Why was my review declined?

Why was my review 13 March 2023 #230313-032328-580004 re: the HBO documentary "Navalny" declined? I watched this film and feel that my contributions are important for potential viewers to have some context. Here it is in full: 

Let me start off by saying something that should be unnecessary but for the state of near totalitarian narrative management and information control that has been in place since Russia invaded Ukraine last year, and which has ramped up in the collective **democratic West** since the election of 2016, but also in a more subtle manner extending back to 2008 and then 2014, the years of the Russian military action in Georgia and the Maidan coup d’etat in Ukraine, respectively - then there is the Skripal affair. But since it has to be said I AM NOT A RUSSIAN, I’m not a **Putin sympathizer** and I’m not a paid troll or employee of a **troll farm** - see my review history for all the proof of that you need.

As far as the film **Navalny** goes I’ll give it one major compliment It was very well written and produced. It spins a very compelling tale and is visually engaging to watch.

As far as the criticisms, they center on the lack of balance and omission of critical information that is inconvenient to the story the film is telling. Let me enumerate them quickly.

1. It is far from conclusive what substance was allegedly given to Navalny, and the testing process was subject to criticism from those who follow geopolitics and clandestine affairs, especially related to the **great powers** (US, UK, Russia and China for this purpose) and their respective adversaries. By this I mean that there are other sides to the story, conflicting accounts from witnesses, a broken (and opaque) chain of custody for the evidence, and some disputed findings. None of them are addressed in the film except in a broad brush dismissal of anything that might countervail the **official** narrative as ‘Russian propaganda.’

2. Navalny got his start in Russian politics on the erstwhile **left** but was quickly booted from his associations for his white supremacist, nazi-like views. Since then he moved ever further to the right and became a straight up far right Russian ultra-nationalist far to the right of Vladimir Putin. He was expelled from the liberal Yabloko opposition party for colluding with the Russian neo-Nazi movement. Navalny is a arch nationalist who wants **Russia for the Russians** excluding all other ethnic groups. In 2013 he publicly endorsed a race riot against Russians of Chechen heritage.

His most commonly stated views align more with Alexandr Dugin (the guy whose daughter was just killed last year) than Vladimir Putin and If you want proof of this, I encourage you to use the Russian website Yandex.com to search for the many instances where Navalny has made openly racist statements and incitements to racial and political violence - on video. There are too many examples to name here. You’ll need to use Google translate or find videos with English subtitles. In an interview with the Guardian Navalny confirmed those views

Several years ago, Navalny released a number of disturbing videos, including one in which he is dressed as a dentist, complaining that tooth cavities ruin healthy teeth, as clips of migrant workers are shown. In another video, he speaks out in favor of relaxing gun controls, in a monologue that appears to compare migrants to cockroaches.

The interviewer says **I ask him if he regrets those videos now, and he’s unapologetic. He sees it as a strength that he can speak to both liberals and nationalists. But comparing migrants to cockroaches? **That was artistic license,** he says. So there’s nothing at all from those videos or that period that he regrets? **No,** he says again, firmly.

This, of course, was papered over in the film.

3. As detailed in the film, Navalny decided to run as the opposition candidate to Putin in I think 2017 during which time he came out with a couple of campaign videos espousing some VERY REASONABLE anti-corruption policies and, dare I say, socialist-left leaning ideas for the common people in the Russian Federation. Whether he was being genuine is anyone’s guess, but given everything he did before and after that, one should probably assume he would have reverted to his far-right roots should he have won the presidency of Russia.

4. Navalny is very unpopular in Russia and this is borne out by multiple independent and anonymous polls. For example, not long ago (2017), polls were conducted on the street protests - some of which were led by Navalny and his cohort. Public opinion was mostly in favor of the right to protest against Putin and various policies of his in the streets, but the public mostly held unfavorable views of the Navalny-associated protests. In another poll related to the mayoral race of Moscow, Navalny scored a meager 4% among voters who said they would definitely vote for him and another 10% who said **maybe yes.**

Don’t get me wrong, once the Kremlin recognized him as a potential political threat, they took many actions, some of which were likely illegal and put out a ton of anti-Navalny messaging. But in subsequent polls before the 2018 Russian presidential election, his popularity had nosedived to 4%. So he’s not this widely loved put upon opposition figure that poses a real threat to Putin’s power and he’s not a nice guy with typical Western liberal values, despite the one campaign I mentioned in which he claimed to be.

5. Finally and in building on the previous points, the ‘western’ media also try to connect the ‘poisoning’ of Navalny to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. That makes no sense at all. Navalny is no danger to Putin and is actually useful for him as he keeps other ‘liberals’ busy opposing the far-right (that is people and parties far to the right of Putin).

During years leading up to the incident which this movie centers on, Navalny made some enemies by uncovering corruption cases. His latest one was about the local governor of Tomsk. It was also the reason why he was on the flight. That is a far more logical suspect in his alleged poisoning than the Kremlin or Putin, which will be hard for most Westerners to swallow given the non-stop unverified stories of Putin poisoning person after person (again, including the Skripals).

Only the anti-corruption activities (which I think of as very positive, BTW) were depicted in the film **Navalny.**

On this basis I have to say I cannot recommend this movie unless you're very bored and/or you like digesting fictions on the evils of Russia and Vladimir Putin. The story told is compelling, but it is largely hogwash.

3/10 for technical merit.

Summary: Pure Propaganda

The (non - I had to search for it) notification that it did not meet community standards was vague to the point of uselessness. I need to know exactly what policy it violated so that I can edit and re-post. Otherwise IMDB is just a joke, another propaganda outfit in a media landscape currently awash in them.