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.
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.
… and once they have rounded up and sent every minority into mandatory service for the war effort, there will be nothing left of the arts, sciences and cultural diversity, that makes a society blossom. They are undoing themselves, they don’t need anybody’s help.
Russia has been doing and undoing itself the whole history. Meanwhile, who suffers? The minorities. You could compile a list of cultures they destroyed across Siberia, the Pontic Steppe and the Caucasus. And this process is still ongoing.
Russia has had this problem for decades, even before the collapse of the Soviet Union this was a problem, who would want to live in communist Russia when you could live in a democracy in the west instead, and get paid for the privilege? Anyone with a brain left. After all, all the people smuggling through the Berlin wall was going in one direction.
But yeah their current actions are making it far worse.
Putin doesn’t care about the future of Russia though, he only cares about his legacy. The Ukrainian invasion was supposed to be the start of the second Soviet Union. The plan was to also invade places like Poland (of course that was a terrible plan that would have almost certainly resulted in the third world war but there you go). To fall at the first hurdle like this is particularly embarrassing and dangerous because it makes him look weak, and in Russia you do not want to look weak because if you do you end up dead eventually.
If Putin manages to die of old age I’ll be amazed
@Stamau123 What were they looking for 👀
People who like getting their shirt off?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.
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.
People who want to pretend this couldn’t happen in America need to realise 2021 Maryland used obscenity laws banning oral sex to raid a gay bookstore and arrest people for having sex in private. That’s a somewhat rural part of one of the most progressive states, there are far too many republicans that would love to use some flimsy excuse to criminalize gay people and throw as many in jail as possible.
Oh good, whataboutism! I was hoping someone would think to get into some whataboutism. A Russia-bashing thread is never complete without your whataboutism with regard to the US. It’s axiomatic. You can’t have one without the other.
How I spent summer. Essay.
In the morning we with my mom went to beach. There we’ve seen jellyfish(recognized as unwanted organization, included in the list of foreign agents).
Then it rained(recognized as unwanted organization, included in the list of foreign agents). After rain came rainbow(which is element of extremist movement symbolics).
Also mom showed me memorial in city center. Memorial is included in list of foreign agents, its activity in Russia is suspended by the court’s decision
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.
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“Seriously? I’m being arrested for being gay?” Extremely gay.
Where is that from?
Sad news for Russia. If only they made matchmaking lists instead of hit lists
Meanwhile “pro lgbtq” hexbears keep licking Putins boots
That’s because they’re all 12 years old and have no brain. When you talk to them it’s quite clear they don’t actually know what they’re talking about. My favourite thing to do is quote events and dates at them of things that that didn’t happen, and most of the time they don’t pick up on it.
when you argue they will just post the pig poop balls
An obvious sign of an intellectual superior individual. I don’t think.
That sissy, lemme.ml isn’t exactly any better
i haven’t seen anything bad on this instance, and it doesn’t constantly defederate from random instances (unlike instances such as lemmy.world, a while back it tried to block lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Gold medal in olympic mental gymnastics
Well, I suppose that one way to get blocked, u/soot
It’s one loser making a bunch of accounts and spamming several instances.
If anything this shows the need for better automated mod tools.
I don’t get it. Is this news article wrong? Who is u/soot?
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Russia looking a lot like their old enemy the Nazis these days.
And they always have
Russia has always been anti-LGBT+. Stalin called them abomination and Putin is just a dimestore version of that monster.
I was reading several months ago that there was a time in the mid ‘90s that there were a few gay clubs in Russia that were relatively unmolested by the cops, as long as the local “roof” was paid off.
Not always. Soviet Russia decriminalized homosexuality in 1917, and it was the first country in the world to do that. But it was recriminalized again in 1933 by Stalin.
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.
Ironically, Russians think they are fighting Nazis in Ukraine.
And Ukraine’s president is Jewish.
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.
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
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.
Not so much “Russians being Russian” as it is “Fascist power structure being fascist power structure “
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.
I see you are well acquainted with the idea of redfash
no such thing.
Hexbear and lemmygrad be like: “Russia is just avoiding a potential color revolution.”
It’s because they are campists. They don’t actually care about egalitarianism. Or leftism.
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?
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.
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).
