Nossik was an Jewish-Russian journalist who perhaps more than anyone else shaped the contours of the Russian Internet. Apart from having a hand in starting up a huge percentage of the online news leviathans that still dominate the sphere, as an outspoken political personality he was also one of the most popular bloggers in his own right (dolboeb).
He has died at the age of 51, apparently after a vodka binge at a friend’s dacha.
Nossik heyday was “before my time” (he was becoming a name on Fidonet political discussions in Israel about Russia in the early 1990s; I started blogging in 2008). So I am not exactly qualified to write a balanced obituary about him, nor am I particularly interested in doing that. Instead, I will just write describe a few vignettes from his late life that I think tie in with my own blog’s themes.
But first, to set the political scene, Nossik’s fundamental convictions were “liberal” (see caveats) and pro-Western. Really, mostly the latter. For instance, in 2010 he attacked Assange for recklessly spilling American secrets and cooperating with the “Holocaust denier” Israel Shamir in Russia.
That said, this did not stop him from maintaining productive relations with media personalities in both the pro-Kremlin camp (e.g. Maksim Kononenko, Konstantin Rykov) and Russian nationalists (e.g. Sputnik i Pogrom’s Egor Prosvirnin, see right).
At the end of the day he was a Jewish/Zionist nationalist. He was rarely seen without with yarmulke, and was always very explicit about how his concern for Israel took precendence over the more… universalistic ideals that he at times claimed to profess.
For instance, here is a transcript of his interview with the liberal Gazprom-funded Echo of Moscow in October 2015, where a conversation about Russian misdeeds in Syria between the handshakeworthy crowd took a bit of an unexpected turn:
Nosik: What is Russia doing [in Syria]? It’s killing women, children, old people.
Interviewer: And you support this?
Nosik: Sure. They’re Syrians.
Interviewer: But they’re people.
Nosik: No, they’re Syrians.
Interviewer: So Syrians aren’t people?
Nosik: In what sense? They present a danger to Israel.
Interviewer: And women and children and old people too?
Nosik: I don’t care, if they present a danger to Israel.
Interviewer: But what danger can women and children and old people constitute?
Nosik: Women? They give birth to Syrian soldiers. If they are bombed, they won’t give birth to Syrian soldiers. And thank God!
“L means Learn calm, moderate nationalism from the Jews,” sarcastically commented Sputnik i Pogrom.
He immediately followed it up with a blog post where he called on Syria to be wiped from the face of the Earth.
Now this wouldn’t have led to any consequences in Western countries, where hate speech laws only really applies to criticism against Jews, Muslims, and various sexual minorites. However, retrograde as Article 282 – Russia’s prime hate speech law – might be, it does at least tend to be applied more consistently. For instance, back in the 2000s, the Russian “journalist” Boris Stomakhin served a term for encouraging terrorism against ethnic Russians (Western human rights outfits such as the Committee to Protect Journalism predictably labeled him a victim of Putler’s regime). This is, incidentally, a state of affairs that European institutions are very, very sad about, repeatedly calling on Russia to make Article 282 less “politicized.” That is, only have it apply to nationalists, as in Europe, and as was the intention of the mostly Jewish “liberals” and “human rights activists” who had pushed it through the Duma in the first place.
Anyhow, the Jewish nationalist Nossik must have failed to take this specificity of Russian law into account, and was charged with Article 282 in 2016. (That said, in all fairness, I should point out that Nossik himself was not a hypocrite about this – he has been criticizing Article 282 for more than a decade on his blog). Unlike many other less prominent people, he escaped the two year jail sentence recommended by the prosecutor, and got off with a 500,000 ruble fine (lowered to 300,000 rubles on appeal).
Which for him was pocket change anyway. This morning, I was amused to see one of the “thought leaders” in Russian transhumanism criticize Nossik on Facebook because he had apparently paid the man $10,000 in 2010 to propagandize radical life extension, but Nossik just took the money and promptly forgot all about it. (Amusingly, $10,000 would have been just sufficient to pay off the original fine at today’s exchange rate).
The lesson to be drawn from this? “And now Anton Nossik has died. What more can I say? He should have done more for life extension.” I would also add: Goys should always put contracts to paper.
“Really, mostly the former.”
Shouldn’t that be “latter”? Criticising Assange for anti-Americanism seems more “pro-Western” than “liberal” to me.
Anatoly,
Nossik dying “apparently after a vodka binge.”
Have allegations/claims of his political murder yet surfaced? If not yet, surely they are to be expected sooner (very likely) or later!
Death is freedom.
Heroes and martyrs are brave because tyrants can’t inflict anything more than 110 years of torture. Death waits to liberate the martyr from the tyrant’s grasp.
Life extension gives the tyrant the power to create a literal hell on earth, misery without end. Without death, there will be no more martyrs or heroes – tyrants will break them all.
Even gallows humor, that last bastion of human dignity, will disappear.
Lying to a transhumanist and stealing his money to impede his cause is the only moral course of action.
A Jew named Anton. Russia never ceases to amaze….but then again we have people named Abramovic/Avramovic and are Orthodox and Catholic and never Jewish.
OT
Trump now demands Ukraine and Syria problems to be solved before lifting sanctions. Is this not a new demand? The sanctions were introduced as a response to Ukraine, weren’t they?
Trump is a moron. Just ignore his tweets – dude is not the one making policy anyway.
Someone quoted this tweet criticizing him. But only criticized it for the Ukraine demands, not Syria, which in my opinion is a bigger issue, a new demand.
