The Woke Contrarian

I don't think I'm one of them either. I'm one of mine.

Page 9 of 10

LGBTQ+ organisations in Russia

2023-09-09 / / 0 Comments

Despite the intense repression that LGBTQ+ Russians have suffered under Putin’s regime, there are still brave people out there fighting the good fight. Here are just a few (all links are in Russian, though some include English translations—I used machine translations for a lot of it, since my Russian isn’t great yet):

  • Centre-T is a Moscow-based organisation that provides social support, legal help, education, and more to trans people and their allies. They have resources for neurodivergent trans and nonbinary people, too!
  • The Russian LGBT Network (Российская ЛГБТ-сеть) provides emotional, psychological, legal, and community support to queer Russians across the country.
  • Delo LGBT+ (Дело ЛГБТ+/LGBT+ Affairs) is a legal advocacy agency that helps people across Russia.
  • Doxa is an online magazine that devotes a lot of its coverage to the struggles of LGBTQ+ Russians, though that’s not all: Doxa articles include content about creeping authoritarianism around the world, the war in Ukraine, mental health, bullying in schools, and more.
  • Holod (Холод, “Cold”) is similar to Doxa—a lot of LGBTQ+ content along with articles about politics and society.
  • SOS North Caucasus supports LGBTQ+ people in one of the most dangerous parts of Russia: Chechnya.
  • Quarteera, based in Germany, offers support to Russian-speakers, including Russians and Ukrainians. They have a great podcast miniseries, Queer Conversations (Квир-беседы, Kvir-besedy), that features queer people from Russia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and more. (I was able to get the gist of what they were saying—and it’s been great practice for my oral comprehension!)
  • Coming Out (Выход/Vykhod) is a nationwide advocacy and support organisation.

If you’re able to send money to Russian organisations, I would encourage you to do so. I can’t do that from over here—our sanctions have made that impossible—but they can use all the help they can get, especially in this hostile climate.

The problem with the “NATO proxy war” narrative

2023-09-08 / / 0 Comments

Critics of Ukraine often say that the US and NATO are supporting the country to weaken Russia. This is true—after all, Russia’s actions are directly opposed to American and NATO national-security and strategic interests—but this is a one-sided interpretation that places all the responsibility on the “collective West,” as Putin and his sycophants call the US–NATO alliance. Russia, too, is treating Ukraine as a proxy for its war against the West. Domestic Russian propaganda treats the war as a conflict of values between conservative, traditionalist Russia and the decadent US/NATO alliance and its client state, the Kiev regime.

The dissident Russian media network, TV Rain (Dozhd/Дождь), covers the anti-Western rhetoric espoused by Russian TV talking heads in its Fake News series. Dmitry Kiselev, Vladimir Soloviev, Margarita Simonyan and other propagandists spend as much time ranting about the United States, Britain, France, Denmark and other NATO countries as they do Ukraine itself.

Clearly, their war isn’t just against Kiev; it’s against Washington, London, Copenhagen and Paris. This is the very definition of a proxy war.

Even if you consider NATO’s problematic expansion policies or the relationship between the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations and post-Maidan Ukrainian governments, Russia still bears primary responsibility for the Ukrainian invasion. This is why I still support Ukraine militarily, even though I oppose many of its government’s actions.

Tankies suck at Russian

2023-09-05 / / 0 Comments

If you’re going to present yourselves as USSR and Russia fanboys, can you at least get the grammar in your name right? The Stalinist “US Friends of the Soviet People” group calls itself “США друзья советский народ [SShA druzya sovetskiy narod].” This is extremely bad Russian. I know only a little Russian myself, but I know just enough to tell that this is wrong. Russian has a case system, so the idea of “of” is expressed using the genitive case. The way it is now, it’s “USA Friends Soviet People” with no clear relationship between the words. I think the correct version would be Американские друзья советского народа or Друзья США советского народа. They should have had this checked by someone who knows Russian, but then again, I think these people like to LARP as Soviets without doing any research.

Graphic that says США Друзья Совиетский Народ, or poor Russian for American Friends of the Soviet People

Russia–Ukraine link roundup, 2023-08-21

2023-08-21 / / 0 Comments

I don’t agree with everything said, but these are all thought-provoking pieces about the Russia/Ukraine war, the events leading up to the full-scale invasion, tensions within Ukraine and other related topics. I’ve included a mixture of views, though I have consciously excluded work by Russian or Ukrainian nationalists, all state-run media, and anything that actively promotes the Russian invasion. (Admittedly, my links lean toward being critical of the Ukrainian government, but that’s only because most anglophone media is… very much uncritical of its policies.)

Socialists and the War in Ukraine, League for the Fifth International, Workers’ Power (probably the closest thing I’ve found to my position—yes, arm Ukraine to fend off Russian aggression, but don’t support the government’s policies)

The Rise and Role of Ukrainian Ethnic Nationalism, by Anatol Lieven, The Nation

Persecuting Ordinary Russians Won’t End Putin’s War, by Branko Marcetic, Jacobin

Answer to the article “War and Ukraine’s Anarchists,” by the Combat Organisation of Anarcho-Communists (in Russian—I used Google Translator for most of it)

Putin in anti-trans, anti-gay drive, by Rhodri Evans, Workers’ Liberty

The unique extra-parliamentary power of Ukrainian radical nationalists is a threat to the political regime and minorities, by Volodymyr Ishchenko, Foreign Policy Centre

Gone Rogue: The Left and Ukraine, by Joseph Grosso, CounterPunch

Multipolarity, the Mantra of Authoritarianism, by Kavita Krishnan, Z Network

Rampant Russophobia takes us down a dark path, by Anatol Lieven and George Beebe, Responsible Statecraft

What We Lose When We “Cancel” Russian, by Caroline Tracey, Zócalo Public Square

Israel lobby group ADL rehabilitates Hitler’s accomplices in Ukraine, by Ali Abunimah, Electronic Intifada

Russia, Ukraine, and Lasting Peace in Europe, by Nicolai Petro, Transatlantic Policy

The Tragedy of Ukraine, by Nicolai Petro, The Transnational

 

 

 

Sensible commentary on social justice, “woke liberalism,” and the left

2023-07-20 / / 0 Comments

I’m not a Marxist, much less a Marxist–Leninist or Trotskyist, but the International Bolshevik Tendency published a good piece about the problems with “woke liberalism” without attacking women, black people, Latinos, queer and trans people, immigrants, or anyone else who finds himself on the wrong side of discrimination in American society.

