Re: <nettime> meanwhile in Russia

[Flick Harrison <flick@flickharrison.com>]

Can't read the Russian original, but as for the link you posted:

Wow, that is a tepid critique for such a crazy document as the "Foundations of State Cultural Policies."   I mean, I understand the withering academic fire ("the contents of the document sometimes are not even at the level of student work. ..") is indeed intellectually destructive, but there must be serious fear in the land if that's the harshest thing they can say.

Especially when we read that

"It is a false assertion that this thesis is supported by ???the whole history of the people and the country.'"

I shiver to think what the Russian state is planning to become with the whole history of the people and country behind them (are there no non-Russian minorities in Russia?)!  What arrogant nonsense, and I don't even know what their thesis is yet.  It can only get worse the more one reads it.

But the opposition in Russia is on the back foot, and the slightest opportunity to trash the West puts our hard left against them.  

I was shocked at the "radical feminist" critiques of Pussy Riot.  Imagine a group who declared themselves feminist from the highest towers, who went to jail for singing the lyrics "virgin mary, become a feminist" in a protest in a church, an all-grrl punk-rock band, no less, getting dissed by feminists in the west for NOT BEING FEMINIST ENOUGH!

Eg "Why would Western media denounce so passionately the repression of feminists in Russia, when it usually only diffuses information that supports male supremacy and patriarchy?" 

and

"I found it suspicious that Pussy Riot was getting so much media attention, even for pseudo feminist standards"

http://radfemworldnews.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/pussy-riot-whose-freedom-whose-riot/

That stuff couldn't be more useful if it was written by the Russian information bureau itself.  It shows a disturbing alignment between Putinist propaganda and Western dissent, which seems really, really stupid.  

At least in the soviet days, the Russian system was different, and its existence forced Western governments to bend on socio-economic issues for fear of breeding bolshevism at home...

Now Russia is hyper-capitalist, with much less democracy and more ethnic chauvinism.  WTF is the left finding so attractive about it??

-
- Flick

-- 
* WHERE'S MY ARTICLE, WORLD? http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Flick_Harrison 

* FLICK's WEBSITE: 
http://www.flickharrison.com

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On Jun 9, 2014, at 17:53 , Janos Sugar <sj@c3.hu> wrote:

> The draft policy document, entitled "Foundations of State Cultural
> Policies", that has been proposed by the Russian Ministry of Culture
> and supported by the Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky, has
> evoked "extremely mixed reactions" in Russia itself, according to
> Shcherbakova. "It is especially dangerous for us, people living in
> Russia, to in some sense reject modernisation."
> http://hro.rightsinrussia.info/hro-org/culturalpolicy
 <...>


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