Russian security forces raided gay clubs and bars across Moscow Friday night, less than 48 hours after the country’s top court banned what it called the “global LGBTQ+ movement” as an extremist organization.

Police searched venues across the Russian capital, including a nightclub, a male sauna, and a bar that hosted LGBTQ+ parties, under the pretext of a drug raid, local media reported.

Eyewitnesses told journalists that clubgoers’ documents were checked and photographed by the security services. They also said that managers had been able to warn patrons before police arrived.

  • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world
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    To everyone cracking jokes about a gay uprising, it’s a lot simpler than any of that.

    They just want to exterminate the gays. Like literally. They want to find that portion of the population and destroy it, because they think it’s disgusting and evil.

    That’s it. Putin and the Russian conservatives are going after gays because it’s an easy win with their conservative base, and they can claim moral superiority. Also distracts from Ukraine.

    If you are gay in Russia… Its a very bad time to be gay in Russia.

      • Kepabar@startrek.website
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        Florida here checking in.

        Our government is hard at work on this.

        Check out this pending bill up for vote during the next session: https://m.flsenate.gov/session/bill/2024/599/billtext/filed/pdf https://m.flsenate.gov/session/bill/2024/599/billtext/filed/pdf

        Essentially it makes it illegal to be transgender and have a job in government or government adjacent.

        Here is an excert: It is the policy of the state that a person’s sex is an immutable biological trait and that it is false to ascribe to a person a pronoun that does not correspond to such person’s sex. This section does not apply to individuals born with a genetically or biochemically verifiable disorder of sex development, including, but not limited to, XX disorder of sex development; XY disorder of sex development; sex chromosome disorder of sex development; XX or XY sex reversal; and ovotesticular disorder.

        An employee or a contractor may not be required, as a condition of employment, to refer to another person using that person’s preferred personal title or pronouns if such personal title or pronouns do not correspond to that person’s sex.
        An employee or a contractor may not provide to an employer his or her preferred personal title or pronouns if such preferred personal title or pronouns do not correspond to his or her sex.
        An employee or a contractor may not be asked by an employer to provide his or her preferred personal title or pronouns or be penalized or subjected to adverse personnel action for not providing his or her preferred personal title or pronouns.

        It continues on about not being able to fire people for thinking being gay is a sin and so on, but I don’t want this to be a novel.

        • rayyy@lemmy.world
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          Well, if gay people weren’t sabotaging electric substations, mass murdering innocent people and attempting to overthrow our government…, oh, wait!

          • 【J】【u】【s】【t】【Z】@lemmy.world
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            Don’t forget that big gay plot to kidnap a governor, and the other big gay plot to seize control of the capitol, the Supreme Court, and the Department of State and installed Donald Trump as an unelected dictator. Yes, they planned on having a lot of proud boys go hard into Foggy Bottom.

            E: I forgot that other big gay plot to send mail bombs to all the Democratic leadership, ex-presidents, and governors that they could.

        • T00l_shed@lemmy.world
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          Well I for one am so glad the government of Florida is tackling the REAL problems. Pronouns are scary and difficult to understand, and I never had to deal with calling my friend Dick by anything other than his given name.

          /s because of poes law.

    • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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      That’s it. Putin and the Russian conservatives are going after gays because it’s an easy win with their conservative base, and they can claim moral superiority. Also distracts from Ukraine.

      There you said it. They don’t care about gay people. They need an easy win with conservative public before future (mock) elections and to distract people from Ukraine. And they also want a weapon to proclaim anyone they dislike an extremist.

      Can you prove you aren’t gay? Let’s see. It’a either you record a video of apologizing for being gay, or we stuff a broom up your ass and you record a video of apologizing for being gay 🤗 Either way, 10 years in a joint.

      I’ve recently seen a good article in a ru-language blogosphere. These pieces of shit who climbed to the power in the 90s and 00s break every ladder to their positions, they want to establish themselves as new nobles, and they need a variety of tools to persecute whoever they dislike. They want the good ol’ serfdom. They build it as we speak.

