Friday, February 20, 2015

And now for a word from the other side (Russia and the US)

Via the Young Fogey and Dr. Tighe...

...Russia, which is portrayed as radically nationalist and religiously extremist, particularly in the American Conservative article, has not executed a single person in 20 years, while the United States… well, you know. Saudi Arabia still beheads people in front of Western spectators and jails bloggers for not being religiously devout or "respectful" enough, whereas the West focused on the "persecution" of a group of punk rock feminists who rushed into a church to insult Putin and and the faith of 85% of the country. 

Unlike in Western countries, Russian anti-hate laws are primarily designed to protect the Russian majority. Pussy Riot violated the hate-speech laws in Russia, which are extremely comparable to the laws in the United Kingdom, where the slur "Faggot" posted on Facebook by one of High Right’s founders got him imprisoned for 17 hours while his wife and children sat outside freezing on a bench waiting for him to be released. 

Countless stories show that people all through Western Europe are arrested on hate-speech violations every year, when they hardly do something as extreme as running into a place of religious worship to insult the faith itself. Usually, hate-speech laws are used to suppress European-descended ethnic majorities and Christians..
 
... We constantly hear about how Westerners should condemn Mr Putin for his "anti-gay laws," which really only ban public displays of ‘non-traditional’ sexual relations. We are told to think this is the worst evil on planet earth, to not allow these cheerfulsexuals to display their deviancy for the public. In any normal culture, this display would be considered at best abnormal behavior, and at worst considered what it is, degenerate. We are told, this is "repression," even though the majority of Americans are Christians, even if only superficially, and we do not appreciate such public displays for the most part. Instead, to be truly progressive, one should make sure that their nation allows Christians to be sued for not making birthday cakes for people who violate what they consider to be an intrinsic religious belief. Essentially, repression is only OK if it is Christians and Europeans who are being repressed...
 
...Americans believe that they can create a utopia, that they can overcome any sense of "bigotry," that cultures do not have to matter, that endless swarms of immigrants can be just like us. Americans do not see their country’s failings as the result of a deeply flawed worldview, they see it as the result of bad management. Thus, they eagerly hope for a change in their managers, and look towards the next cycle of elections. The American mindset in addition is also often obsessed with the superficial, the easy to placate, the carnal, the expression of excess. Combine this with extreme optimism and unrestrained idealism and it isn’t hard to see why liberalism imposed with force took hold: most of us accepted it because we wanted it to be true. 
 
Read the rest here.

This strikes me as a somewhat rose colored look at Russia, with a lot of very fair criticism of the United States thrown in. Russia is no paradise and Putin really is a thug (albeit very politically skilled). But it's not Nazi Germany, North Korea or Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, much, though not all, of the criticism of the United States seems especially stinging. Perhaps because it has the ring of truth to it.

3 comments:

The Anti-Gnostic said...

Dr. Tighe reads Alternative Right?

John (Ad Orientem) said...

I doubt it. But he does read TYF's blog.

William Tighe said...

I never heard of "Alternative Right" until I found the link to the article on TYF's blog.