[LINK] "The decline of Gayropa?"

[rfmcdonald]

Continuing the exploration of attempts by Putin et al to launch Russia as a global conservative power, Oleg Riabov and Tatiana Riabova's Eurozine article analyzing the role of anti-gay invective specifically is worth reading. Human rights for non-heterosexuals are portrayed as proof of a European degeneracy to be opposed by a traditionally masculine Russia, this European degeneracy being further proof of the inferiority of the European system to the Russian and of the necessary role of Russia in saving Europe from itself. (Showing Ukrainians that their future will be sodomitical and that they need Russia, or at least showing Russians the errors of the Ukrainians, is a bonus.)

In 2013, a complete picture of allegations branding Europe as sexually deviant started to emerge from discussions on same-sex marriage in France, on the possibility that Russian children might be adopted by same-sex couples in the US and Europe and, finally, on the law banning the "propagation" to children of non-traditional sexual relations. The allegations were made by politicians, journalists, bloggers and commentators on Internet forums. There is nothing especially original about Russian invective on the sexual deviancy of Europe. The concept of the "decadent West", which can be traced back to the works of the Slavophiles, includes claims about the superiority of the Russian family and of Russian gender norms. Criticism of the bourgeois gender order that featured in Soviet propaganda during the Cold War acts as another ideological source for the rejection of Gayropa today. In fact, allegations about the decadence and effeminacy of western civilization are an important component of anti-Western discourse generally.

Today, the gender dimension has become one of the most important aspects of allegations levelled against the West. The destruction of the "normal" gender order in Europe is associated with the legalization of same-sex marriage, the growing influence of feminism and the destruction of the traditional family unit. It is alleged that these processes are bound to lead to a very real decline in European civilization, primarily because they pervert human nature itself and destroy the foundations of human communities. An article by the pro-Kremlin journalist Maksim Shevchenko is indicative of this line of thought. He writes – perhaps not entirely seriously – that Russians and most westerners belong to different categories of humanoid, which are externally similar but internally radically different. One of contemporary Russia's most prominent conservative thinkers, Alexander Dugin, uses the terms "trans-human" and "post-human" to describe the development of European civilization, as he sees it. According to Dugin, the logic of liberalism presupposes the destruction of all collective identities, from the state and the nation to gender and humanity. Once gender has been dismantled, humanity will take a similar course: "If we do not apply the brakes just a little, we will hurtle on to the bitter end, until we're asked to baptise a chimaera, a bio-robot, a cyborg or to marry a fly to a human being." Chairman of the State Duma foreign affairs committee Alexei Pushkov has assessed changes to the gender order in European countries "as an attempt to alter the very foundation of human civilization". In articles and commentaries, same-sex marriage is often mentioned alongside zoophilism, necrophilia or paedophilia, all of which are also invoked to denote a tendency leading to the decline of human civilization.

Furthermore, it is maintained that European civilization is condemning itself to geopolitical defeat. Europe is failing to compete with its main rival – Islamic civilization – principally in the demographic sense. In the not too distant future, the majority of people living in EU countries will be Muslims.

How do Russian commentators account for these transformations in the gender order within Europe? One explanation draws on the internal dynamics of European development. Alongside the prosaic argument that "Europe is too well off", some commentators refer to tendencies noted by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West: the idea that "culture" has given way to "civilization" being among them. Another kind of explanation suggests links with conspiracy theories. In an article entitled "The New World class – a challenge to humanity", Vladimir Yakunin, plainly an ally of Putin's, calls the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations "part of the process of transforming the human community into an compliant herd, to be led by the new global financial elite, a class of "global oligarchs". One indispensable component of conspiracy theories is the idea that the "blue lobby" stalks the corridors of power. In connection with this, writers and commentators use phrases such as "the blue plague" or "gay fascism". A programme screened on a major Russian TV channel entitled "The repressive minority" had participants discussing "gay totalitarianism". The influential politician, ideologue and head of the European section of the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, Natalia Narochnitskaia, said in a radio interview on the Voice of Russia that western European decisions on same-sex marriage totally ignored the views of the majority of the population. And on 12 December 2013, in a widely publicized address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin emphasized that the "destruction of traditional values 'from above' not only brings negative consequences for societies, but is essentially anti-democratic, since it is implemented [...] against the will of the majority of people".