      It’s not bad if you are gay and noble. Gref, Volodin, others are gossiped to be gay. Rather it’s bad to be not in their club, like most do. Then you are in a risk of being persecuted and robbed of everything over nothing.

      It’s 21th century and neo-feudalism is on the rise! Fuck, I hate it here.

      • uis@lemmy.world
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        others are gossiped to be gay.

        Milonov. He makes a lot of anti-gay statements, but he is gossiped to be gay.

        • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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          I’d argue that for what he was used for, being a vehicle for unpopular laws, he may not be gay (as we don’t have solid proofs and it doesn’t really matter), but he is sure an f-word.

          Just like that guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Krasovsky

          His reaction to treating LGBTQ+ as extremists while being an open gay? Hurr-durr I mean, sometimes you take what your Motherland needs over what you want. That’s the same dude who got banned from the TV because his suggestion of burning ukrainian kids blocked in houses was just too extreme for our media. He’s not unlike fucking Sharikov with that line of choking stray cats.

          For what I care, they can eat whatever, may it be a pussy or a dick, but I’d strongly approve if they’d eat a fucking brick. They do everything to make it be seen as a consensual act.

    • lattenwald@lemmy.world
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      They need a new enemy every now and then. If the current enemy happens to be exterminated, they’ll need one sooner, but they’ll need a new one anyways.

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      This is just standard fascism. They need a constant stream of enemies weak enough that they can’t defend themselves. Whom they can paint as responsible for all a societies woes.

      Fascism 101. We see Republicans employing that heavily here in the United States.

    • Syrc@lemmy.world
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      Its a very bad time to be gay in Russia.

      I don’t think not being gay changes much in this statement

      • ocassionallyaduck@lemmy.world
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        I mean, they are literally mounting campaigns targeting gays now. Maybe it sucks for both but it sucks especially hard for gay people in Russia at the moment.

        E.g. Maybe it sucks to live in Mordor. But as a Goblin instead of as an Orc, maybe it sucks especially hard when Sauron starts the “let’s purge the Goblins” campaign led by the Orcs.

        • Syrc@lemmy.world
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          Yes, I know, the article speaks for itself. It was more of a joke about how it’s “a very bad time to be in Russia, period”.

  • pelya@lemmy.world
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    When you are losing the war you started.

    Blame gays.

    When your policies fail.

    Blame gays.

    When your government is less popular than cancer.

    Blame gays.

    When you are getting mass protests.

    Blame Jews. But Jews have nukes, oops. Then blame gays!

  • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    Well well well. I thought Russia said the nazis were in Ukraine. Huh. Funny, that.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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        Sure it can. But that doesn’t mean it is.

        Oh I’m sure if you look hard enough you’ll find one or two nazis hiding anywhere, even if they don’t identy as nazi or even know what it means.

        But Russia, with its actions, have proven themselves to be an imperialist, nationalist, fascist piece of shit. And while both could be true, actions speak louder.

        • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          integrating the azov brigade into the national guard sounds like a bunch of Nazis are in the government to me.

          • Jonna@lemmy.world
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            Yeah, it’s a problem. A threatened country integrated a fascist militia into its army. Yes, and that’s bad.

            But the country as a whole does not like Nazis at all, and doesn’t vote for them.

            “In the 2019 Ukrainian elections, the far-right nationalist electoral alliance, including Svoboda, National Corps, Right Sector, Azov Battalion, OUN, and Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists, under-performed expectations. In the presidential election, its candidate Ruslan Koshulynskyi received 1.6% of the vote, and in the parliamentary election, it was reduced to a single seat and saw its national vote fall to 2.15%, half of its result from 2014 and one-quarter of its result from 2012.”

            https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics_in_Ukraine

            The country has a Jewish president and a Muslim cabinet minister. Sound like a Nazi country to you?

