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.
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:
So yeah, if you’re looking for Hexbears criticizing Russia, then there you go.
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.
Or, you know, it’s because nobody wants to immigrate to China? Ever notice that unlike Europe and Canada and Australia and the US, China doesn’t have an immigration problem? I wonder why that is?
In case anyone wants to know, there have been over 40k undocumented Chinese immigrants to the US this year alone, and the numbers are growing. Fortunately they are pretty easily able to claim asylum and are easily integrated into existing Chinese-American communities.
It’s so strange that we don’t see any Americans immigrating to China.
What on Earth does this even mean?
No idea. Letter from mental asylum?
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.
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.
I think they were referring to difference between classical liberalism (usually implied by “liberalism” term in Europe) and social liberalism (usually implied in the US). The European enlightenment philosophy sounds like something that was a basis for both but contemporary state may be far from the original ideals.
Either way they’re still full of shit, so I don’t see that it even matters.
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”?
In terms of LGBT rights? It’s working out pretty good.
I’m not reducing anything. I’m just giving the freshmen political science definition of the term.
But the right to private property is as important as the right to your bodily autonomy! If you can own nothing then prepare to die losing your body and your mind. Imagine that, a communist alien that will take everything, even your mind from you!
The blob will have no mercy on us! Burn it to death with fire if we have to
Just so that you’re aware, that’s a bullshit definition of liberalism and no one is under any obligation to cede it to authoritarian liars and chumps. Any legitimate definition of liberalism has also to include a fundamental respect for basic human rights and the consent of the governed. Liberalism stands in antithesis to authoritarianism and that’s precisely why the hexbear bozos hate it so much.
How exactly do I revoke my consent?
So they’re not even consistent and you trot that out like we’re supposed to somehow respect it? Call it what it is; intellectual dishonesty. Those people are intellectual contortionists because they don’t actually have a coherent ideology that’s defensible in the light of basic human rights. It’s all authoritarian bullshit and the sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.
deleted by creator
I second your experience. Additionally, if you disrupt their echo chamber too much, they’ll delete your comments and ban you. This has happened repeatedly when trying to have civil discussions like this one. They justify it as preventing misinformation so I have yet to see a fair debate on there.
For anyone reading, @player2@lemmy.dbzer0.com was only banned from the hexbear.net chat board. They were banned for posting a link to a Kyiv independent article defending fascists in ukrane and got absolutely blown the fuck out by this reply.
I hope this fair and balanced coverage helps you understand what experiences this poster is referring to!
Very cheeky. Don’t fool yourself into believing that hexbear hosts fair discussions. I have always held discussions in good faith, in which I respect others and try to understand their perspectives. The hexbear debate style is classic bad faith discussions in which they try to dominate and coerce the other party into conceding. This is not the only time I’ve been censored on hexbear for presenting views that go against the groupthink.
In my offending comment I wasn’t defending fascists, I was pointing out that most Ukrainians are not Nazis.
That commenter only copy/pasted Russian propaganda and a tik-tok edit of Azov Battalion social media clips without context. Only 2.15% of Ukrainians voted for the National Corps Party and after the Russian invasion of Ukraine they have suspended their political activities to focus on armed defense of the country.
That 2021 UN item linked is cherry-picked. Russia has been trying to pass that item every year since 2005. It is a thinly-veiled pretext used by Russia to justify its brutal war and to legitimize their misinformation campaign. Ever since the Russian invasion of Ukraine this has been even more obvious, look at the most recent votes on this item to see that the whole world disagrees with Russia on this.
Russia is co-opting the despicable ideology of Nazism for politically motivated purposes that seek to excuse new violations and abuses of human rights. In fact, Russia has its own problems with far-right extremists and instead of suppressing them, Russia tacitly supports these groups to suppress dissent and to promote it’s own agenda.
2022
Why France and 51 other countries voted against UN resolution condemning Nazism
2023
EU Explanation of Vote – UN General Assembly 3rd Committee: Glorification of Nazism
Are you sad that you can’t delete my comments this time?
For anyone reading, the post that was removed and got this user banned from the hexbear.net chat community, posted in it’s entirety:
Their post was just a link to the article defending and justifying fascist imagery in ukrane.
The comment was directly in reply to the post do literally all ukranian soldiers wear fascist imagery?.
I personally believe it’s abhorrent to accept and defend the use of Nazi imagery and propaganda, but if a reader feels like it’s more complex and that people who go around whipping out the Bellamy salute are fine and they can be made the useful idiots of liberal democracy…
Whomst am I to point at the whole history of the 20th century and say “bro, just one more fascist coup, bro. This cia operation will be different bro!”?
Yup, I posted a link which directly answered the question in the post title and I looked forward to the explanations for why it is incorrect. Unfortunately I never got to participate in that discussion.
Do you realize that only 0.5% of Ukranian forces are part of the Azov Battalion? But they are the group with the most active social media presence, providing most of the images that hexbears throw around. No one else is endorsing Nazis, they’re all fighting to protect their homes and nation.
This Nazi scare tactic is a rather successful political-psychological tactic to justify the war among Russians who view the defeat of the Nazis as the high point in their history which they’d like to re-live.
Look, I can do it too. The Russian government has routinely collaborated with neo-Nazis in order to fight domestic opposition to Vladimir Putin, a policy called Managed Nationalism. The Russian Imperial Movement of neo-Nazi terrorists are allowed to operate and train militias within Russia as long as they don’t target Russians internally. The group worked with the Russian government on the annexation of Crimea, the Russo-Ukranian War, and the War in Donbas.
I personally believe it’s abhorrent to accept and defend the use of Nazi imagery and propaganda, therefore we should reject any actions by Russia. See? It goes both ways.
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
https://hexbear.net/post/1232126
It’s because they are campists. They don’t actually care about egalitarianism. Or leftism.
Or stateists. Well, stateists usually call themselves nationalists, who they are not.
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.
Revolution is politically inconvenient – it’s a color revolution
Revolution fits my ideology – it’s a righteous uprising that confirms my ideology is superior
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).
Russians are not a monolith, but a lot of other Russian expats (for economic reasons) are causing issues for very well agreeing with Putin too much on non-economic issues. I know one such Hungarian in the Netherlands, who begged his colleagues to vote for Wild Geeters, because of Orbán.
Wouldn’t lemmygrad be pro-revolution?