Russian security forces have raided gay clubs and bars across Moscow less than 48 hours after the country’s top court banned what it called the “global LGBTQ+ movement” as an extremist organization.

Sigh.

    • Kaplya@hexbear.netEnglish
      66·
      11 months ago

      Yeah I wonder what would happen to the people with the loss of communist ideology and letting liberalism run rampant in your country (which still hasn’t been purged and are going strong!). The 90s was such a horror show that it’s going to take generations to heal this trauma.

      • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]@hexbear.netMEnglish
        48·
        11 months ago

        Given the general trend, at least in the West, of increasing numbers of non-religious people, it’s kinda fascinatingly disturbing to see the opposite occurring. Really shows how these things are actually governed by measurable social and economic factors and can’t be explained by mere vibes-based explanations like “Well, as society is becoming more rational and scientific…” One wonders if we’ll see a resurgence in religiosity in the West as conditions deteriorate.

        • MattsAlt [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          37·
          11 months ago

          I could see it as lense people adopt to make sense of an awful world. As conditions deteriorate and revolutionary thought is suppressed, religion is the only thing people can grasp to as an explanation for why things are happening and death almost being something to look forward to because it’ll be better in the afterlife.

          I don’t see it exactly the same as Hakim’s recent post about Islam and the people of Palestine, but I think it rhymes. People living in such awful conditions need something to grasp, especially when family and friends aren’t a certainty day to day

          • LeopardShepherd [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            29·
            11 months ago

            I think also in times of hardship joining a religion is an easy way to find community and mutual aid networks. Also a good way to avoid persecution and have an advantage if the state favours a certain religion.

            • GrouchyGrouse [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
              22·
              11 months ago

              Yep. There is a strong history of immigrant communities organizing around their shared religion or even physically inside their houses of worship like the Irish catholics in the 1900s.

          • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
            2·
            11 months ago

            Idk if you were referring to it but the first paragraph is essentially Marx’s intro to the critique of philosophy of right. The most thought provoking few paragraphs he ever wrote imo.

              • quarrk [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
                2·
                11 months ago

                It’s here, just the first few paragraphs (ending with “the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.”), not the whole thing. It’s so interesting and many non-Marxists dont know about his non-economic writing. This was written when he was around 25 years old, before the Communist Manifesto, when he was still involved with left-Hegelian circles.

                Marx was an atheist but he was critical of a particular brand of what he considered “vulgar materialists” at his time who advocated for the abolition of religion without understanding its material basis. Marx agreed religion is illusory but that it is a necessary means of coping for many people. So the philosophers shouldn’t be focused on taking away the coping mechanism but to resolve the conditions that require coping.

        • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          18·
          11 months ago

          Reminds me of an old friend who, when Hillary lost, went into a death spiral of first joining team MAGA because if you cant beat em join em, and later moving to Utah, converting to Mormonism, and praying the gay away. His current politics are kinda like Jackson Hinkle’s

            • autismdragon [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
              7·
              11 months ago

              Ive seen a lot of “the nazis were gay and trans” going around twitter recently but I havent asked this friend and I dont think he knows who Hinkle is because when I mentioned him I got no reaction? I’ll quote the PM where he described his current politics

              "Oh no, not libertarian at all. I can’t stand libertarians. I’m an ultranationalist and a populist and an immigration-restrictionist. So we probably agree on issues such as Ukraine, single-payer health care, pro-labor unions…

              But probably we disagree on social issues, which makes sense because we both want what would benefit our situations."

        • ScrewdriverFactoryFactoryProvider [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          13·
          11 months ago

          One wonders if we’ll see a resurgence in religiosity in the West as conditions deteriorate.

          All of the soup kitchens, food banks, and homeless shelters in my area are still run by church or out of churches. This wouldn’t surprise me, especially in rural areas, especially with churches becoming more and more capitalist.

      • Omniraptor [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        10·
        11 months ago

        What the fuck. Don’t get me wrong the Russian empire was awful about LGBT (no surprises there) until lenin came along and decriminalized it (but iirc there wasn’t much if any proactive/institutional work to secure rights, it just wasn’t a priority and I can’t really blame them). Then came stalin and specifically fucked it up (many such cases).

        and legislatively everything kept being fucked (despite the best efforts of civil society) right up to the fall of the Soviet Union. Even after the fall, we only decriminalized it to appease the capitalists when we joined the council of Europe in 1993.

        So yeah in terms of rights, capitalism/the 90s was the best thing that happened to the Russian LGBT community in recent history. And even then there it wasn’t applied retroactively, people who were previously sentenced stayed imprisoned. However culturally there was definitely a shift in perception. The peak was probably sending a couple (not really) lesbians to perform in Eurovision 2003 (to date iirc they’re still the most popular Russian band among foreigners).

        And going into the 2000s the government grew more and more allergic of civil society / activism of literally any kind including LGBT rights. That’s when the whole ‘foreign agent’ thing started too. Until they just outlawed activism/‘propaganda’ in 2013. The only saving grace is the shitty patchwork enforcement. But if the government does decide to get on your case, you’re fucked. Culturally however I don’t think young people who use the internet are much more homophobic than on average in eastern europe (lol). The state sponsored TV watching boomers (who hold power in the government) are another story tho, it’s as bad as fox news watchers in the west.

    • Omniraptor [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      11 months ago

      This paper is a bit old (2014) and more recent data says that thw trend is reversed. Here is a more recent analysis of a few different studies/surveys saying young people are overall less religious now than they were 15 years ago http://rrsociology.ru/journal/article/2170/

      Not to say Russia isn’t fucked but the root cause isn’t orthodox Christianity lol

    • Kaplya@hexbear.netEnglish
      62·
      11 months ago

      Which is funny because he was so adamant about national sovereignty, he should have purged the liberals when given the opportunity last year. But he’s too afraid to pull the trigger.

      Also, if you are Russian LGBT you need to leave the country NOW. Germany is taking in asylums so there’s a way out.

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    501·
    11 months ago

    I saw a headline from terf island that went “Russian FORCES raid gay bars” and it’s like, this is awful enough, why do you even feel the need to embellish like the army are the ones storming the place? To differentiate it in the minds of your readers from the kind of omnipresent police brutality that has become a staple of life in the US and UK?

  • M68040 [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    49·
    11 months ago

    Hell yeah i’m an absolutely huge extremist. “Traditional family values” can eat my ass, I’m doing this shit my way