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| Thread: Are we on the brink of general war between Europe and Russia? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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Orzie
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted September 10, 2014 09:14 AM |
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mvassilev said:
orzie said:
In other words, Xerox, we don't need no your freedom. If you want us to be free - it's only your intentions, but your rights (to think so) end when our rights (to be different) begin.
Your so-called "right to be different" is really a "right" to be oppressive - for the government to suppress speech that normalizes homosexuality, for example. Needless to say, it's not a real right, because it's aggression against peaceful people.
Our government doesn't punish you if you like sex with men (for whatever reason). It's some people who might dislike you after. It's an orthodox world outlook. The root is in the child education formed on the ruins of orthodox christianity, imperialism and wannabe-communism. And you cannot change that in one second.
However, all these things are unrelated to the Ukrainian crisis and the tensions between the West and the East mentioned above.
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Sal
Famous Hero
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posted September 10, 2014 09:15 AM |
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I would wholeheartedly agree on xerox and Mvass gays rights thing if only they didn't back it by the constant "who doesn't do it is inferior".
If this is your view on history, maybe return to school and take your history classes again until you learn the respect.
And Alci, what you say is true about almost every country. In America there are also places where being gay is not very safe. Being black neither. As well as being white, right?
The appropriate question is: do Russia laws condemn the gays discrimination?
Definitely yes.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted September 10, 2014 11:18 PM |
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Edited by xerox at 23:19, 10 Sep 2014.
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Orzie said:
mvassilev said:
orzie said:
In other words, Xerox, we don't need no your freedom. If you want us to be free - it's only your intentions, but your rights (to think so) end when our rights (to be different) begin.
Your so-called "right to be different" is really a "right" to be oppressive - for the government to suppress speech that normalizes homosexuality, for example. Needless to say, it's not a real right, because it's aggression against peaceful people.
Our government doesn't punish you if you like sex with men (for whatever reason). It's some people who might dislike you after. It's an orthodox world outlook. The root is in the child education formed on the ruins of orthodox christianity, imperialism and wannabe-communism. And you cannot change that in one second.
However, all these things are unrelated to the Ukrainian crisis and the tensions between the West and the East mentioned above.
The public may disapprove of homosexuality, that's bad enough, but what's unacceptable is when the public uses government to force their views and values on others. The reality in Russia is that LGBTQ people don't have the same rights as other citizens, and that the police tends to turn a blindside to their oppression.
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted September 10, 2014 11:25 PM |
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Edited by fred79 at 23:25, 10 Sep 2014.
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what the hell does gay rights have to do with a possible war between russia and anyone else who might participate, again? 
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted September 10, 2014 11:32 PM |
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The thread is largely abut the relations between the EU and Russia. One of the reasons European leaders and people dislike Russia is because of its oppression against LGBTQ people.
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Over himself, over his own
body and
mind, the individual is
sovereign.
- John Stuart Mill
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted September 11, 2014 01:45 AM |
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Edited by fred79 at 01:46, 11 Sep 2014.
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and that has anything to do with the russian/ukrainian conflict HOW, again?
help me to comprehend, for i have a tremendously underdeveloped sense of even rudimentary understanding, incapable of seeing the subtle nuances you speak of, regarding homosexuality, and it's somehow easily apparent relation with this conflict.
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Orzie
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted September 11, 2014 05:20 AM |
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Edited by Orzie at 05:24, 11 Sep 2014.
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Quote:
The public may disapprove of homosexuality, that's bad enough, but what's unacceptable is when the public uses government to force their views and values on others.
However, usually it goes in another way in Russia. Public who want special rights use government to press the people who don't (and claim everyone else inferior, what a coincidence). This happens with the religion - not so long ago several concerts of Behemoth and Marylin Manson were blocked by the so-called "orthodox christian activists", and the administration had to cancel the gigs. The tours were broken, and Behemoth even were arrested by the police under the excuse of "they had wrong visas" and departed from the country. This was a huge provocation.
People of the special group usually want rights which cause tensions in the public masses. Europe has become dependant on this stuff, and now, if a choice will be put between the man and the woman with the equal merit in the dilemma who to put as the university professor... a woman will be put in 100% of cases. This is what happens in England, according to my uncle, a university professor. You have become the hostages of your tolerance, and now if you won't take the woman, it will be claimed as sexism. Same as not putting black people in every movie in the US will be called racism. Even if the movie is about the war in Australia. Or the North Pole.
We don't want such situations in our country. Your vision of the world may work fine for you, but your stripped-and-starred intentions to teach everyone how to live are not welcome.
Quote:
and that has anything to do with the russian/ukrainian conflict HOW, again?
I don't think we have to search the reason, for Xerox is biased towards Russia, admitted it in the Malaysia Boeing thread and will be obviously using every excuse he finds to bash it. Yeah, that way. You don't have to visit the country and watch things from inside before hating it, right?
