I was triggered (haha) by a story all over the mainstream media today:
RUSSIA: Alexey Navalny, Putin’s Chief Opponent, Speaks Out After Prison Transfer – HE’S HELD IN A SOVIET GULAG (TGP 12/26/2023)
The point of this post is not to out Navalny as an Intelligence asset, which we will do only briefly, but to take a look at how thin the deception can be and still fool the consciousness of billions of people. Present company excepted, of course.
The zero-th item to note is that these types of analyses are very unpopular in conspiracy circles. That is, there are very few theorists left, where you have to at least string together a couple of facts with some analysis. They have been completely diluted (and I'm not disparaging) by people (God bless them) who are driven more by, "Yeah, that guy does suck! Upvote!" That's great and all, but if you're looking for more, read on.
Before we look at the general phenomenon, we'll only examine one conclusive detail to his phony story. You'll only be reading about it here, so note how easily an obvious contradiction flies by the rest of the world.
In the story linked above, you'll find a tweet dated the 26th from Navalny's blue-check account. Who cares what it says, because it's mere existence is directly contradicted here by Kira Yarmysh, Navalny's spokesperson:
Alexei Navalny ‘doing well’ after transfer to remote Arctic prison (The Independent 12/26/2023)
There's no way of reaching inmates, nor by mail nor by Internet, so it is practically impossible to contact someone directly.
I hope no troll is going to give us, "Ackshually, you can't email them, they can only tweet out." Although we'd all like to see that, it would still be pretty shameful.
The point is, one sheer lie serves one audience, and another sheer lie serves a different one. The two people making up these lies do not care whatsoever about coordinating them. Nor, as I have pointed out, do they need to.
As I referenced in the title, Navalny is a "Simulant". I don't know of any existing term for this type of "person". It's what I've come up with for the range of such people who go from absolutely authentic with a few phony aspects to outright "virtual persons" constructed from scratch.
Navalny seems to be a living, breathing human being. After that it gets very murky, which is what I'm trying to highlight. And what I'm really trying to highlight is how very thin it all is yet still yields successful, long-running psyop.
For example, this whole dumb, bullshit narrative about "disappearing" and "no one knew where he was for three weeks" until be was found "exiled to Sibera"? Did you know he was (supposedly) sent to the exact same place not quite three years ago?
What we know about the prison hospital where Alexei Navalny has been sent (Reuters 4/19/2021)
You can see the narrative at the time was that he was "recovering from Novichok poisoning (from Putin!)", and not "disappeared to Siberia". Yes, it's all just narrative, but everyone laps it right up.
But I want to stress how thin it all is, and always was. So this guy is supposed to be "Putin's opposition", right? I used Qwant to search on "putin navalny" and got--get this--27 hits. The nexus between the two is virtually non-existent.
Does Putin even know he exists, fake or real? It turns out the answer is probably not. The closest I can come is this video:
Putin says palace in Navalny report 'doesn't belong to me' | AFP (YouTube 1/25/2021)
If you watch the video, Putin never mentions Navalny. In fact, he says he never watched the video, only a summary made by his aides. My guess is that Putin is aware of the deception and chooses never to acknowledge it.
Finally, recall that Navalny is supposedly a politician seeking to challenge the highest-profile leader in the world, correct? He's got to get out there and kiss hands and shake babies, right? Apparently, no, he never does that.
Search for images with "navalny meets". It's him alone, in court, with his "family", and sometimes with some people floating around in the background. He never goes out and poses for photos with people he meets. Try the same search with something like "lauren boebert meets" and she's right there with all kinds of people. Maybe just a slut, huh?
Recall that "media" means "middle", and that's the shim that's created between people and reality. It may be razor-thin, but it's there and makes all the difference in the world.
Haha, turns out I actually did mean "diluted"!
What I was trying to convey was that there was a time, not too long ago, when there were very few conspiracy theorists. If you were into it at all, you were really into it. You'll most commonly find that classical type among JFK researchers, where they'll write up a two page-long post on what LHO did at the embassy in Mexico City or whatever.
Fast-forward to the present and the typical "theorist" just links to a story about Bill Gates or posts an insulting meme about Klaus Schwab. Hey, great to get the word out, to be sure, but can that in any way said to be "theory"?
So over on r/conspiracy, the influx has diluted theorists and theories down to about 98-2. I use it for what it has become: a news feed filtering out mainstream propaganda. And even that comes with a hard rain of paid trolls and angry, basement-dwelling dipshits, further washing out theories.
But yeah, most of them are also deluded too, except it's about a set of things different from those about which the normies are deluded. Sadly, that deludes them that they're superior in some way.
Thanks for the Saint Floyd info! Another good example of how prevalent you see this phenomenon to be once you start looking for it.
Sorry I never got back to ya...The real dilution occurred when ATS was at the top...and then changed formats and started pushing garbage, especially long-winded videos about nothing.
I don't disagree with what you said, but I'm actually glad that I waited to reply.
While there has been dilution of the conspiracy theory realm, it's far too late.
What I mean is this...a Jewish politician recently had a promoted Facebook post on my feed. There was not a single positive comment about him...it also looks like he deleted a solid 30-50 comments!
And the comments were much more intelligent and conspiracy-minded than you would think. My immediately local Facebook group had a bunch of great threads when COVID first came out...I was quite happy to see how bright people were about it.
I had a long discussion about Ukraine with someone recently, and even the most normie of normies poked all kinds of holes in media coverage of the situation.
Attempts to dilute information really don't work...it only creates most conspiracy theorists. And now that seems to be a good chunk of the general populace.