A court in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod has jailed a woman for wearing rainbow earrings, the human rights group Egida reported late Wednesday, marking the second case of its kind after Russia banned the so-called “LGBT movement” as an “extremist” organization in November. According ...
ngl russia is not making it easy to give critical support lol
Not directed at you OP, but just a general observation: I still don’t understand why so many Western leftists see things in such a black and white manner. This is especially true from my interactions with Americans in general, it’s almost always “the good guys” vs “the bad guys”, nothing in between.
You can absolute support Russia’s anti-imperialist goals while rejecting all their other reactionary views. The same can be said for support for the anti-imperialist causes of the Palestinians, Iranians, Lebanese, Algerians etc. You don’t have to like them, you just need to acknowledge that this is a historical process that is inevitable.
In my opinion, this is where the strengths of Marxism-Leninism lie, which provides a scientific and materialist lens to understand the world. The question to ask is not: should we support reactionary Global South countries against Western imperialism? The questions we should ask are: why have progressive movements that had proliferated throughout the 20th century across the Global South been largely obliterated? What was the historical and the objective process that had led to the demise of progressive politics and left-wing movements, and the rise of conservatism in the Global South, especially after 1990? What are the root causes underlying these symptoms and what is the process required to cultivate the very material conditions necessary to enable the growth of left-wing political movements in the Global South?
Like medical sciences, scientific socialism allows us to separate the root causes of the disease from a collection of symptoms, thus enabling us to find ways to cure the disease instead of merely treating the symptoms.
Maybe because if your lgbtq putting people in jail for wearing rainbow colors really isn't much more complicated than "bad guys"
It's the whole "The enemy of my enemy is my enemies enemy and nothing more"
Like if a nation would label you an extremist political organization and jail you for not being straight they're gonna have to do something other than happening to coincidently be opposed to NATO before you start singing their praises.
Doesn't mean you think nato should be running the country or expanding military bases but if you want to talk about being able to view it as more than "good guys" and "bad guys" being able to say "both these people are dogshit for different reasons" seems sufficiently nuanced
Modern Russia is an embarrassment to the USSR that once took them to the stars. It's incredibly sad to see them become just as chudified as the US. What capitalism does to a mother fucker.
This is why I don't understand leftists who oppose China and other AES based on specific social issues like LGBT rights. Look at the imperfect rights of LGBT people in the USSR and tell me that you'd rather be LGBT in the post-Soviet states instead.
Nothing got better as a result of the fall of the USSR unless you were a Patriarch in the Orthodox Church. Can't imagine why anyone would rationally advocate for that shit to happen again.
"the imperial powers use lgbt rights/feminism as a wedge fot justifying imperialism" ought to be met with these governments resolving the grievances of these movements so they can't be coopted into anti-government plots. it's bad morally and it's bad strategy,
The us is the global imperial hegemon. Russia winning a war against the us will not make Russia the new hegemon, but instead destroy the current unipolar system. It will make it more feasible for leftist movements to develop across the world.
Acknowledging this state of affairs does not mean you have to believe Russia is a "good guy"
They have little to no hostility with socialist countries for one thing. They're a good trade partner with a lot of the global south and they're starting to pull out of normal relations with Israel . Russia's UN ambassador last year called Israel an "occupation."
Domestically they're about the same as any other capitalist oligarchy from what I know, plus they have a bunch of reactionaries in high levels of power which sucks. At least they don't have mass shootings like where I live.
They are currently fighting against NATO and western imperialism. That's gotta be worth something, even if their domestic laws suck and I would not want to live there.