Thoughts On Bill Browder’s RED NOTICE.
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I just finished Bill Browder’s Red Notice and – wowzers – was this a great read.
The tweet-length summary of Red Notice is a real doozy but also utterly incapable of transmitting the emotion of Browder’s story:
The grandson (Bill Browder) of the former head of America’s Communist Party goes full capitalist by getting an MBA from Stanford and becoming post-Soviet Russia’s most successful hedge fund manager. The investor becomes an accidental human rights activist after he exposes endemic corruption and his lawyer (Sergei Magnitsky) is jailed, tortured and murdered by Vladimir Putin’s thugs. Browder’s activism following the crime leads to sweeping legislation (Magnitsky Act) that punishes those involved and makes him Putin’s #1 target.
Trying to internalize Browder’s story without reading the book is akin to how I “watch” horror movies by reading the Wikipedia summaries – you kind of get the idea but are missing the entire point.
As a medium, the book is still unrivalled for deep emotional immersion (Head of VR @ Pornhub: “Hold my beer”). It forces your brain to wrestle with the material long after your eyes leave the page. It forces you to internalize the facts, relationships, concepts and narratives. It forces you to think. And it forces you to feel.
A truly effective books, in the words of the late-great Christopher Hitchens, “leaves an indelible mark on your brain.”
The subtitle for Red Notice is “A true story of high finance, murder and one man’s fight for justice.” The chapters covering the high finance and murder parts are gripping (and ready-made for Hollywood). However, it is through his “fight for justice” that we feel Browder’s transformation from a high-flying financier to an indefatigable human rights activist. And it is this personal hero’s journey (and Magnitsky’s incredible courage) that has left an indelible mark on my brain.
Fittingly, the most memorable chapter from the book is the final one titled “Feelings”. The following passages from the chapter pack a very strong emotional punch. I can assure you, though, that the payoff from these words are exponentially heightened by reading through the previous 41 chapters of the book. 1
“If you asked me when I was at Stanford Business School what I would have thought about giving up a life as a hedge fund manager to become a human rights activist, I would have looked at you as if you were out of your mind.
But here I am twenty-five years later, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. Yes, I could go back to my previous life. But now that I’ve seen this new world, I can’t imagine doing anything else. While there is nothing wrong with pursuing a life in commerce, that world feels like watching TV in black and white. Now, all of a sudden, I’ve installed a wide-screen color TV, and everything about my life is richer, fuller, and more satisfying.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t have profound regrets, though. The obvious one is that Sergei is no longer with us. If I could do it all over again, I would never have gone to Russia in the first place. I would gladly trade all of my business success for Sergei’s life. I now understand how completely naive I was to think that as a foreigner I was somehow immune to the barbarity of the Russian system. I’m not the one who’s dead, but someone is dead because of me and my actions, and there is nothing I can do to bring him back. But I can carry on creating a legacy for Sergei and pursuing justice for his family.”
“In early April 2014 I took Sergei’s widow, Natasha, and his son, Nikita, to the European Parliament to watch the vote on a resolution to impose sanctions on thirty-two Russians complicit in the Magnitsky case. This was the first time in the history of the European Parliament that a public sanctions list was ever to be voted on.
A year earlier, I had relocated the Magnitsky family to a quiet suburb of London where Nikita was able to attend a prestigious private school and where Natasha could stop looking over her shoulder every day. They felt safe for the first time since Sergei’s murder, and I thought that it would help their healing to watch more than seven hundred European lawmakers from twenty-eight countries condemn the people who killed Sergei…”
“…the vote went through and there wasn’t a single objection in the entire European Parliament. Not one.
Early in this book, I said that the feeling I got from buying a Polish stock that went up ten times was the best thing to ever happen to me in my career. But the feeling I had on that balcony in Brussels with Sergei’s widow and son, as we watched the largest lawmaking body in Europe recognize and condemn the injustices suffered by Sergei and his family, felt orders of magnitude better than any financial success I’ve ever had. If finding a ten bagger in the stock market was a highlight of my life before, there is no feeling as satisfying as getting some measure of justice in a highly unjust world.”
After finishing Red Notice, the first association that came to my mind was the story of Vaclav Havel. Like Browder, Havel had a “stranger than fiction” personal transformation that forced him from a life of cosmopolitan comforts to a life of constant danger while confronting a brutal and unfeeling state apparatus.
Havel went from a Czech playwright in the 1960s to a jailed Soviet dissident in the 70s to the President of Czechoslovakia in 1989 (and of the Czech Republic from 1993-2003).
Of the many unlikely Cold War heroes, Havel’s journey from prison to the Czech Castle is right at the top of the list.
Sam Altman, of YCombinator and OpenAI fame, has said he takes on projects that “if successful, will make the rest of [his] career look like a footnote.”
Browder and Havel certainly did not “pick” their respective “careers” as a human rights activist and a dissident, but it is clear that the later chapters of their lives turned previous chapters into footnotes.
I guess to paraphrase Altman, it is more often circumstances out of our control (and how we respond to them) that relegate our past into the footnotes of our life story.
To be sure, this may be an overly high-level reading of a book that so deftly handles less abstract issues such as corruption, justice, financial crimes and political intrigue.
I think this high-level interpretation holds a lot of weight, though.
In the face of oppression, injustice and insurmountable odds, we all need inspirational narratives of courage, perseverance and personal transformations.
My point-of-view is not shared by the NYT review of Red Notice, which closes with this snarky little remark, “though he has dedicated his life’s work and this compelling book to his deceased lawyer, make no mistake: Bill Browder is the hero of his own story.”
Yes homies, that’s the point. Browder is the hero of his own story.
Browder was an incredibly successful hedge fund manager and he is now a fearless human rights activist.
The former point is a footnote.
Some version of the Magnitsky Act is being adopted by country-after-country and, if you need a quick reminder, just stroll through Browder’s Twitter timeline. Even at great risk to him and his family, he continues to be among the loudest voices in the world keeping Putin to account.
That’s what happens in a hero’s journey.
Life forces you to change.
Red Notice is an unforgettable (you might even say “indelible”) example of such a transformation.
One that you must read to feel.