Russian security forces raided gay clubs and bars across Moscow Friday night, less than 48 hours after the country’s top court banned what it called the “global LGBTQ+ movement” as an extremist organization.
Police searched venues across the Russian capital, including a nightclub, a male sauna, and a bar that hosted LGBTQ+ parties, under the pretext of a drug raid, local media reported.
Eyewitnesses told journalists that clubgoers’ documents were checked and photographed by the security services. They also said that managers had been able to warn patrons before police arrived.
Russia looking a lot like their old enemy the Nazis these days.
Russia has always been anti-LGBT+. Stalin called them abomination and Putin is just a dimestore version of that monster.
It’s worth remembering that for all of the numerous issues Western nations and especially the US have with freedom of speech and expression, for every convert to some racist ideology, there is also a new supporter of LGBT+. The rise in hate we see is paralleled by a rise in acceptance of the marginalized. Freeze peaches is a double edged sword and always has been.
The paradox of tolerance is certainly an issue, but the very fact we’ve evolved as a culture to the point we’re having a discussion about it says something about the benefits of that freedom. Our culture isn’t stagnant. We have the capacity for growth and change, and while the government usually maintains the social status quo, we in turn can affect what the status quo is.
Fucking peaches.
And they always have
I don’t know people incorrectly try to associate everything with Nazi. It’s hard to take anyone serious when they don’t even know what a Nazi is.
This isn’t dissimilar from how they were under the Soviet Union. Russians are just going to Russian.
Not so much “Russians being Russian” as it is “Fascist power structure being fascist power structure “
It’s more accurate to say that Russia under the Soviets was also an authoritarian state.
Authoritarians by their very nature are right-wing.
Putin, the Soviets, the Nazis, Conservatives, and Fascists of all flavors are obsessed with control and conformity.
It’s far easier to control a population when everyone is exactly the same.
This is why the true left wing movements have always embraced minorities and outliers.
This of course is a call back to the very origins of the terms left and right when discussing politics. The French Revolution. A vote was held. One of the first of the new assembly. The question was, “Should the king have an absolute veto over new laws?”. Those in support of the monarchy sat to the right of the speaker’s podium. Those opposed sat to the left.
All the economic bullshit of capitalism v communism was added later. Making the Soviets, a supposedly communist nation, firmly right wing. Not that the Soviets were particularly good at actual communism. Communism sort of requires the workers to control the means of production, not the State. Workers must be working for their own profit, not the profit of the State.
Working for the profit of the State is more of a kleptocracy.
The nazis criminalized, imprisoned, and eventually exterminated gay and transgender people in death camps. So yes, comparisons to nazis are fair when you criminalize lgbt people and start rounding them up in jail, preventing them from gathering together, etc etc
I see you are well acquainted with the idea of redfash
no such thing.
It’s true that authleft often looks a lot like authright, which supports the theory that political alignment is more like a circle than a line. After all, they were allies before Hitler betrayed Stalin. Since then being anti-Nazi became a big part of Russian propaganda.
To everyone cracking jokes about a gay uprising, it’s a lot simpler than any of that.
They just want to exterminate the gays. Like literally. They want to find that portion of the population and destroy it, because they think it’s disgusting and evil.
That’s it. Putin and the Russian conservatives are going after gays because it’s an easy win with their conservative base, and they can claim moral superiority. Also distracts from Ukraine.
If you are gay in Russia… Its a very bad time to be gay in Russia.
American “conservatives” are over here drooling at the possibilities.
Their Stochastic terrorism has too low of a rate. Either move onto more practical efforts, or make the whole world worse to increase the Stochastic terrorism rates.
Well shit, they’re just going to do both.
They need a new enemy every now and then. If the current enemy happens to be exterminated, they’ll need one sooner, but they’ll need a new one anyways.
My bet is they round up the men and send them to the front as fodder.
That’s it. Putin and the Russian conservatives are going after gays because it’s an easy win with their conservative base, and they can claim moral superiority. Also distracts from Ukraine.
There you said it. They don’t care about gay people. They need an easy win with conservative public before future (mock) elections and to distract people from Ukraine. And they also want a weapon to proclaim anyone they dislike an extremist.
Can you prove you aren’t gay? Let’s see. It’a either you record a video of apologizing for being gay, or we stuff a broom up your ass and you record a video of apologizing for being gay 🤗 Either way, 10 years in a joint.
