this “laicité” concept, which is often mistranslated as secularism

Hey that’s a very good point but you miss some French cultural/political context! Laïcité does exactly mean secularism, and its legal basis means freedom of thought/beliefs for everyone: laïcité was formally established in 1905 when the State was separated from the Church (again and almost finally, except in Alsace/Lorraine where the Catholic Church is still part of the State apparatus for other reasons).

The 1905 law clearly states that the State has no business telling people what to believe or not, that this is a private matter between people. This is the legal basis for laïcité.

But since the 80s, some segments on the far-left and far-right have been involved in transforming the concept in public discourse to target it against muslims. It started with unionized teachers from marxist-leninist organizations (was it FO? not sure anymore) refusing to do classes to veiled schoolgirls, and bringing TV crews to the classroom to embarrass those poor kids. I don’t believe at the time it was presented to be in the name of “laïcité”.

Then this discourse grew in both New Atheist circles (a subset of the wider anticlerical movement) on the left, as well as in Judeo-Christian conservative groups on the right. Especially after September 11th, this discourse was instrumentalized against muslims by building a narrative that veiled girls are supporters of terrorism or that they advocate for Shariah, or that they’re submitted to Male authority. Many outlets even made parallels to Afghanistan or Algeria, but we’re talking about kids who grew up here (for the vast majority), only speak French, and have no ties or clue to what’s happening around there. As for male domination, there’s a few blind spots in this argument:

• it’s just a piece of cloth?! you can be abused/dominated by men with or without any external sign for it
• if you truly believe the girls are being abused and they need to get help, how does it help to ban them from public schools so they remain in their bubbles?
• in many parts of the world France has colonized, women either held power or had a history of it (for example, Kahina in amazigh regions of North Africa is becoming a symbol again in the new struggles for Kabyl independence)
• women to this day in France are struggling to have their basic rights preserved (against police abuse and power/sexual abuse in the workplace and in education), no matter their religion (see also Me Too movement)
• men telling women what to do (or not to do) framed as a feminist argument, really? how is French police officers (male) asking a woman to undress any different from Iranian police officers (male) asking a woman to dress up?
• in particular in the western world, the “sexual liberation” movement of the 60s has given birth to a new norm/dogma where women must be sexually available for men to enjoy in the name of sexual freedom (where the veil is seen as an obstacle to sexual availability): this has been greatly described in Ovidie’s documentary À quoi rêvent les jeunes filles?

Starting with Sarkozy, this new formalized islamophobia was given a legal basis, which reused some discourse about laïcité but amended it so much that it completely lost the spirit. The new texts, instead of saying that the State must be neutral in faith/religious matters, says that agents of the State and public services must not promote religion in any way: this led to the ban of religious signs from public servants (which may or may not have been illegal before, but was certainly not enforced), which was then extended more broadly, for example for parents accompanying children on school trips. And more recently, it’s given birth to the complete hysteria about “burkini” and other non-sensical racist “controversies”.

All along, this was anti-muslim racism. It actually predates the situation i just described: colonization in much of the world (including french colonies) was often framed as a humanitarian intervention against uncivilized (male) barbarians hurting their poor women (which some political commenters have dubbed “white men saving brown women from brown men”). For example at the height of the colonial war in Algeria (1950s-1960s), the French government was organizing mass unveiling campaign (see this poster with the message: “aren’t you pretty? unveil yourself”).

Frantz Fanon has explained in great lengths how the colonial enterprise must destroy any sense of belonging or cultural identity in the colonized in order to succeed. I strongly recommend (all of) his books. If you speak french, Un racisme à peine voilé (“A thinly-veiled racism”) is a documentary from 2004 which goes to great lengths to explain the rise of the anti-veil sentiment in schools since the 80s. It’s a bit dated and does not account for the most recent racist developments but is still very much on-point.

One last point to conclude: newer, restrictive laws on “laïcité” (against religious signs) do not apply in practice to christians and jews, and even less so to minority religions whose religious signs bigots are unable to recognize. It’s not uncommon to see public servants (including teachers) wearing christian crosses, despite the law saying otherwise.

Russia and China have been historically the main protagonists against Nazism

That’s not wrong. I’m just pointing out both also have their history of ethnic cleansing and cultural supremacy. And i’m also pointing out that just because some structure did something good a while ago doesn’t mean they can’t do something bad (and vice-versa), especially given the major political changes there were since 1945 all around the world.

You aid English Fascism, and that isbclear from the Lithuania link you use to smear Russia.

Please get educated. You seem to indicate either that the top-level domain of a domain domain, or a specific language, is an indicator of State-sponsored propaganda: that makes no fucking sense. And if you want me to post more links about neo-fascism in Russia, i’ll gladly put up a compilation tomorrow when i find the time :)

I am not sure how true that is because I don’t know much about Russia.

Thanks for acknowledging this, the discussion on Lemmy would be easier if we started from this (honest) point rather than spewing propaganda from every side. Please note i also know relatively little about Russia: what i know i know from ex-USSR political refugees i’ve met throughout my life so i’ve got close to zero academic knowledge but plenty of anecdotes and homebrew political analysis (from an anarchist perspective).

