Unacceptable for any communist.
Said it before but this is one issue where my “cultural relativism” falls flat, especially when it comes to ostensibly communist and revolutionary nationalist movements. You aren’t discarding an imposed Western cultural hegemony by embracing homophobia and transphobia, you’re only further submitting your populace to that insidious disease spread by homophobic britbongs and other wEsTeRn culture-spreaders. That isn’t to say Russia was ever an LGBT paradise, but that homophobia there, like nigh everywhere, was first pursued as a systematic force by kings and leaders pursuing intellectual and cultural “westernization”, colonizing their minds against a perceived other. All over Asia it was spearheaded by westernizers (comprador and colonial), all throughout south America it was spearheaded by Catholic imperialists, throughout Africa by imperialists and colonizers, on and on and on. You are not anti-imperialist for opposing the rights of people who have existed since time immemorial for simply existing as they are, you’re falling directly into the colonizer trap, where they will continue to weaponize homonationalist talking points and “Human Rights” NGOs against you while you’re busy oppressing your own people. Homophobia and transphobia are not foundational tenets of national liberation, they are admittances of defeat to western mind-colonization.
Yeah. I get your point and Id ask how it seem strange that homophobic Ukrainian nationalists are most likely the ones killing Russian soldiers. 🤷♂️ Sooooo… Does it not stand that there is something about the queer question that isnt universally western if “based” god fearing ukrainian nationalists are actually killing Russians?
Your post is refreshing.
No one here should be surprised in any way. The Russian Communist Party is a state operated controlled opposition. All the high ranking members receive huge payouts from liberal parties and oligarchs, while active lower ranking members are shuffled into useless positions or shunned.
The chairman is also a Putin Yes Man, meaning he has sacrificed his entire Marxist identity to make money. The party has become reactionary, hostile, and liberals. They have lost the last shreds of the party from the Union days, many years ago.
…Do you guys remember when being a communist was based on some idea of material equity without being exploited by the bourgoisie?
But for some reason… Mother fuckers out here gotta flirt with pogroms against people who cant help who they are.
🤦♂️
‘Communist’ ‘opposition’
The old “hate the sin and not the sinner” bullshit. This shit is the Russian equivalent to “MAGA Communism”. Such utter support of conservatism and “traditionalism” has no place in the revolution. This perversion that claims to be a “communist party” would be purged if comrade Lenin were alive today. They are just as much the enemy as capitalists, fascists, and monarchs. Right wing shit like this belongs with Nazbols. If I remember correctly, one of the top CPRF leaders literally wanted the Russian Federation flag to be changed back to the flag of the USSR. Just because they claimed “things were better with that flag” or something like that. Not because people had equality or any of the actual shit that made those better times. Just wanted to use the imagery of socialism/communism to paint over the bad shit and act like everything is good. I’ll see if I can find that article and reply to this with the link.
I don’t think this was the exact one I read. But it is still the CPRF statement either way. https://kprf-ru.translate.goog/dep/gosduma/activities/210029.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp
You all sound surprised
🙄😒 Of course.
It’s when stuff like this happens that I always question the possibility of Marxist unity. How could I call those “comrades” who wish to demonise and take away rights from marginalised groups even if we do ultimately agree on the same economic system?
At the same time though, I understand that it’s almost impossible for Marxists to gain traction in a reactionary society if they rail against the reactionary zeitgeist too hard. Marxists need to be in tune with the proletariat but that’s hard when the minds of the proletariat have been poisoned by reactionary propaganda such that the zeitgeist contradicts progressive values.
So what can be done? It’s easy to say “We should educate people away from reaction” but actually doing that seems almost impossible, it’s not as if you have legions of reactionaries who are completely open to changing their minds through reasoned and factual debate because if their critical thinking skills were up to par then they wouldn’t be influenced by bourgeois media in the first place. Yes this task may not actually be impossible but only in the sense that it’s technically not impossible for a Marxist party to win an election under FPTP, we still know it’s realistically never going to happen so is it really worth banking our hopes and dreams for the future on succeeding in this way? Certainly we don’t want to risk being viewed by the proletariat as a bunch of out-of-touch middle class bookworms, sitting on a high platform to lecture down to people about their “inferior morals and political education” but we also have to be mindful to not abandon our principles for the sake of populism.
