Actually, I think the influence of Limonov on Ames and the eXile in general is vast. Reading Ames sometimes reminds me of early Limonov in translation.
The eXile really was pissed off when the Western media ignored Limonov's arrest. You can bet that if it had been one of their darling liberals rather than a Russian nationalist possibly facing life in prison on trumped-up charges, it would have been all over the papers:
Limonov's Victory is Western Media's Defeat
By Mark Ames
Nobody I know except for Limonov’s lawyer expected him to be cleared of terrorism charges this past Tuesday. Everyone assumed that the trial had been decided before it even began. Russia’s judicial system is notoriously corrupt, and there was no way that the FSB was going to let Limonov go free after spending all that money and manpower setting him up. Not after they sent some fifty elite counter-intelligence spetznazis to make the arrest in the far-off Altai region just over two years ago, and not after they involved Attorney General Ustinov and the Supreme Court in the whole messy lead-up to Limonov’s trial in Saratov.
Most of the Russians I know, particularly the more successful lawyer types, were sure that Limonov would spend the rest of his life in jail. Many even thought that he’d somehow wanted it that way. It was a natural reaction against the threatening, radical aesthetics that Limonov has lived by.
The Western press has been grotesquely shameful in their coverage of what should be the most sensational story out of Russia: a Henry Miller author and political radical accused of attempting to form an army, invade Kazakhstan, and overthrow the state. You couldn’t invent a juicier story. Yet the Western media, so pious in its defense of Russian dissidents who share their liberal values, ditched all pretense of “defending to the death” those with whom they disagree when faced with someone who was a dissident against them. Limonov’s anti-Western, anti-liberal aesthetics and politics are anathema to Western liberals. So they suspended their liberalism in his case and kept a conspiracy of silence.
http://www.exile.ru/164/164020001.html
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