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Garry Kasparov Profile picture
Garry Kasparov
@Kasparov63
Join RDI! @Renew_Democracy. Chairman of the Human Rights Foundation (@HRF). Author, speaker, 13th World Chess Champion https://t.co/dJTDTCEEvM
5 subscribers
Oct 3, 2018 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Nice anniversary, 24 years to the day. We almost looked the same when we met at a chessboard again last March in NYC, no?! Here Nathan Sharansky and I are at the March 7, 2018, NYC event honoring his life and retirement as head of Jewish Agency. I asked the great Ukrainian chess composer Eduard Eilazian for a problem in homage to Sharansky's own life. A trapped knight escapes to deliver mate!
Sep 29, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
"Like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing in our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom." Sen. Barry Goldwater, 16 Sep. 1981. nytimes.com/1981/09/16/us/… "I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ''A,'' ''B,'' ''C'' and ''D.'' Just who do they think they are?"—ibid
Sep 16, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
A liberal society fighting against the promotion of fascism should not be equated with a totalitarian state banning freedom of thought. Or do good and evil not exist? Horrible people promoting horrible ideas should be shunned, ridiculed, ignored. This isn't illiberal thinking, it's the immune system response to an attack. Don't engage with cancer to hear what it has to say.
Sep 7, 2018 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
The Trump GOP is clearly the greater evil now, but Obama would have more credibility if he and his admin acknowledged the role their mistakes & policies played in facilitating Trump's victory & misrule. Not just Russian hacking & response, but weakening the institutions. I've been calling Trump a symptom of a dangerous disease for two years. It's an opportunistic virus on a weakened body that got weaker during Obama's 8 years. It would be healthy for the resistance to address how & why so as not to repeat the mistakes.
Sep 6, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Corruption has always been at the core of Putin's influence in the free world. Instead of Communist ideology it's hard cash, and it finds takers on the right and left. This Kremlin method of influence was actually encouraged by Western leaders as engagement. They hoped (so they said) it would liberalize Russia & China while also profiting themselves.
Sep 3, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Trumpists are better at building straw men then they are at building walls. "Purging" the shills & sycophants normalizing Trump's assault on US institutions would take authoritarian power that none of us have or want. We want them named for their own actions, and to know they will be remembered.
Sep 2, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
A thoughtful contribution, thank you. Ideological opposites allying for the greater good is also what I tried to help build in Russia against Putin. We'd be on opposite sides in a parliament, but at least we'd have one. Similarly, my lack of forgiveness comes from experience. The USSR fell, but the KGB was never rooted out in the rush to celebrate & move on. No accountability, no truth commissions. Putin was the result, just 8 years later.
Aug 26, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Of course McCain wasn't an "opponent of Russia," but of its dictatorship. McCain saw Putin for the KGB thug he is and the Kremlin hated & feared him, itself an honor. McCain stood proudly for what all of America used to stand for, the idea that everyone in the world deserved freedom and that it was worth fighting for both on principle and as a strategic benefit for US security.
Aug 13, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
What I've been saying for years, but omits *why* it matters. Threatening Putin's power is the only threat that matters. Trump undercutting US sanctions relieves that pressure. bloomberg.com/view/articles/… Making Russia a pariah state is nearly meaningless as a deterrent if Putin's gang is convinced that only Putin can ever fix things, which is exactly what Trump's personal loyalty to him communicates.
Aug 7, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This by Voltaire is often paraphrased as "Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." Reducing our exposure to and belief in absurdities reduces injustice. This is why dictators and would-be autocrats push conspiracy theories and misinformation. They wish to weaken the mind and to spin the moral compass. The truth is always their greatest enemy.
Jul 16, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
The clearest message from this pathetic display is that Trump doesn't represent America, much like Putin doesn't represent Russia. And he just spent two hours alone with a KGB agent. This is Putin's dream, bilateral equality with the US despite his dictatorship & aggression, one on one with the US president instead of confronting American interests, international institutions, and free world values.
Jul 10, 2018 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I think Mig made up that name, but the practice is well-established. Business is in the service of politics and vice-versa in Putin's mafia state, and exporting that corrupt model to the free world has been very successful. Putin's oligarchs are his quasi-official ambassadors and agents worldwide, and they recruit foreign businesses & business people with favorable terms as agents of influence.
Jul 8, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
All these articles saying the US Senators talked tough on election meddling in Moscow, so why only GOP invited? Why are they talking about US concessions to Putin, not the return of Crimea? US Senators talking about lifting Russia sanctions to replace them with new ones by the Putin-adoring Trump is ridiculous. Add new ones, preferably not written by the Kremlin, but what has Putin conceded to deserve leniency?
Jul 4, 2018 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
"Rulers are no more than [..] trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest & trust, is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have deputed." —John Adams. (On the Canon & Feudal Law, 1765) 2/8 "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people [..] an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge of the characters and conduct of their rulers."—John Adams. (ibid) 3/8
Jul 2, 2018 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Once a corrupt system is in place, it takes massive reform from very the top to change it. Since nothing has changed at the top in Putin's Russia, we should assume the worst. Many don't understand about the corruption endemic in authoritarian states. The regime cannot just end it at will even if it wants to. It's how the system works. It IS the system.
Jun 8, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Since Russia was ejected from the G7+1 for annexing Crimea in 2014, Putin has killed thousands in East Ukraine & waged hybrid war on Europe & USA. And Trump wants to bring Putin back? The first line of the G7 Toronto Commitment: "The G7 share common democratic values of respect for fundamental freedoms, human rights,
and the rule of law." That doesn't include Putin's Russia. Or Donald Trump, apparently.
Jun 2, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
That is an interesting euphemism. Putin also has a "bold vision of executive power"! The voters had better alert Trump to the limits of his office while they still can. I want to expand on this because some replies don't take it seriously on a practical level. It's a race. The autocrat works non-stop to weaken constraints on his power, both legal & traditional limits.
Apr 15, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The obsession with "what now?" instead of long-term strategic plans & goals means it is foolish to try to evaluate any single action. A monkey might make the best move on the board once. So we should resist all demands to say if this or that tactic is good or bad, as if they exist in isolation. We should condemn any move made without knowing why it was made and what is to come next.
Feb 11, 2018 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
In 2014, I wrote several articles on the love affair between authoritarian regimes and sporting spectacles, from Berlin 1936 to Putin's Sochi Games. thedailybeast.com/putins-sochi-a… Dictators hide behind "it's just sports, not politics" to whitewash the crimes of their regimes, and the international media often plays along.
Jan 31, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Yes, "mild"! the western press about Hitler 1930-1938 is incredible to read now, and should be read. Whenever someone says "X is no Hitler!" today, well of course, but in 1933 Hitler was no Hitler either. Hitler became a Hitler because nobody stopped him. There hasn't been another not because he was uniquely evil or capable, but because we learned and others have been stopped.
Jan 14, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I'm deeply skeptical about this sudden North Korean rapprochement as the South Korean Olympics near. Paranoid dictator of a gulag state threatens with nukes and missiles & now wants to play nice guy to get what he wants. cnn.com/2018/01/13/asi… Rewarding the despot with the public acclaim and photo-ops he craves at an Olympics, sounds familiar! Kim Jong-un doesn't care about reunification, only about staying in power, just like every other dictator.