You could say that Russia being a capitalist country is maybe not idealogically opposed to fascism but use the history of the Great Patriotic War for nationalistic purposes.

That’s precisely what i’m saying. If you follow the links in my original post (two of which are written by russian collectives) they’ll even argue that Putin’s is a direct fuel of both neo-nazism (there were, i don’t know if it’s still the case today with this new State narrative, government support toward neo-nazi groups) and a revival of Russian fascism (Putin has given a lot of power to the orthodox church).

If you’d like to read more from both russian/ukranian perspective on the topics of neo-nazism and fascism on both sides (Ukraine/Russia government), i strongly recommend the articles published on crimethinc.com since mid-february.

But equating Ukraine which glorifies Nazis and had neo-Nazis brought to power in the 2014 coup seems like a false equivalence to me.

There is a symbolic difference: Neo-nazism is a reverence to Hitler and his specific ideology, but fascism is an evolving beast and can take many forms. You don’t need swastikas or antisemitism to obtain fascism. In this sense, fascism is very much alive and well on both sides of the border.

Let’s take another example: France has strong laws against nazism and racial discrimination, but they are never applied. France is a deeply racist country with structural racism at play on many levels. That leads to contradictions like Eric Zemmour: the guy was paid to be every day on public television spewing hatred (against women, against muslims, etc). It only stopped a few years back when he was condemned for encouraging we deport all muslims from France (suggesting “it’s been done before” in reference to Hitler and the jews), yet the next week he found a very comfortable spot appearing every day on a private channel. The guy is now a candidate for presidency who like Trump back in the day all media advertise for. This guy is a pure product of French society, which on paper is supposed to stand for the opposite.

France is supposed to be anti-racist, but glorifies racist police abuse, or figures like Christopher Columbus or Jules Ferry. The law tells us little about actual political context somewhere. The situation is rude for antifascists both in Ukraine and in Russia, and i personally stand in support of them both against their respective government.

I feel like a lot of these people are just marxism gone wrong. Add a pinch of stalinism, and a bit of leninist/trotskyist discourse, and what you have is uncritical support on any tyrannical power that’s not the USA/UK. In the real world, in the unions and in the squats, we call these people fascists (of the red-brown kind because they use red words to promote fascism).

I mean, just imagine going to your union comrades and saying invading a sovereign country is justifiable in the name of socialism. You’ll get weird looks and nervous laughter. If you add the bit about the persons leading the invasion are siding with oligarchs and having privatized the entire country since the USSR collapsed, you’ll get called a scab and may come home with a few bruises.

Criticism must happen not against the oppressed (pro-Russian) narrative, but the dominant (pro-NATO, pro-Ukraine) narrative

In what world do you live that there is an oppressed and dominant narrative? Both sides are trying to impose their own narrative for their own fucked up interests. Neither of those sides will be what local militants will tell you, as those have a common understanding (anti-war, anti-imperialist) of the situation from every side of the border/conflict.

Russia needs to do a lot of catchup on whatever Anglo countries have done, for Russia to be equally called an empire.

I’m not saying Russia is as evil as UK/France/USA. I’m not interested in playing a game of who’s less worse. This is not a game. This is real life and our comrades are suffering on both sides of the border.

most of whatever is shown to paint Russia bad in the media is debunked as fake news

Of course there’s disinformation on both sides, like during any political conflict. Where can you see me spreading fake news?

Playing both sides trope when the media is suspiciously imbalanced against Russia is purely meant for grift purposes.

I’m not doing “both sides”. I’m doing “neither side”. I chose my side, and i side with the people who struggle across this planet. I’m taking time to counter propaganda on both sides on these forums because i have higher expectations in terms of information/debate when it comes to Lemmy, and because some people need to take the side of the common people and militant antifascists and spread their analysis on the situation, when everyone else is spewing Washington/Kremlin propaganda.

If you can point to one instance where i advocated for NATO, i’d be happy to provide an apology. Unfortunately this does not exist except in your mind where being against the Russian empire means siding with the western empire. I strongly recommend you do some reading on third-worldism and the importance of non-alignment (in regards to colonial empires) for the socialist/communist/anarchist movement worldwide.

Do you seek interest in publishing photos on Lemmy like this, since you call critics of current narrative “puppets of Russian Empire”?

Challenge accepted. I’m all up for denouncing nazism/fascism where it is. I just criticize when denouncing a specific brand of fascism is done in a way to reinforce another (whether it’s USA or Russian fascism/imperialism).

[And] nobody bothered in the west

That’s definitely not true. I’m not saying these movements are heard or effective, but there’s still a strong anti-war/anti-colonial movement in the West, in both the decolonial circles and in the libertarian networks.

You should definitely be pointing this out in regards to hypocrisy of state/industry-controlled media and the variable empathy bombed people get from them. I definitely upvoted.

Technically correct, but completely misguided. Sure it’s running on an army of computers, not a single machine. But who owns them? Who operates them? Does the user have any power over these computing resources? No. Cloud users are at the mercy of the service provider, who owns the computers and dictates them their computing.