I’ve recently seen a good article in a ru-language blogosphere. These pieces of shit who climbed to the power in the 90s and 00s break every ladder to their positions, they want to establish themselves as new nobles, and they need a variety of tools to persecute whoever they dislike. They want the good ol’ serfdom. They build it as we speak.
It’s not bad if you are gay and noble. Gref, Volodin, others are gossiped to be gay. Rather it’s bad to be not in their club, like most do. Then you are in a risk of being persecuted and robbed of everything over nothing.
It’s 21th century and neo-feudalism is on the rise! Fuck, I hate it here.
Well we’ll well. I thought Russia said the nazis were in Ukraine. Huh. Funny, that.
both can be true
Sure it can. But that doesn’t mean it is.
Oh I’m sure if you look hard enough you’ll find one or two nazis hiding anywhere, even if they don’t identy as nazi or even know what it means.
But Russia, with its actions, have proven themselves to be an imperialist, nationalist, fascist piece of shit. And while both could be true, actions speak louder.
integrating the azov brigade into the national guard sounds like a bunch of Nazis are in the government to me.
Where’s Azov now, and where’s Rusich?
Yeah, it’s a problem. A threatened country integrated a fascist militia into its army. Yes, and that’s bad.
But the country as a whole does not like Nazis at all, and doesn’t vote for them.
“In the 2019 Ukrainian elections, the far-right nationalist electoral alliance, including Svoboda, National Corps, Right Sector, Azov Battalion, OUN, and Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, under-performed expectations. In the presidential election, its candidate Ruslan Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the vote, and in the parliamentary election, it was reduced to a single seat and saw its national vote fall to 2.15%, half of its result from 2014 and one-quarter of its result from 2012.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics_in_Ukraine
The country has a Jewish president and a Muslim cabinet minister. Sound like a Nazi country to you?
No, and you can fuck right off out of here. Nobody wants to hear your pro-terrorist bullshit.
I don’t make a distinction between the Nazis on one side of a border or the other.
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You need to study the subject more closely before stating that (: Slavik nazism is a deep rabbithole, but for the purpose of this article, I compare two governments, and one of them does indulge in that kind of rhetoric more than the other.
I don’t think either government is any better than the other. I don’t think either set of Nazis is any better than the other.
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your insults don’t change whether ukraine has a serious nazi problem. they formed a paramilitary group. that group has been intentionally integrated into the ukranian military. it’s not a lie.
i don’t think i’ve ever once excused russia or its government.
you should apologize.
Apologise, to you? Who are you? Do you even live here to begin with? How would you even know what a problem it was? From RussiaToday? What’s your argument?
Didn’t you know Russia has a lot of nazis too? Have you ever heard a name Tesak (rus. Cleaver)? Have you ever stood in our numerous protests agsinst the state along these guys like I did? Have you ever visited 2ch? How can you even fucking tell us about anything?
You know nothing and can fuck right off.
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Yes there are stupid people everywhere. In most places they aren’t literally running the country.
in most places they aren’t being integrated into the military.
Are you suggesting that the Russian military isn’t part of the Russian government, which is doing pogroms against gays?
I’m saying most places don’t integrate neo-Nazi units. I didn’t say anything about Russia.
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if a military is knowingly comprised of Nazis, that military shouldn’t exist.
When you are losing the war you started.
Blame gays.
When your policies fail.
Blame gays.
When your government is less popular than cancer.
Blame gays.
When you are getting mass protests.
Blame Jews. But Jews have nukes, oops. Then blame gays!
clubgoers’ documents were checked and photographed by the security services
That’s the worst part. Being on any list of this state is a danger. Especially when they want another batch of bodies to once again storm Avdyivka. Hope they can nope-out from all possible traps. It’s just… it would be totally spelled out they are here because they are gay, and it means a faith worse than death. Place is cursed.
Hexbear and lemmygrad be like: “Russia is just avoiding a potential color revolution.”
Actual quotes from Hexbears that I got when discussing Russia with them:
“Those reactionary shitstains [the Russian government] has little to be proud of.”