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted September 11, 2014 06:20 AM |
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Orzie said:
People of the special group usually want rights which cause tensions in the public masses. Europe has become dependant on this stuff, and now, if a choice will be put between the man and the woman with the equal merit in the dilemma who to put as the university professor... a woman will be put in 100% of cases. This is what happens in England, according to my uncle, a university professor. You have become the hostages of your tolerance, and now if you won't take the woman, it will be claimed as sexism. Same as not putting black people in every movie in the US will be called racism. Even if the movie is about the war in Australia. Or the North Pole.
We don't want such situations in our country. Your vision of the world may work fine for you, but your stripped-and-starred intentions to teach everyone how to live are not welcome.
Regardless of whether the above is an accurate description, this is a complete non-sequitur. You can have liberty and legal equality without quotas and affirmative action - if anything, government-mandated affirmative action is a form of discrimination and would not exist in a free society. It's not a choice between oppressing homosexuals and affirmative action, because you can and should have neither.
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Eccentric Opinion
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Sal
Famous Hero
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posted September 11, 2014 06:46 AM |
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Orzie said:
Your vision of the world may work fine for you, but your stripped-and-starred intentions to teach everyone how to live are not welcome.
I think this is all what is about, in the end. Protesters like xerox don't understand that this legislation is part of Putin's deliberately anti-Western agenda.
This movement he set out in order to boost his power over a country with deep conservative roots. Many protesters criticize the anti-gay propaganda policy without understanding Russia's complicated relationship with homophobia. Their lack of understanding the very country they're trying so hard to vilify leads to narrow-minded and eurocentric arguments and actions, which only FUEL Russian nationalism.
When Putin passed the "anti-gay" law as part of a line of conservative policies based on the "good Russian" mentality, Russians loved it. 88% of Russians supported the legislation. The law's massive popularity helped Putin to finally define post-communist Russia by juxtaposing it with Western society; there hasn't been this much anti-Western sentiment in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union.
For Putin, traditional Russian values are far superior to the West faceless, sexless tolerance, and by criticizing the anti-gay propaganda law without wrapping their minds around what led to the legislation, protesters corroborate the picture Putin has painted of West — that it's a chaotic, atheist society of tainted capitalism, where gays are running around expressing their pointless "free speech" and demoralizing society.
If you want to help change the anti-gay propaganda law in Russia, you need to show that you first understand the mechanisms of repression deeply rooted in Russia's history of silencing minorities that led to the legislation. Progress is a slow-moving operation that can't be forced upon those who aren't in the mood or the place to consider it.
And btw, in several US states, there are exactly same anti-gays laws as in Russia, yet no one is chilling about. And this is where Putin enjoys the attention is given to him, while he can point to the US hypocrisy as well.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted September 11, 2014 07:02 AM |
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Orzie
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted September 11, 2014 07:21 AM |
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Quote:
It's not a choice between oppressing homosexuals and affirmative action, because you can and should have neither.
Your way is barely able to be considered as the one and only superior variant to solve the problem, for we can see the side effects mentioned above.
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Zenofex
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Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted September 11, 2014 07:47 AM |
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In this thread we have prime examples how prejudices about some people or country can put you in the position to support a righteous crusade against them or condemn their every action. This is as old as the civilization itself but the human mind is no less susceptible to it in XXI century. Precisely what the propaganda uses for its purposes.
@artu, I don't want to fuel the off-topic here because it's really not the place but the values which you are talking about are as universal as the culture which spawned them, and this is only in the most generic sense. The Eurocentric attitude of the Western people that dates back to the colonial ages is still quite alive, as are its flaws about its perception of the world. (Some of) the values of the liberal democracy might be very appealing and ultimately good for the society and the individuals who compose it but they can not be intruded on other social models just because they are in some way superior, it just doesn't work like that and history has proven it over and over again. Besides, in case of an international conflict, you can safely bet all of your money that the values have a very little role in the interests of the engaged parties - something which just doesn't sink in many people's heads.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted September 11, 2014 08:15 AM |
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Edited by artu at 09:09, 11 Sep 2014.
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I never suggested it has critical importance in the Ukraine conflict, the topic had already shifted somewhere else when I objected to you. I haven't talked about the universality of a culture, I've talked about the legal rights of an individual. Now, of course, with a broader perspective, those rights also have their historical and sociological background, they did not develop out of nowhere. Yet, we are not exactly talking about bringing gay marriage into Sudan, are we? This is Russia, it is an urbanized, modern country that has a Westernization history of three centuries, it's culture and internationally acknowledged works of art are considered among the Western canon (such as Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Tarkovsky, just to name a few.)
Legal rights are not necessarily subject to the majority of the people or the popular opinion. How many people from the US were pro-slavery in 1860, probably a lot. You can ask something like, "what if they had changed everything the day war ended in 1865, instead of changing it slowly till 1960's, what would the social reaction be, then?" But I don't think of Russia as a place where people will revolt because of gay rights or anything similar. If the communist regime in the 20th century did anything good, it's that even lower classes had relatively decent education, they are not feudal villagers.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted September 11, 2014 09:09 AM |
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The US abolished slavery as an internal act, following a war which didn't even have as its main goal to dispose of that institution, so nobody came from outside to break their heads and fill them with anti-slavery ideas. Typically even an oppressed society would prefer to stick to its own domestic dictators rather than allowing some "liberators" to invade and change the way of life drastically. Russia hasn't had a single day of Western-style democracy throughout its history, it would be incredibly naive to expect that it can be taught respect for ideas which still remain largely alien to it, especially through force. It's not Sudan but it's also not a country that can be easily influenced.