Not upvoting, not because the subject isn’t interesting, but because of the framing: “The great popular hero russia restores water to the poor victims of the ukrainian despotism”.

I’d be interested in more sources on the implications behind this. I’d also be interested if you were to publish the same kind of propaganda against Turkey’s war crimes against the autonomous communities of Rojava ;-)

One side… that has 0% representation in current media for SOME reason.

That’s definitely not true. You are the proof of this. While many national outlet are spewing NATO propaganda, others are spewing Kremlin propaganda. I’m hoping we can have more balanced information on lemmy.ml, that accounts for psyops on both sides of the conflict.

Quoting should help here, because Putin’s recent speech tells otherwise.

OK let’s dissect Putin’s speech together:

I am referring to the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border. (…) First a bloody military operation was waged against Belgrade. (…) Then came the turn of Iraq, Libya and Syria. (…) in the 1990s and the early 2000s, when the so-called collective West was actively supporting separatism and gangs of mercenaries in southern Russia

Geopolitical concerns between the two big empires (Russia and NATO), nothing about Ukrainian separatists. Though in this part of the speech, Putin presents separatism (in the Caucasus presumably) as morally wrong and dangerous.

they sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature.

Being slightly informed about Putin’s fight for cis-hetero-patriarchy, this appears to be anti-LGBT propaganda. Nothing to do with ukrainian separatists.

Moreover, these past days NATO leadership has been blunt in its statements that they need to accelerate and step up efforts to bring the alliance’s infrastructure closer to Russia’s borders. (…) The problem is that in territories adjacent to Russia, which I have to note is our historical land, a hostile “anti-Russia” is taking shape.

Once again this is about sovereign nations and their choice of military alliances (i.e. not Russia), nothing to do with ukrainian separatists. Special note that Putin explicitly appropriates Ukraine territory (“our historical land”) and in the same sentence acknowledges that his colonial stature fuels “anti-Russia” sentiment.

For our country, it is a matter of life and death, a matter of our historical future as a nation. This is not an exaggeration; this is a fact. It is not only a very real threat to our interests but to the very existence of our state and to its sovereignty.

This is highly debatable. Russia is a major military power and has weapons capable of destroying half of Europe and Asia. In the “delicate balance of terror”, there is no indication that the balance has been broken (despite NATO expansionism, Putin still has one-click “life-or-death” button over much of the world) and Putin is not providing any evidence for Russia to be under risk of military attacks.

For eight years, for eight endless years we have been doing everything possible to settle the situation by peaceful political means.

Saying “i won’t destroy you if you don’t become friends with my enemy” is not peaceful political means. It’s threats.

We had to stop that atrocity, that genocide of the millions of people who live there and who pinned their hopes on Russia, on all of us. (…) the showdown between Russia and these forces cannot be avoided. It is only a matter of time

Putin talks about a genocide which beyond ordinary (and yes, unfair) State repression does not exist in Ukraine, and never provided any evidence for that. If anything, there is evidence that much of this spectacle was planned in advance (video metadata in official releases). And once again, Putin does not provide any evidence that Russia is in any way threatened.

Moreover, they went as far as aspire to acquire nuclear weapons.

There is exactly zero evidence for that that i could find. On the contrary, Ukraine used to be a major nuclear power in the times of the USSR and agreed to dismantle its entire arsenal in order to acquire relative peace with both Russia and NATO. This sounds a lot like the Bush administration’s “weapons of mass-destruction” narrative in Iraq back in the early 2000s.

Russia accepted the new geopolitical reality after the dissolution of the USSR. We have been treating all new post-Soviet states with respect

As the military repression (some would say civil war) in muslim States (such as Checheny) and in Caucasus has shown, Russia has been treating separatists and ordinary citizens way worse than the Ukrainian has ever treated the people of Donetsk (at least from what we know publicly so far).

To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation. (…) It is not our plan to occupy the Ukrainian territory. We do not intend to impose anything on anyone by force.

So they don’t plan to occupy the country, yet they are bombing the capital and intend to impose (“not by force” ?!) their laws and judicial systems, as well as fully demilitarize a sovereign nation. Is that not a textbook example of a colonialist invasion?

You look to be on the side of Ukraine, that wants to prevent the oppressed people of DPR and LPR to have independence

I’m on the side of the people, against Nation States and borders. I recognize the autonomy of local community and am ready to support people struggling for their independence. I’m not on the side of Ukraine and i’m not on the side of Russia, and i’m certainly not on the side of NATO as i’m anti-France, but i also have to be against Russia on this because they’re the ones who “fired” and keeps on shooting.

Your first question mixing Putin and NATO on the same side is a fallacy

On the contrary, it’s the only reasonable analysis. Putin and NATO are two sides of the same dice of colonialist garbage. I stand with the people not with governments, as is a foundational principle of socialism (i strongly recommend some historical socialist/anarchist anti-war propaganda). Overall, i strongly recommend that you listen to the demands and cries of comrades on both sides of the border.