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The Navalny Affair
Supporters of Vladimir Putin have been caught in a flat-footed attempt at character assassination. Wanting to smear blogger Alexei Navalny, who's been a fierce critic of Putin's government, they created a picture showing Navalny meeting with the exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky. The implication was that Berezovsky was funding Navalny. Then Putin's supporters published the picture in one of the party newspapers.

But the picture was a clumsy fake. The original, undoctored version of the photo soon emerged, as well as numerous parody versions. Links: BBC, Daily Mail.


The doctored version


The original version

Some newspapers are commenting that the stunt recalls how Soviet authorities routinely used to doctor photos for political purposes. Which is true -- see "The Commissar Vanishes." But the stunt reminds me most of an American hoax from 1950 -- The Tydings Affair -- in which a fake photo showing Senator Millard Tydings chatting with the head of the American Communist Party was circulated by Joseph McCarthy, causing Tydings to lose an election. The Tydings and Navalny photos are similar both in their general composition and in their strategies of guilt-by-association.

tydings
Categories: Photos/Videos, Politics
Posted by Alex on Wed Jan 18, 2012
Comments (2)
More from the Hoax Museum Archives:
It seems the old Soviet Union is reemerging quite fast in terms of this kind of totalitarian and Cold War style manipulation and blame-shifting. Look also at the Cold War style attempts by some Russians to blame the failure of their Mars probe Phobos-Grunt on deliberate or accidental sabotage by American Radar systems - conspiracy theories easily debunked, see my post in the forum: http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/forums/viewthread/14510
Posted by LaMa  in  Europe  on  Thu Jan 19, 2012  at  06:35 AM
Or this one just in:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16627415
..accusing an opposing radio station of "acting in foreign interest".
This is old-fashioned Cold War era talk.
Posted by LaMa  in  Europe  on  Thu Jan 19, 2012  at  06:50 AM
Comments: Page 1 of 1 pages

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