was the final revenge sequence, when the devil’s mischievous talking cat repels a secret police squad that has come to apprehend the Master, leading to a fire that ultimately engulfs all of Moscow.

The Master and Margarita, alongside the devil, played by the German actor August Diehl, gaze out over the burning city, watching a system that ruined their lives go up in flames.

“Today the whole country is unable to take revenge or even respond to the persecution, restrictions and censorship,” Dolin, the film critic, said. But the protagonists of the film, having made a deal with the devil, manage to get even.

The film flashes to the Master and Margarita in the afterlife, reunited and free. “Listen,” she says to him. “Listen and enjoy that which they never gave you in life — peace.”

For the full story, see:

Paul Sonne. “Poking The Bear Right In His Den.” The New York Times (Monday, February 19, 2024): C1-C2.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 16, 2024 and has the title “Life Imitates Art as a ‘Master and Margarita’ Movie Stirs Russia.”)

Even in Chinese “Oasis” for “Dreamers,” Space to Think Critically “Is Shrinking”

(p. A8) Welcome to the Chinese mountain city of Dali, also sometimes known as Dalifornia, an oasis for China’s disaffected, drifting or just plain curious.

The city’s nickname is a homage to California, and the easy-living, tree-hugging, sun-soaked stereotypes it evokes. It is also a nod to the influx of tech employees who have flocked there since the rise of remote work during the pandemic, to code amid the picturesque surroundings, nestled between snow-capped, 10,000-foot peaks in southwest China, on the shores of glistening Erhai Lake.

. . .

But recently, Dali has filled with a different crop of wandering souls: young people from China’s megacities, fleeing the intense lifestyles that so many of them once aspired to. Worn out by the high cost of living, cutthroat competition, record youth unemployment and increasingly suffocating political environment, they have turned Dali into China’s destination of the moment.

“Young people who can’t fit into the mainstream can only look for a city on the margins,” said Zhou Xiaoming, 28, who moved from Shanghai three years ago.

. . .

. . . nowhere in China is truly immune to the tightening political climate — as Lucia Zhao, the owner of the bookstore where Ms. Chen was reading Beauvoir, recently learned.

Ms. Zhao, 33, moved to Dali from Chengdu in 2022 after being laid off from a tech company. She opened her bookstore, which focuses on art, feminism and philosophy, because she wanted to create a space where people could relearn to think critically, she said.

But in August [2023], officials suddenly confiscated all her books, on the grounds that Ms. Zhao had applied for only a regular business license, not a license specifically for selling publications. She shut down for several months while applying for the license and rebuilding her inventory.

She was now more cautious in her book selection. Local officials dropped in occasionally to inspect the store and had recently scrutinized a display of antiwar books she had put out.

“You definitely have more latitude in Dali than in cities like Beijing and Chengdu,” Ms. Zhao said. “But compared to when I got here last year, the space is shrinking.”

For the full story, see:

Gilles Sabrié and Vivian Wang. “Enclave in Southwest China Offers Oasis for Drifters and Dreamers.” The New York Times (Monday, Feb. 5, 2024): A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Feb. 5, 2024, and has the title “Welcome to ‘Dalifornia,’ an Oasis for China’s Drifters and Dreamers.”)

Palestinian Group Defaces Portrait of Balfour, Who Tried to Save Jewish Lives

Pro-Palestinian slashes portrait of Arthur James Balfour at University of Cambridge. Source: NYT article quoted and cited below.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917 advocated the establishment of a Jewish homeland (Dershowitz 2003, p. 35). “In 1937, 1947, and 2000-2001,” Jewish leaders accepted the establishment of a Palestinian state, but Palestinian leaders “each time . . . rejected the offer and responded with increased terrorism” (Dershowitz 2003, p. 159). If Israel had existed by the 1930s, “hundreds of thousands—perhaps even a million or more” European Jews could have immigrated to it before the Holocaust, saving their lives (Dershowitz 2003, p. 52). Arthur James Balfour’s portrait should be honored, not “slashed and spray-painted” (article quoted below).

(p. A6) A pro-Palestinian group slashed and spray-painted a century-old portrait of Arthur James Balfour at the University of Cambridge on Friday [March 8, 2024], defacing a painting of the British official whose pledge of support in 1917 for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” helped pave the way to Israel’s founding three decades later.

For the full story, see:

Marc Tracy. “Balfour Portrait at University of Cambridge Is Defaced.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 9, 2024): A6.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 8, 2024, and has the title “Activists Deface Portrait of Balfour, Who Supported Jewish Homeland.”)

Dershowitz’s heavily referenced book, cited above, is:

Dershowitz, Alan. The Case for Israel. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003.