“Russia is extremly Reactionary […] thats why Russia has a Real Problem with “White Supremacy” , [and] no problems with hunting down LGBTQ+ […]”
Now I don’t exactly see anybody on Hexbear presently discussing this particular bit of news about crackdowns on LGBT+, but I’ll go post about this news on Hexbear and see how the people there react. I have a feeling it’s going to be consistent with my previous experiences discussing Russia with Hexbears, which is also going to be the reaction that I’d expect from an instance that skews heavily LGBT+.
My experience has been exactly the opposite. They go out of their way to defend Russia and China and will hardly utter a word of criticism against either.
Here’s the thread I made on Hexbear.
https://hexbear.net/post/1232126
Four comments as of me writing this comment:
Putin really is a big fan of the Russian Empire. He’s even doing his own pogroms that will inevitably lead to a brain drain.
Russia is so fucked. People who identified as not-religious has been constantly falling from since 1991 from 60% to 20%. Orthodox Christianity from 30% to 70%. Russian youth (16-29 yo) are 75% religious (62% orthodox) https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2014/02/10/russians-return-to-religion-but-not-to-church/
Man, fuck Gorbachev for allowing the USSR to be dissolved by the west.
[an emoji titled “russia-cool”, depicting a burning Russian flag]
So yeah, if you’re looking for Hexbears criticizing Russia, then there you go.
Also, if you are Russian LGBT you need to leave the country NOW. Germany is taking in asylums so there’s a way out.
I’m confused. Don’t they want to leave Nato countries? Why not go to the next best thing to them, China?
I can only assume it’s for reasons such as:
Language: there is a very large Russian/FSU diaspora in Germany, while there is only a very small Russian community in China; and LGBT+ Russians are more likely to be proficient in English than in Chinese. It then follows that integrating into society and accessing services would be easier in Germany than in China, since Germany has a high English proficiency, and a large enough Russian population for many services to be provided in that language, or for Russophones to be able to find community on the basis of shared first language. German itself, of course, is also more similar to English and Russian than it is to Chinese.
The state of LGBT+ rights: rights for LGBT+ people are better in Germany than in China. This is not to erase the strides that China has made in terms of LGBT+ rights, nor the difficulties that LGBT+ people face in Germany and the very real possibility of regression as right-wing sentiment grows in Germany; but it’s also just a fact that LGBT+ Hexbears obviously acknowledge, that it’s in many ways just easier to be LGBT+ in the core than in the periphery or semi-periphery. It sucks, but that’s the way it is, for now.
Ease of applying for asylum: becoming a refugee in China is more difficult than becoming a refugee in Germany. Last I checked, China does not officially grant asylum, and has all refugees living in the country processed by the UNHCR. Germany, on the other hand, does grant asylum. While it’s obviously a good thing that people can flee from dangerous situations and seek asylum in another country, and China really should grant official asylum to refugees; one should be aware that systemically, the imperial core’s policy towards refugees is a form of economic domination over the imperial periphery, meant to provide themselves with cheap labor and drain the capital of the periphery.
China does not need more communists: it’s not like it’s a bad thing to move to China by any means — there’s a lot of good that can be done there — but it’s also not a bad thing to move to the imperial core in order to fight the good fight “in the heart of the enemy”. That’s more people to do activism, more people to join and contribute to organizations, and so forth: if we want to build socialism around the whole world, obviously we’ll want to live around the whole world.
I dunno, these are just some of my thoughts on potential reasons why an LGBT+ Russian socialist might prefer to take refuge in Germany rather than China… Like, it could’ve also just been that Kaplya just stated the name of the first country Kaplya thought of, and the comment wasn’t meant to be read into to this extent, but either way it’s a good writing exercise.
Seems like they are mostly concerned with connecting “Russia bad” to liberalism, the ideology which is actually doing the most for LGBT rights. So even in contrition, they push misinformation and information warfare.
liberalism, the ideology which is actually doing to most for LGBT rights.
Just so that you’re aware: liberalism here refers to the belief in market economies and the right to private property. There is a bit more to liberalism, naturally, but that’s the main point. So whenever you see Hexbears talk about “libs” or “liberals”, rather than applying whatever American definition or preconception of the word “liberalism” that you may have, instead think, “someone who supports the free market and private property”… And indeed, the liberal parties in Russia are right-wing and deeply conservative: “liberal” non est “progressive”. Decouple those terms in your mind. You can have liberal progressives and liberal conservatives alike if you’re not using “liberal” as a synonym of “progressive”, like Americans tend to do.
