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Russian Court Jails Woman for Wearing 'Extremist' Rainbow Earrings - The Moscow Times
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this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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My friend, do I have some news for you.
I come from and have lived many years of my life in the so-called Global South countries. Progressive movements have always existed throughout the Global South. Incidentally, they were all crushed - directly or directly - by Western imperialist powers. Perhaps not as brutal as those were in Afghanistan or Chile, or Indonesia even a decade earlier, but they were crushed nonetheless and the situation allowed reactionary forces to take power, which again conveniently benefited the foreign imperialists. All these countries are now conservative shitholes that you’d claim to be the “bad guys” in your book.
All the left-wing leaders that ever came into power had to face economic threats that forced them to more or less commit to austerity simply to survive. The end result? Left wing governments achieved nothing and only stoked further economic despair, allowing right wing forces to exploit and come into power.
Do you think Argentinians are simply so stupid that they elected the crazy libertarian as their leader? Or do you think there is a much longer history underlying the failures of left wing reforms in the Global South?
Tell us, what are we supposed to do? Are we supposed to just “be better”? Every time we have a left wing movement growing that wants to assert sovereignty (which almost certainly means threatening the interests of the Western imperialists), they get crushed one way or the other.
At the end of the day, trust me, if you had lived in Russia, unless you are part of the wealthy elites, you’d much rather live under the stability of Putin’s rule, conservative as it is, than the absolute madness and poverty of 1990s Yeltsin era, when simply walking down the street for being a minority can get you murdered by literal neo-Nazis, when child prostitution literally re-emerged after many decades of prosperity. Ah yes, so progressive of Russia to let the Western liberals in. There is a reason why Gorbachev and Yeltsin are the two most hated leaders in Russia.
This is why there is such a stark contrast in opinion between leftists in the imperial core and the peripheral, developing world when it comes to the Ukraine War. There is a reason why all the AES countries almost immediately came to an understanding with Russia’s plight when the Ukraine War started. The people who have been victims of abuse know that if one day, another victim kills the abuser out of rage, everyone immediately understands that the abuser had it coming. Nearly every country in the Global South stood with Russia and refused to impose sanctions, despite the demands of their Western imperialist masters. Leftists who live in the imperial core and still don’t understand why this is the case simply reveal their complete ignorance of what it means to be a leftist in the Global South.
Again does literally nobody understand the concept of critical support?
That's an awful lot of words to justify discriminating against gay people.
My stance is that nato should fuck off and America doesn't have any room to criticize anybody for their treatment of any type of minority but I still think that countries shouldn't jail people for being gay.
And again, if I were a gay I would understand if gay people put any country that would jail them for that in the "bad" category.
We talk an awful lot about intersectionality but I think what really hurts intersectionality is minorities seeing that their comrades are willing to set aside basic human rights for them if it means advancing a alarmed agenda.
Like it's a pretty hard pitch to say "look I know they would throw you in jail for who you are but you still can't criticize anything this country does because they arent aligned with nato"
You should read my OP if you think this is in any way a “justification”. What I am doing here is indeed intersectionality, and it is that the progressive movement in the Global South can only grow when Western imperialism can no longer intervene in our domestic politics and economy.
You’re talking as if we in the Global South never tried to be progressive, and are stuck with conservative reactionaries that we should criticize. I am saying that there is no point in criticizing the conservatives when every time we had a chance to do something progressive, we get immediately crushed by the Western powers. We simply have no way out without defeating the imperialists first. This is what Mao called the principal contradiction. Everything else is secondary at this point and will never be untied without resolving the principal contradiction first.
There is a book I’d like to recommend, it’s called the Jakarta Method by Vincent Bevins, and I think it will inform you a lot about the perspective of what it means to be a leftist in the Global South.
I do think the sort of “don’t talk about it” mentality does more harm than good. Why are we trying to pretend these reactionary elements don’t exist in these countries instead of just holding our whole, principled stance (Anti-Imperialism is needed to properly oust the reactionaries, so anti-imperialist action is needed first, and that can include support for Russia in E.G. the Ukraine/Russia conflict)?
Trying to literally bully people into not complaining about homophobia in those countries seems not only counterproductive but silly. Complaining about gun-obsessed chuds is technically within line of the mainstream narrative of gun control, but it’s also entirely justifiable because gun-obsessed chuds are deeply unhinged. It’s like we think every single person alive is such a completely politically illiterate person that writing “DEATH TO AMERICA AND CRITICAL SUPPORT TO RUSSIA (their current policies on queer people suck though)” will lead to that person going off and voting to murder Russians
This is why weirdos in the Fediverse are able to slander us so easily, people coming in and seeing us outright shut down gay people complaining about homophobia or whatever is a really fucking terrible look. If our concern is that the optics of being… checks notes not outright delusional about the amount of reactionaries in countries ravaged by imperialism… could lead to more imperialism… then first of all, we’re doing something horribly wrong, because we could just MAKE IT CLEAR that the presence of these reactionaries is the FAULT of imperialistic countries like the US, and second of all, why do we then not care about the optics of literally hushing queer people because they’re making our politics too difficult?
Russia isn’t a fucking MONOLITH, there isn’t a single fucking Russian Hivemind that controls every belief of someone there. When we reject criticisms like this because “oh but it’s an imperialized country!” you ignore the fact that 1. These reactionary elements, again, CAME FROM imperialism, so trying to be all hush-hush about it is far less effective than just acknowledging that, and 2. Progressive elements in the country probably share the exact same criticisms because these are criticisms of lobbying groups and conservative orgs, not Russian people as a whole (why would it be? There’s some weird noble-savage shit going on here where some people who call themselves “anti-imperialist” can’t help but act like every single person in an imperialized country is infallible, EVEN WHEN their existence and power came directly or indirectly from imperialism. Yeah, I’m just some white person, but this feels super racist and dehumanizing to me, like some kind of fetishizing)
You have fundamentally misunderstood my position. Go back and read all the comments I have made on this thread, under no circumstances have I ever said that “don’t criticize, don’t talk about it”.
I have laid out the historical cases on why progress will continue to be stifled as long as we remain oppressed under the threat of foreign imperialist intervention. From Indonesia to Chile to Afghanistan to Russia, millions of people striving for exactly what you are telling us to do, were brutally murdered in the name of anti-communism and enforcing the liberal free market order. These were merely the most prominent examples, but across the Global South, there are endless stories like this, perhaps not as brutal, but no less harrowing.
Let’s make it clear here:
For us in the Global South, the prescription has never been more clear: the defeat of capital and the emancipation of minorities (including LGBT minorities) go hand in hand with the total and complete defeat of Western imperialist intervention in our countries. This is the principal contradiction. We will continue to fight the reactionaries in our own countries, but we also fully understand that no progress is possible as long as Western imperialists can continue to oppress our political aspirations, economic sovereignty, national and cultural identities.
For the comrades in the imperial core, you will have to figure out the principal contradictions yourselves. You will have to figure out how to defeat capital and the reactionaries and to emancipate the oppressed minorities in your own country. The best you can do for us progressives in the Global South is to defeat your imperialism from within, so the progressive movements in the Global South will finally have a room to breathe.
Yeah, and I’m not disagreeing with any of this? It’s like you’re inventing beliefs I don’t even have