            • Mirshe@lemmy.world
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              Agreed. Remember the golden rule of warfare: so long as the guy beside you is shooting in the right direction, you can sort your differences out later.

            • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              The country has a Jewish president and a Muslim cabinet minister. Sound like a Nazi country to you?

              identity politics are boring. there were Jewish collaborators in the third Reich.

              • player2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                In most cases, Jews who chose to collaborate with Nazis did so to guarantee their personal survival, which distinguished them from most other ethnic groups who collaborated with Nazi Germany. It’s not exactly a fair comparison.

                • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  but you see that identity is not a preventative for fascism, right? I don’t think the president of Ukraine is any more fascist than Biden or Obama. but I also take a pretty dim view of them.

              • andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works
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                I don’t pick my favorite nazis here too lol. I point out one had 9 years of being dismantled and intermixed with regular corps, meaning it’s non-existent by now, and one is still intact and active as it’s own entity.

                • commie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  one had 9 years of being dismantled and intermixed with regular corps, meaning it’s non-existent by now

                  i don’t believe this is true for a second. integrating was wrong: some of those Nazis surely stayed in leadership, shaping an even larger recruitment base. that shit doesn’t just disappear. it must be rooted out.

          • Kepabar@startrek.website
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            The irony of the whole Azov thing is a majority of their members are ex Russians who moved to East Ukraine because Russia wasn’t being Nazi enough for them.

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        You need to study the subject more closely before stating that (: Slavik nazism is a deep rabbithole, but for the purpose of this article, I compare two governments, and one of them does indulge in that kind of rhetoric more than the other.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        Yes there are stupid people everywhere. In most places they aren’t literally running the country.

    • uis@lemmy.world
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      Looks legit. I wonder what will happen to all those soviet-era daycares "Rainbow"s?

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    Ah yeah, the daily reminder that Russia has indeed become the comical evil country as it was always portrayed in Tom Clancys books, if not worse…

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    clubgoers’ documents were checked and photographed by the security services

    That’s the worst part. Being on any list of this state is a danger. Especially when they want another batch of bodies to once again storm Avdyivka. Hope they can nope-out from all possible traps. It’s just… it would be totally spelled out they are here because they are gay, and it means a faith worse than death. Place is cursed.

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    I dunno if anyone is interested but of you got some spare coins laying around the Canadian based charity Rainbow Refugee has been helping get out threatened LGBTQIA+ folks from multiple countries including Russia for quite a while now by arranging sponsorships and legal support and advice for LGBTQIA asylum seekers. If you know anyone looking to get out or would like to donate here’s a link :

    https://www.rainbowrefugee.com/

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      My daughter is queer and if Trump wins, we will probably have to seek refuge in Canada. I have an uncle there, which will also help, but this is a good resource. Thanks.

      • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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        Nothing happened to lgbt people when Trump was in office. It won’t happen if he gets voted back in. Like Trump or not, he’s never been anti-lgbt.

    • molochthagod@lemmy.world
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      That’s kinda the whole point of this bullshit. Russia’s entire history is “things go bad? find an enemy and attack them.” This distracts the populace and makes the ruler (at least theoretically) look “strong”. This is why “war” is the answer to almost any problem in Russia. For Nicholas II this didn’t work out though, when he attacked Japan hoping for a quick victory, but ended up losing and exacerbating problems at home, which then led to the collapse of Russia.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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      It’s a core foundation of Fascism to define “us” and “them” groups, blame the “them” and if in power followup those words with actual actions against said “them”.

      Sex being the thing which generates the most tension in peoples’ minds in present day society - we pretty much all want it and yet we’re taught that it’s somehow “impure” and interiorize all sorts of boundaries around it and judgements on people who don’t obbey said boundaries - it’s only natural that people who are a minority in practicing some sexual practices that the majority does not are chosen as “them”.

      We might have the tech, but socially and psychologically most of humanity are barelly changed from cavemen days and we might have even gone backwards (there was a time when nakedness was far less “frowned upon”), so cross these two of the biggest disfunctions in the psyche of many - sex and tribalism - and you end up with this kind of shit.

      • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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        It’s a core foundation of Fascism to define “us” and “them” groups,

        I’m pretty sure this is just a fundamental way to understand groups, any groups. How would a group exist without an “us” and a “them”?

        • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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          The error in that argument is oversimplification.

          It’s not just the grouping people, it’s the how its done.

          For starters, it only makes logical sense to group people on actions they actually commit or committed - say, “this person has repeatedly stollen things, hence he is a thief” - because it’s a judgement on their actions, while it makes no logical sense group them on something else and then judge them as a group for something unrelated - say, “this person was born with a certain skin color hence he is a thief” - because it’s quite literally prejudice (the judging somebody for acts they have not committed).

          The second part is simplifying it into “us” and “them” - it’s quite literally mathematically impossible to, in any situation with more than 2 humans, have 2 or fewer generic classifications (worse, as people actually change how they act as their life experiences change them, so they would change classification). This is because there are so many different things of importance in which people can chose to act in different ways (and for many such important things there are even more choices than merelly 2), that any realistic grouping of humans on anything more generic than a single behaviour - such as thieving - would yield billions of groups (pretty much one per person) because there are just way too many combinations of preferred choices.

          It’s not possible to have a genuine division of humans in a general sense into a mere 2, “us” and “them”, and the lie in such division is further compounded when action judgements are passed on all individuals of an entire group which was defined by any criteria other than having commited said actions.

          And then to top all this up, they cast those 2 groups as adversarial, thus justifying violence by their group against the other group.

          PS: By the way, it’s not just Fascists who do this kind of prejudiced grouping of people, but what’s more unique about that ideology is the tendency for the splitting to immediatelly or eventually end up with a mere 2 groups which are deemed in opposition to each other in everything that matters and were the Fascists are all in the group (“us”) that’s pre-judged as “good” and the others are in the group (“them”) prejudged “bad”.

          You’ll see, for example, Liberals also doing the grouping of people on arbitrary non-action characteristics, complete with “good” and “bad” prejudgements based on group membership (though the words used are usually “victim” and “oppressor” rather than “good” and “bad”), but they’re usually divided into many groups (an ever growing list, even) and the group in which the Liberal individual is not necessarilly one of the groups deemed “good” (whilst the Fascists will always put themselves in the “good” group).

          • kool_newt@lemm.ee
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            The error in that argument is oversimplification.

            It’s not just the grouping people, it’s the how its done.

            Exactly

  • uis@lemmy.world
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    How I spent summer. Essay.

    In the morning we with my mom went to beach. There we’ve seen jellyfish(recognized as unwanted organization, included in the list of foreign agents).

    Then it rained(recognized as unwanted organization, included in the list of foreign agents). After rain came rainbow(which is element of extremist movement symbolics).

    Also mom showed me memorial in city center. Memorial is included in list of foreign agents, its activity in Russia is suspended by the court’s decision

  • Aceticon@lemmy.world
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    Imagine the constant thinking about gay and transsexual specific activies that’s leads somebody to the point of voting to make them illegal.

    Regular people don’t constantly think about it, so they don’t actually care one way or the other.

    No wonder that it’s extremelly common to discover that the very people who keep raging about homosexuallity were closet homosexuals.

    Grow up, embrace whatever you trully are and move on: no need to punish others for your own sexual self-repressions.

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    The loftiest ruler is barely known among those below. Next comes a ruler people love and praise. After that, one they fear, And then one they despise.

    How sincere will the Russians remain for this man?

    • hakunawazo@lemmy.world
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      Just distinguish between the government’s decision and the people. I don’t know if I would demonstrate there at the moment if someone kept falling out of the window, so I don’t presume to judge. But the government has moved very far away from human rights.

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        Russia seems to have a long history of just getting it wrong. There is something inherently russian about it, so it’s not just the government.