Why that? Jews can choose any name they like. Though, if they choose non-biblical names, they tend to choose the names which resemble them, e.g. Anton or Anatoly for Nathan, Boris for Barukh, Mikhail (Misha) for Moishe, Wolf or Vladimir for Benjamin, Lev or Leo for Judah, etc. See also “Kinnui”.
Abram/Avram is a normal Christian name in the past.
I am a bit surprised by the circumstances of his death. Do Russian Jews generally drink as much as ethnic Russians? How “Russian” are they anyway in terms of culture?
Nossik was an Jewish-Russian journalist … [he] was always very explicit about how his concern for Israel took precendence
According to the BBC, he was a dual Russian-Israeli citizen.
May he RIP. 🙁
If you hate Jews–you are anti-Semite, if you hate blacks–you are a racist, if you hate gays–you are a homophobe, if you hate Russians–you are a human rights activist (Nobel Prize sometimes follows).
Have you ever been to America? Trump literally has to say these things.
The one thing the Donald isn’t, is a moron. Au contraire, he is a veritable genius. And a disruptor to boot! He, not unlike Al Waleed of KSA, was enamored with falsely stating his actual worth, which was in billions of dollars to be sure but not as high as he would insist it to be, lest the cabal (about a dozen Jewish families) that he dealt with, lived with, competed with and socialized with in their private paradise of Manhattan, not let him in deals or worse look down upon him. Apart from some notions of patriotism, the big D is just another money and power loving businessman, who given the opportunity to edge up in money rankings would do so in a heartbeat. Perhaps that explains his not putting his wealth into a blind trust. And even at the risk of not fulfilling his promises to his supporters, Donald T. will come out smelling like roses. Plus given the fact that all his grown children are married to Jewish spouses, the media aren’t going to crucify him (the last thing they want is to provide an excuse to the hoi polloi to upset the applecart). It’s just that Donald Trump isn’t the man you think him to be…
Russian Jews love to pretend that they are ethnic Russians. They all consider themselves Russians and are hypersensitive about what they perceive as Russophobia. The only exception is if they become religious or become western.
Umm, why? I thought his mission was to take over the Republicans and remake them into a populist party. Do his working class voters in the rust belt really care about what Russia’s doing in Syria? Trump is a fool if he drags the US deeper into the Syrian mess just because some special interest lobbies want him to; a war will destroy his presidency, and hand over the US to some really extreme Democrat in 2020.
Trump’s approval is 40%. The Mitt Romney wing of the party doesn’t like him as is. The Mitt Romney wing also HATE Russia. Trump can not have a successful administration without at least the tacit support of the GOPe. Literally every American will tell you as much. Anatoly grew up in America and he will back me up on this. It is no coincidence that the people bashing Trump’s foreign policy the most here are all non Americans who don’t get how US politics work.
It is also accepted by everyone in America, both left and right, that Trump would immediately drop the Russia sanctions if he could. Right now he is just trying to prevent the additional sanctions against Russia that the Senate passed from going through.
Despite all the bellyaching about Trump, we finally have a ceasefire in southern Syria. Would have never happened with Obama. Trump’s arming of the Kurds has drastically increased the pressure on ISIS and when ISIS falls, the US and Russia will be able to come to a permanent agreement on Syria.
Ok, I understand. The Mitt Romney wing of the Republicans ought to be crushed though imo (from my non-American perspective they look like plutocratic losers whose programme is deeply unappealing even to many somewhat right-wing white Americans)…it’s not like they helped Trump win anyway. But of course that’s probably not politically possible.
That must be relatively recent. I haven’t paid any attention to him after about 2005 but he never wore yarmulke in 20th century. Not even when he lived in Israel.
All in good time. Probably will take another 20 years to completely exterminate them.
lolwut.
Trump must be stopped!
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/07/us-senate-strikes-russian-equality-oligarchs-targeted-new-sanctions-bill.html
It is a great measure against Atlanticist corruption.
Just as Russian nationalist can be “squeezed between globalist “ZOG” and the “Putletreich””, the same can be done with Russian oligarchs and others who have invested in the West.
jewish sociopath invokes Assad must go Curse, but supercharges it to al syrian people must be extermined, which wipes him out
good riddance to this wannabe hitler
Hmmm…was so busy advocating the killing of Syrian children, it seems he forgot to have kids of his own. Genetically pwned!!!
Peace.
You must be joking. Not having children was probably one of the only morally commendable actions of his life. Also, by not having children, an individual pwns his genes, not the other way around.
Anatol, even Nossik’s friendship with Prosvirnin and his warm support of SiP did not open your eyes on the fact that SiP is a hostile anti-Russian operation?
Good points!
By your Nossik friendship criteria, are you going to extend your condemnation to Maxim Kononenko/”Parker” (eminent pro-Putin columnist) and Konstantin Rykov (one-time UR deputy, founder of Vzglyad and Russia.ru, outspoken Trump/Le Pen Putin fan with Masha Katasonova)? When are we going to ban Vzglyad, Izvestia, RT Russian, and pretty much half of all the pro-Putin/patriotic websites for having been founded by them or carried their writings?
I don’t know anything about this Nossik guy, and I’m sure he was just as unpleasant a character as it sounds (I think I might’ve heard the name from Maxim Shevchenko, who I listen to sometimes). Nevertheless, to be fair, I wouldn’t take the Syrian stuff too seriously. You need to understand Russian cultural nuances, specifically the term pizdezh, talking shit. Often with intention to shock the listener. Iow: trolling. It’s very common.
And now, Mr. Karlin is personally testing the limits of article 282. Good luck.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/886356292847243264