Navalny to Russian People: “Not Give Up”

(p. C1) In the opening moments of “Navalny,” the Oscar-winning 2022 documentary about the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, the director Daniel Roher asks his subject a dark question.

“If you are killed — if this does happen — what message do you leave behind to the Russian people?” the voice asks from behind the camera.

Navalny’s ice-blue eyes narrow just a little, and he sighs. “Oh, come on, Daniel,” he says in heavily accented English. “No. No way. It’s like you’re making a movie for the case of my death.” He pauses, then continues. “I’m ready to answer your question, but please let it be another movie, Movie No. 2. Let’s make a thriller out of this movie.”

. . .

(p. C8) But if “Navalny” wasn’t intended as a postmortem, it’s chilling to watch it after reports of his death. He knows what might happen but doesn’t seem scared, just determined. The day of his return to Moscow, he appears nervy and intent, but with fellow plane passengers, he makes jokes about the weather, accepts their well wishes and watches “Rick and Morty” as they descend. This is, you realize, a resolutely unflappable man.

At the end of the film, Roher once again asks Navalny what message he would leave for the Russian people if he was imprisoned or even killed. Answering in English, Navalny responds, “My message for the situation when I am killed is very simple: Not give up.” Recognizing there’s more to the sentiment, Roher asks him to repeat his answer in Russian.

“Listen, I’ve got something very obvious to tell you,” Navalny says rapidly and fluidly in Russian, according to the subtitles. He’s looking straight into the camera and picking up steam as he goes. “You’re not allowed to give up. If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes. We don’t realize how strong we actually are.”

. . .

Navalny takes a breath, then continues. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing. So don’t be inactive.” He stares sternly into the camera, steel in his eyes.

And then his face cracks into a wide, joyful grin.

For the full review, see:

Alissa Wilkinson. “More Chilling, Posthumously.” The New York Times (Tuesday, February 20, 2024): C1 & C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review was updated Feb. 18, 2024, and has the title “The Documentary Aleksei Navalny Knew We’d Watch After His Death.”)

In Final Message, Navalny Quoted “Hope, My Earthly Compass”

(p. 26) Aleksei A. Navalny, an anticorruption activist who for more than a decade led the political opposition in President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia while enduring arrests, assaults and a near-fatal poisoning, died on Friday [Feb. 15, 2024] in a Russian prison. He was 47.

. . .

Mr. Navalny dedicated his final post on social media to his wife on Valentine’s Day.

. . .

The song he quoted, “Hope, My Earthly Compass,” is one of the best-known hits in Russia. Its refrain is “Hope is my compass, and success is a reward for courage.”

For the full obituary, see:

Valerie Hopkins and Andrew E. Kramer. “Aleksei A. Navalny, Russian Opposition Leader, Dies at 47.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, February 18, 2024): 26.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the obituary was updated Feb. 18, 2024, and has the title “Aleksei Navalny, Russian Opposition Leader, Dies in Prison at 47.”)

All Conclusions in Science Are Open to Further Inquiry

(p. C3) Victory is often temporary. In December 2014, a nurse named Nina Pham contracted Ebola from a patient in Dallas. She was transferred to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and treated by a team led by Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

When Ms. Pham was discharged, the cameras captured an indelible moment: Together with NIH Director Francis Collins, Dr. Fauci, dressed in a crisp white lab coat, walked her out with his arm draped over her shoulder. This conveyed a critical message at a time when public fear about the disease was widespread. “We would not be releasing Ms. Pham if we were not completely confident in the knowledge that she has fully recovered, is virus free and poses no public health threat,” an NIH statement read.

But scientific certainty often carries an asterisk. Six months later, doctors in Atlanta discovered that in some patients who survive, the Ebola virus could still be found hidden away in parts of the body. This did not indicate that they could transmit the disease, but it meant that they could no longer be declared “virus-free” with certainty. This episode demonstrated how quickly our knowledge about public health threats can alter. What we once thought was true for the Ebola virus had changed, and no doubt will continue to evolve.

For the full commentary, see:

Jeremy Brown. “What Past Crises Tell Us About the Coronavirus.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Feb. 1, 2020 [sic]): C3.

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Jan. 31, 2020 [sic], and has the same title as the print version. In both the online and print versions, the first sentence quoted above is in bold font.)

China-Born Dissidents Supported Trump for His “Willingness to Confront Beijing”

(p. A18) Many who fled abroad after being detained in China for their political activism have been won over by President Trump’s willingness to confront Beijing.

. . .

Fewer than one-quarter of Chinese-Americans voted for Mr. Trump in the 2016 presidential election, according to a study by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

But many mainland-China-born exiles are different. Teng Biao, a prominent U.S.-based Chinese lawyer and a critic of Mr. Trump, draws parallels to Cuban exiles, who aren’t so much pro-Trump as they are anti-communist.

