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 to Egida, law enforcement agents tasked with combating “extremism” detained the woman after a group of “aggressive people” approached her and her friend at a local cafe and filmed them on camera.
But if it doesn’t make sense why I’m arguing so hard, it’s because the phrase “western values” sort of implies this weird connotation that, beyond simply being a symbol people associate with direct US influence, it is associated with some sort of evil, insidious gay worldview. This might seem like splitting hairs but it tread so close to Nazbol territory to defend that specific terminology that it freaks me out. If it was just “western symbols” or “probability of being a western spy” it would make perfect sense, but “western values” conjures images of hordes of scheming Untermench soft-men carving away the fabric of strong insert country here society.
As if the issue is the things these organizations claim to support and not the fact they are blatant lies. Gay liberation being a “western value” is about as true as democracy, as in, not at all (we just pretend it is so we can have Cassus Belli on random countries). If we try to compensate for every possible concept the US tries to appropriate then we’re going to end up having insane positions like “war crimes are actually good because the US said they weren’t” (probably with the context of the US lying about them happening in the first place)
Like, imagine if we responded to claims of the “Uyghur genocide” by claiming that being against genocide is a Western value being pushed on unwilling countries, instead of just pointing out the very obvious fakery of the whole thing. People would rightfully call us sociopaths and monsters.