It’s refreshing to see, especially when so many on the left go too far in the woke direction (trying to make their case using abstruse critical theory that almost nobody understands) or in the reactionary anti-woke direction (sounding like far-right conservatives as soon as gender and sexuality come into play). If you are a homophobe, misogynist, or transphobe, stop calling yourself a fucking leftist. Patriarchy—and admit it, all sexism arises from patriarchal thinking—is not a leftist value, since it imposes hierarchical thinking when we should promote equality. I know some Marxists are wary of feminism, since it looks like “identity politics,” but I think it’s common decency to treat women as though they were complex human beings, rather than baby factories. Egalitarianism encompasses feminism.

There is no such thing as an antifeminist leftist. Not in 2023, anyway.

One of many reasons why I’m grudgingly pro-Ukraine…

2023-07-14 / / 0 Comments

… is that Russian culture-warrior bullshit has gotten out of hand over the past decade or so. The Russian legislature—dominated by Putin’s neoconservative United Russia party—is coming very close to banning legal recognition and surgery for trans people, even though laws allowing transition have been in place for over twenty years.

We have politicians like this in America, too, but at least they don’t have an iron grip on Congress (and shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power).

Do I think a Ukrainian victory will force Russia to have better policies? Maybe not. But reducing Putin’s sphere of influence may make his policies less popular. Remember that it’s not just Ukrainians Putin is mistreating; it’s also his fellow Russians.

 

Kiev City Council bans public use of Russian-language cultural products

2023-07-13 / / 0 Comments

Via Interfax-Ukraine:

“It is necessary to finally once and for all restrict the Russian-language cultural product on the territory of the capital of Ukraine. In fact, it is envisaged to prohibit public coverage and demonstration of Russian-language goods and services created in the process of carrying out activities in the field of culture. These are books, art albums, audiovisual works, musical sound recordings, handicrafts, theatrical and circus performances, concerts and cultural and educational services. Russian is the language of the aggressor country, and it has no place in the heart of our capital,” the press service of [Kiev] City Council quoted chairman of the Standing Committee on Education and Science, Youth and Sports Vadym Vasylchuk. [all errors in the original; all emphasis mine. —Ed.]

This is revisionist bullshit. Kiev is a historically Russian-speaking city. Are the ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians now “aggressors”? Is Zelensky an “aggressor” since his first language is Russian and produced most of his TV and film output in Russian? Note, too, that this is about content in the Russian language, not necessarily pro-Putin-regime content.

Now musicians are banned from publicly singing in Russian in Kiev. What’s next, speaking Russian at home? Since when is Ukraine a bastion of democracy?

I want Putin out of Ukraine. But I cannot endorse stunts like this. All this does is play into Putin’s narrative about “oppressed Russian-speakers.”

 

 

 

Land acknowledgments are performative bullshit

2023-07-10 / / 0 Comments

Acknowledging that what we call the United States rests on stolen land is not performative bullshit. I mean the mumbled land acknowledgments I hear in a lot of “woke” circles.

Anyone doing land acknowledgments is highly aware that this land is stolen. They are well-meant performative rituals to absolve white people of their “original sin.” Are any of the people making land acknowledgments making restitution to Indigenous people? Of course not; it’s just an empty gesture. I’ve done them before, mostly because I feel weird when everyone else is doing them but me.

I support the #LandBack movement to return control to Indigenous people, since this is a concrete way to acknowledge their self-determination. But a rote “I live on Hopi land”? Not so much.

Cancelling “America” is a gift to Trump and other right-wingers

2023-07-08 / / 0 Comments

There’s a movement afoot on the woke left to “cancel” the name America. This is asinine performative bullshit, just like land acknowledgments and #KyivNotKiev.

A lot of the objection comes from Latin Americans who do not live in the United States. The last I checked, the inhabitants of a country get to decide what they want to be called in their own language. In this country, people call themselves Americans. Mexicans and Bolivians can call us estadounidenses all they want. I don’t give a shit. But that doesn’t give them the right to dictate what people in this country call themselves in English.

Instead of “America,” the cancellers use “US,” “USian,” and other constructions. But they don’t have the same effect on the reader.

“US” sounds cold, sterile, like a government form. “America” conjures up images of apple pie, baseball, the Stars and Stripes, the valiant troops fighting the Nazis and the colonial British overlords. “Captain United States” wouldn’t have the same ring to it, would it? “Make the US Great Again” wouldn’t stand a chance as a political slogan. It’s too bureaucratic.

I can just imagine Trump making hay of it at one of his fascistic rallies: “Look, everyone. Many people are saying that the woke left is trying to cancel the word America, OK? They say, ‘Sir, they’re telling us not to say America, that it’s not politically correct.’ And I will say this, folks, they’re trying to cancel our entire country. Very sad. But with Trump, you’ll Make America Great Again.”

I’m not an American chauvinist or nationalist fanatic; in fact, I’m a fierce critic of American imperialism, especially in the name of “democracy promotion.” But that criticism can happen without this kind of performative bullshit (see a theme?).

Sad!

 

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