So maybe there’s an argument for tolerating some degree of reaction in society for the sake of a Marxist party making some kind of progress and gaining ground by appearing to be in tune with the proletariat, but then at what point does tolerance to reaction, or other deviations from ML principles, become liberalism? Mao Zedong needed the support of rural peasants to win the revolution in China but if you think these peasants were all well-educated Marxists then you’ll be sorely disappointed as the vast majority of them were entirely illiterate and full of reactionary sentiments regarding things like patriarchy and superstition. Nobody (worth listening to) calls Mao a reactionary or a liberal, yet he had to rely on a base of non-Marxists to achieve a proletarian state.
However, you also get groups like patsocs in America who have been trying to align themselves with MAGA chauvinists and they’ve been roundly crapped on in ML circles for trying to appeal to this crowd. So I feel we really do need to answer the question of where we draw this line if we do want a grand revolutionary success. Yes these are very “online Marxist” problems but at the same time I think there’s only so much work you can do at the grassroots community level before you and your party have to start thinking a bit more about the bigger picture.
Working with people that have no clue about marxism or even who, on some point, have some different views is not necessarily a bad thing. Your average factoryworker may not be all that interested in, for example, trans rights or fighting patriarchy. But that does not mean they should not be in our party.
However, if you actively work against the rights of minorities you should not be a part of the movement. I think you need to have a pretty solid base line that you won’t cross. Otherwise we would just betray the LGBTQI+, non-white and other minority groups fighting on the marxist side. Nor should they accept that.
If my party would declare support to some homophobic group because they want another ally, my fellow comrades and I would hopefully rise up to protest it. And what would be next? Adapting liberal ideologies because we want to appeal to liberals? No, we don’t do that as well.
It’s one thing to have some backwards views because you are misinformed, but to actively work against the interests of minorities is not marxist at all and should not be accepted. It’s a tough challenge to persuade other people for our cause when they have backwards views, but through education, action and other forms of outreach it’s certainly possible. I’ve seen it happen myself.
I understand what you’re saying and the way that you and your party feel about these matters is the same way that I feel. However, I’m willing to bet that you’re speaking from the position of someone in a liberal Western country where society is not so reactionary/bigoted. In Russia and other countries, this kind of bigotry is a lot more normalised and also backed up fully by both state and private media, such that many in Russia consider the notion of “LGBT propaganda” to be factual.
Like imagine if you wanted to run a Marxist party in Saudi Arabia; assuming it wouldn’t be outlawed immediately you’d have to go up against the entirety of Islamic culture regarding things like homophobia and patriarchy and I can’t help but feel like if you rail against these ideas on Day One you’ll probably never gain much ground, if any.
What I’m saying is that it might be possible or even easy to educate and not tolerate reaction in countries with a weaker reactionary base among the proletariat, but in societies where reaction and bigotry are simply the norm and have been for centuries now then is it not universalist abstraction to say that Marxists in these societies should expect the same success as Marxists in your society?
deleted by creator
Ffs
wow that sucks
Why the surprise? The Russian CP are basically unreformed Stalinists. Under Lenin in early years of revolutionary socialism, homosexuality was decriminalised. Of course under the Stalinist Thermador it was fully recriminalised in 1933.
This is a common myth, and while technically true in some ways the overall gist of what you’re saying is totally bs. Being gay was “decriminalized” because the abolished the entirety of the tsarist legal code. This idea that lenin was some firebrand social liberal who was as progressive as socialists 100 years later is just not true, just as the idea that Stalin was this right wing conservative was bs.
Lenin was extremely progressive overall for his time as was Stalin, women’s liberation and empowerment was no joke in the USSR for it’s time for example. But when Marxists in the 2020s talk like Lenin was some warrior for gay Folk I have to cringe a little bit. It’s almost like many western leftists see Lenin as a “pure” socialist and project their moderm values and knowledge onto him, while stalin was the antithesis to that and he was just a strong man of sorts. The main difference in reality was the material conditions they were working with. Yes, under Stalin for a period abortion was made illegal with some exceptions, but I’d bet the same would happen under Lenin if 20%+ of the population was killed in a Nazi invasion.
