...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:
Dr. Tighe reads Alternative Right?
I doubt it. But he does read TYF's blog.
I never heard of "Alternative Right" until I found the link to the article on TYF's blog.
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