By the way artu, there's an interesting parallel between Russia and Turkey in the recent years. Both Putin and Erdogan managed to improve the general welfare of the population while advertising relatively conservative ideas at the same time. And both of them still enjoy considerable popular support. Keeping the people fed and content with their material well-being is a very powerful tool to remain in power, don't you think? One might say, much more powerful than preaching vague ideas which the everyday life often exposes as hypocrisies.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted September 11, 2014 09:35 AM |
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Edited by artu at 09:49, 11 Sep 2014.
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Well, the South clearly saw it as the North preaching and dictating ideas, hence the war. And you kind of overdramatized the situation, it's not like Europeans preach to Russians constantly about gay rights and threaten to invade them if they don't change their ways.
On your second question, my answer would be yes. Turkey and Russia have relatively similar but not identical histories regarding that. How Orzie says they have both Eastern and Western elements can also be said for us. Except because of religion, here, culturally, the dominant side would be Eastern, where as in Russia the Western side is stronger. Geographically and historical relationship wise, it's the opposite.
Of course, Westernization (which also brings in nationalism and ironically, anti-westernist reactions in the long term) eventually creates figures like Putin and Erdogan, their strategy can be politically successful but it's cheap and populist. This post of Sal could easily be talking about Erdogan. Japan had this phase much earlier, right before WW2. A very insightful and interesting study on this phenomenon is this book, to quote:
..the same oppositions appear again and again: the heroic revolutionary versus the timid, soft bourgeois; the rootless, deracinated cosmopolitan living in the Western city, cut off from the roots of a spiritually healthy society; the sterile Western mind, all reason and no soul; the machine society, controlled from the center by a cabal of insiders—often Jews—pulling the hidden levers of power versus an organically knit-together one, a society of "blood and soil."
I think, it's very important not to label every social result of modern urbanization intrinsically as Western culture. We call the process Westernization because it happened in the West first. That doesn't mean every aspect of social progress is necessarily Western assimilation.
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Zenofex
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted September 11, 2014 10:11 AM |
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Edited by Zenofex at 10:13, 11 Sep 2014.
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I don't think I'm dramatizing because I don't expect even the greatest warmongers in NATO to be that stupid to organize a direct attack on Russia. Even a conventional war in that case will be hugely expensive, even if ultimately successful, and a nuclear war is every modern Great Power's nightmare. What I said is in the context of the polar propaganda and the positioning of the "good us" vs. the "evil them" which many people soak with next to no resistance. I suppose you know very well that it is never that simple and shallow.
As for the populism - well, it's usually on the rise when official doctrines and concepts start to contradict reality too drastically. You can't grow a stable democracy in a country with no democratic traditions and you will fail even more miserably if that country is not incredibly rich, because you will have to use as raw material poor traditionalists who don't exactly have the promotion of gay rights and such as their main goal in life. Get food for the people, secure their jobs, allow them to have some free time to actually use their minds for something else than constantly thinking how they will provide themselves and their kids with basic stuff and progressive ideas will start emerging from within that society in time. Try to forcefully educate them while changing nothing about their material welfare and you'll have the next conservative messiah in a very short time.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted September 11, 2014 10:27 AM |
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Yes, change does not come overnight. But as I said, I don't see Russian culture at a point where it's too early for them to talk about gay rights and similar stuff. They don't have a long history of democracy but they have a long history of modernization and they don't have a feudal mindset.
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Orzie
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted September 11, 2014 10:34 AM |
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Edited by Orzie at 10:44, 11 Sep 2014.
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Generic Russian view of life have been cultivated for a long, long time with the remark that "Europe loves gays, Europe is a sodomy", to say roughly. If you suddenly put that idea of ultimate tolerance in the government's heads, even 5 restored Crimeas won't be enough for people to start liking Putin's govt again. 
No, the majority of adequate people are not homophobic and often have gay friends, but still perceive the question (yes, the sole fact of the question being asked) of "are you gay?" as an insult. Yet, the girls are more advanced in this case, and lesbians have less problems with that, but they still do.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted September 11, 2014 10:41 AM |
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Well, when they asked Erdogan about gay marriage, he said "That can't exist. That can't even be imagined." Any reply that wasn't something similar would be considered by an average Erdogan voter as "crazy ideas that will result in total social decline." So, I get what you mean perfectly.
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Atronach
Hired Hero
Fired Hero
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posted September 12, 2014 12:17 AM |
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No American or European leader would be as foolish as to start a war over gay rights. If they would, they'd go down in history as the greatest incompetents of all time. Russia's attitude towards gay rights has propaganda value for the West, because it makes anti-Russia policies more palatable among the general population.
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To the victor go the spoils.
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