Did they think the guys were gonna rise up, form a gayocracy?
Edit: angry tankies down voting their ridiculous beliefs being talked about
Like the sacred band of Thebes, but they’re a government body instead of an army platoon.
No, they just take a far-right government appropriating left-wing terminology in good faith, which they did since the 1920’s.
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.
Revolution is politically inconvenient – it’s a color revolution
Revolution fits my ideology – it’s a righteous uprising that confirms my ideology is superior
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.
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.
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.
Man, fuck Gorbachev for allowing the USSR to be dissolved by the west.
What on Earth does this even mean?
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.
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.
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”?
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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
good for russia.
Ah yeah, the daily reminder that Russia has indeed become the comical evil country as it was always portrayed in Tom Clancys books, if not worse…
I dunno if anyone is interested but of you got some spare coins laying around the Canadian based charity Rainbow Refugee has been helping get out threatened LGBTQIA+ folks from multiple countries including Russia for quite a while now by arranging sponsorships and legal support and advice for LGBTQIA asylum seekers. If you know anyone looking to get out or would like to donate here’s a link :
My daughter is queer and if Trump wins, we will probably have to seek refuge in Canada. I have an uncle there, which will also help, but this is a good resource. Thanks.
People said that last time trump won and literally nobody actually followed through
Lots of people have been moving across the border for residency. Canadian politicians have been complaining about it.
Nothing happened to lgbt people when Trump was in office. It won’t happen if he gets voted back in. Like Trump or not, he’s never been anti-lgbt.
Trump is anti anyone who doesn’t conform to his view of how people should be. This is especially problematic because he also doesn’t trust intelligence, and of course to Trump, if you can successfully open a crisp packet you’re considered dangerously intelligent.
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!
No, Israel has nukes. The Jews have a space laser though, which is better. Netanyahu lost his space laser privileges a long time ago, I could maybe petition the Council to let The Gays have his time slot?
Agreed. I appreciate a lot of Russian culture, the use of matrices, etc and some of their discoveries and all as much as the next guy, but it’s sad to see the way that their government is going about with things.
Fuck it half the problem is that straight people and breeders consistently expect themselves to not be held accountable for being assholes. Being the majority should not mean you are free from consequences when you cause harm. Love returns threefold.
I honestly could not care if there was another world war at this stage. People who claim to give a fuck about humanity as a whole really need to start justifying why they don’t deserve a war and actually try to fix their own shit or mediate stuff.
Consider that if someone is aware they’re a minority and attempt to do their best to get level without looking to do harm to the majority status quo, if they know that they could do better, they’re giving you an opportunity to step up to the plate, and as for their morals ,at least they’re standing up for themselves, even better if they’re standing up for others by trying to teach and lead by example.
It’s like, how is it you can seriously have the audacity to ask for good things for anyone, yourself, society or your own children when you treat people like such shit that they literally choose to leave.
It’s like people asking why people leave Saudi, Russia or China etc, and you just only have to look at how ridiculously stupid and pansy the way they treat their children, saying things like they wish that they suffer for being disobedient, for being gay or for being bisexual or for not having a haircut, or for driving a car, or for not following their advise. Anyone with half a braincell would see it as a petty and weak attempt to feminise and handicap someone into compliance with the status quo simply for something they can’t change.
It’s like, would I try and punish a woman by dropping a nail under the tyre or cutting the line for their brake pedal for not knowing how to change their brakepads before their wof is due? No I would not, because it’s dumb as fuck and an idiotic attempt to try teach someone a lesson that very transparently demonstrates bad faith and a sadistic desire to assert dominance more than a real commitment to someone’s well being and long term future.
This comment is a minor masterpiece of rambling disjointed incoherence. I couldn’t do better if I tried. Were you roaring drunk when you wrote it? Do you even remember writing it?
So what I’m hearing is give The Gays™️ nukes…
Maybe they should. Carve out a piece of land and make it a homeland for them which would included a whole mess of weapons
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That’s one way to create a rainbow
Can we not blame gay Jews?
Like especially the communist gay Jews, the true root of global disharmony
Russia bad
You got that right. Russia is not required to be bad, though. We’re all hoping they improve. Any day now.
Yes, Russia oppressing LGBTQ+ people is bad.