Furthermore, LGBT+ criticisms of capitalism have a history stretching back even before Stonewall. Harry Whyte’s letter to Stalin in 1934, which criticizes the regress of gay rights in the USSR while also analyzing the position of gays in capitalism at the time, stands out. Leslie Feinberg (1949-2014) is another important figure in the history of LGBT+ communism. You might find Feinberg’s Lavender and Red to be particularly interesting, as it lays out a history of the intersection of LGBT+ rights movements and leftism.
Just so you’re aware: liberalism is the European enlightenment philosophy which holds that individual liberty and civil freedom is foundational to the curation of political agency and democratic self determination. This ML reduction to “liberalism is everything I don’t like” is factually incorrect and, like I said, intentional misinformation. Or more realistically, just bad political science, which is what most of us have come to expect from hexbears.
Russian oligarchy is in no way, shape, or form related to the belief that democracy is sacred, and political agency is a necessary condition thereof.
As opposed to you reducing liberalism to everything you do like, of course. How’s that “sacred democracy and political agency” working out in practice? How are you enjoying your “individual liberty”?
Which is why they said it’s not being discussed much over there.
They don’t want to defend it, but they can’t bring themselves to be critical of Russia either, so they just don’t speak up.
My thread on Hexbear
It’s because they are campists. They don’t actually care about egalitarianism. Or leftism.
Those slimy bootlicking fucks on hexbear I imagine are mostly fortunate Russians that haven’t been sent to the front line. I wonder if they feel anything watching their country men die in dirt while posting pig balls on the internet. Strange fucking world. I’d post this on hexbear, but I’ve just been banned by them, typical spineless fascists.
Did they think the guys were gonna rise up, form a gayocracy?
Edit: angry tankies down voting their ridiculous beliefs being talked about
No, they just take a far-right government appropriating left-wing terminology in good faith, which they did since the 1920’s.
Like the sacred band of Thebes, but they’re a government body instead of an army platoon.
Also, if you are Russian LGBT you need to leave the country NOW. Germany is taking in asylums so there’s a way out.
This one got me confused. Flee to a Nato country that they hate?
Who says gay Russians hate NATO countries? And for that matter, who says most Russians do regardless of sexual orientation?
I’d imagine if I hated the authoritarian autocrat of my country, I’d naturally align with countries that hated the autocrat too. Especially if said countries were offering to save my life and give me the freedom to live how I wish (so long as I’m not hurting others).
People want to be treated like human beings regardless of who they love? Yes, that’s a dangerously extreme view. Wanting to exterminate them all is perfectly normal, however.
“Seriously? I’m being arrested for being gay?” Extremely gay.
Where is that from?
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@Stamau123 What were they looking for 👀
People who like getting their shirt off?They’re creating lists of people and looking into their associated social networks. Do you want to be on a list of people your government has suddenly associated with crime and terrorism because your cousin went to a gay bar?
@Szymon Unfortunately tactics used in the american south of course.
They took lots of photos to pour over in the evidence room that night
@Stamau123 😉 Exactly
sure Putin asked for copies - just so he could observe how unRuski they are.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Russian security forces raided gay clubs and bars across Moscow Friday night, less than 48 hours after the country’s top court banned what it called the “global LGBTQ+ movement” as an extremist organization.
Police searched venues across the Russian capital, including a nightclub, a male sauna, and a bar that hosted LGBTQ+ parties, under the pretext of a drug raid, local media reported.
The ruling, which was made in response to a lawsuit filed by the Justice Ministry, is the latest step in a decadelong crackdown on LGBTQ+ rights under President Vladimir Putin, who has emphasized “traditional family values” during his 24 years in power.
Activists have noted the lawsuit was lodged against a movement that is not an official entity, and that under its broad and vague definition authorities could crack down on any individuals or groups deemed to be part of it.
Before the ruling, leading Russian human rights groups had filed a document with the Supreme Court that called the Justice Ministry lawsuit discriminatory and a violation of Russia’s constitution.
Earlier this month, Russian media quoted Deputy Justice Minister Andrei Loginov as saying that “the rights of LGBT people in Russia are protected” legally.
The original article contains 635 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 69%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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For a second I read it as if we invadeed a Russian gay bar and revealed that Russia was ok with gays.