For the full story, see:

Sha Hua. “Chinese Dissidents Back Trump Claims.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Nov. 23, 2020 [sic]): A18.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 22, 2020 [sic], and has the title “Chinese Dissidents Back Trump’s Claims of Election Fraud.”)

Communist China Increases Censorship of Negative News and Views of “Struggling Economy”

(p. A16) BEIJING—Several prominent commentaries by economists and journalists in China have vanished from the internet in recent weeks, raising concerns that Beijing is stepping up its censorship efforts as it tries to put a positive spin on a struggling economy.

. . .

. . ., Li Xunlei, an economist at state-owned Zhongtai Securities, warned in a column published on Chinese news outlet Yicai that insufficient household consumption would persist unless China’s leadership took steps to help lower-income families. Li also highlighted a study conducted by Beijing Normal University showing that some 964 million Chinese people, representing roughly 70% of the population, were living on a monthly income of less than 2,000 yuan, equivalent to about $280.

That data point quickly went viral on Weibo before it disappeared from the Chinese microblogging platform’s official list of trending topics. Before long, Li’s column vanished from Yicai’s website too. It has also become inaccessible on Li’s public account on Chinese messaging platform WeChat, where a message read: “The content can’t be viewed due to violation of regulations.”

For the full story, see:

Jonathan Cheng. “Negative Takes on China’s Economy Vanish Online.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, February 1, 2024): A16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated January 31, 2024, and has the title “Negative Takes on China’s Economy Are Disappearing From the Internet.”)

Covid Mandates and Firms Restricting Employee Speech Led Democrat to Invest in Tucker Carlson Media Venture

(p. A18) Five years ago, Omeed Malik was a self-described “run-of-the-mill corporate Democrat,” with a seat on the Council on Foreign Relations, a summer house in the Hamptons, and stints at Bank of America and white-shoe law firm Weil, Gotshal under his belt.

Then Covid happened. Chafing under government mandates he found illogical and corporate limits on speech that felt to him like censorship, he moved from Manhattan to Florida and began hanging out with Republican donors. He discovered a business opportunity in a so-called parallel economy of conservative-friendly companies.

Now, he is one of their financiers. Malik this year launched 1789 Capital, which aims to capitalize on the opportunities that it sees left open by the “wokeness” of more traditional sources of capital.

Its first fund, with a modest $150 million, made its initial investment Monday [Oct. 16, 2023], leading a $15 million seed round with other private investors into Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel’s new media company.

For the full story, see:

Keach Hagey. “1789 Invests in Carlson’s Media Firm.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023): B1-B2.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date October 17, 2023, and has the title “Tucker Carlson’s Media Company Secures Investment Led by ‘Anti-Woke’ Firm.”)

How Does Larry David “Brilliantly” Use “Stereotype” and “Caricature” to “Mock Deadly Serious Issues” Without Getting Cancelled?

(p. 24) On “Curb,” David starred as “Larry David,” simultaneously the world’s most comfortable and uncomfortable man, registering his complaints to a cast of sounding boards: . . .

. . .

. . ., David has . . . played with material that could explode on a lesser comic. In a classic episode, Larry becomes addicted to a Palestinian chicken restaurant that raises a furor when it opens a branch next to a Jewish deli. (While the plot might seem uncomfortably prescient during the Gaza war in 2024, when it premiered in 2011 it alluded to the controversy over a planned Islamic center in Lower Manhattan that was mislabeled a “ground zero mosque.”)

Larry is unsettled, as a Jew, by the militant posters on the restaurant’s walls. He is seduced, as a mortal, by the delicious poultry and by a Palestinian woman he meets there, who turns him on with antisemitic dirty talk.

Does the episode stereotype? Does it caricature? Does it mock deadly serious issues? Yes — brilliantly. It blows straight through offense into transcendence, guided by the comic philosophy that all people are debased, fallen and governed by low passions, above all Larry David. He ends the episode in a parking lot between two furious crowds: a group of Jewish protesters, including many of his friends, and the Palestinian counterprotesters, including his girlfriend — tribe vs. tribe, socialization vs. appetite, the camera pushing in on Larry’s anxious, indecisive face.

For the full commentary, see:

James Poniewozik. “CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; ‘Curb’ Spun Something Special Out of Nothing.” The New York Times, First Section (Sunday, February 4, 2024): 1 & 24.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Jan. 20, 2024, and has the title “CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK; ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Made Something Out of Nothing.” The online version says that the print edition has the title “‘Curb’ Spun Gold Out of Gripes and Grievances” but my national version of the print edition had the title “‘Curb’ Spun Something Special Out of Nothing.”)