75th Anniversary Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Russia's Perspective

Some nations have excellent reasons to rejoice over the UDHR’s formulation while others would rather ignore it aside from using it as a hegemonic tool, As mentioned previously, the most important nation not to ratify the UDHR is the Outlaw US Empire because like the UN Charter it restricts it from acting unilaterally. How it approaches the anniversary date of December 10th will be closely watched by the Global Majority as the Empire is currently engaged with the Zionists in the Genocide of Gaza. But instead of focusing on the massive ongoing crime in Gaza which has prompted numerous articles, the point here is to look at Russia’s internal discussion as one of the components of Russophobia is its alleged cruelty and intolerance to its own people. Several weeks ago, “Culture in Foreign Policy: The Concept of the Humanitarian Policy of the Russian Federation Abroad,” and “Russia Vs. Wokism: Declares 2024 Year of Family” were published that contain information related to this topic, particularly the Humanitarian Policy document as it duplicates much of what’s contained in Russian law.

Russia’s Supreme Court recently decided the “International LGBT public movement” to be “extremist” and “outlawed” its presence within Russia. RT has a good explainer article, while Novaya Gazeta Europe has published a more oppositional article. And then there’re numerous BigLie Media items distorting the entire issue, which provides a clue as to the real reason behind the Court’s designation. This issue is important as it tests Russia’s credibility on its domestic and foreign humanitarian and human rights policies. Also related is the Family Values discussion as you’ll see one of the frequent reasons cited for the limitation of LGBT Ideology is the need to protect Family Values. Here’s yet another POV:

Designating LGBT advocacy as extremist is a form of “moral self-defense” of society, a spokesman for the Orthodox Church said on Thursday, supporting the decision of the Russian Supreme Court.

Responding to the request of the Ministry of Justice, the highest court in Russia ruled on Thursday that the “international LGBT public movement” and all its subsidiaries would be declared an extremist organization, practically banning their work.

“We know from the testimony of many Western Christians who adhere to traditional beliefs regarding marriage and family that the activities of LGBT movements are aimed at displacing the Christian idea of ​​marriage and family from the public and the legal sphere,” said Vakhtang Kipshidze, head of public relations at the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. [Emphasis Original]

Russia isn’t alone in having that POV as many nations see it as an effort to destabilize their internal socio-cultural peace. But this is only one aspect of this issue that’s gone global. I wrote about this, related aspects and their employment in “The New Tool to Divide and Rule” and “Time to Cancel Cancel Culture;” so, some of the basics of these interrelated issues some readers will have read. And Putin far more than Lavrov or other government members has spoken out, saying essentially that while Russia values openness and acceptance while championing its diversity it will not tolerate attempts to divide its society. In a recent article written by Alexey Drobinin, Director Foreign Policy Planning Department, Russia’s Foreign Ministry entitled “Why is the choice of traditional values so important?" and published in the Journal International Affairs on December 1, 2023, made this point:

Those involved in discussions about neo-liberal narratives are always tempted to limit everything to deliberations on the strangest and most challenging element, specifically, prioritising the so-called gender issues and LGBT rights. However, this issue is more complicated, and it would therefore be appropriate to analyze the paradigm of neo-liberal values in greater detail and to divide it into four tentative aspects, including the economy, politics, society and technology….

Phenomena that were once marginalised and that lead to a fracturing of people's consciousness, such as the obsessive LGBT agenda, radical feminism, the cult of social political correctness to the point of absurdity, and “critical race theory” (based on the assumption that race is not a biological but a socially engineered characteristic to oppress non-whites) have become a standard of everyday life in Western countries. Any understandings that refer to tradition or that contradict “progressive” theories are declared archaic, outdated at best.

It is important to emphasise here that sexual minorities are part of all societies. They should not be discriminated against and they should have the same civil and socio-cultural rights as all other citizens. Of concern is the propaganda of non-traditional values, which is becoming more and more aggressive. Thus, according to IPSOS, one of the major international companies specialising in sociological research, in a number of countries where the neoliberal paradigm has taken root (Germany, Sweden, Australia, Canada, France, Great Britain), the share of LGBT representatives is two to four times higher than the corresponding world average (the medical standard is about one percent of the population). And in some countries, in surveys among young people, up to 18 percent of respondents admitted to same-sex attraction.

Neoliberals do everything to make those who adhere to classical (normal) ethics feel discomfort and shame, to make them feel “unfashionable.” The methods of oppressing those who openly express disagreement with deviations that aggressively make their way have already been tested. These are “cancellation culture” and “deplatforming,” encouraging reports to the authorities, collective bullying and unsubstantiated stigmatisation with insulting labels: racists, fascists, communists, sexists, homophobes, gender haters and the like. Adherents of traditional views, now declared “wrong,” are forced to publicly repent….

The developments are aggravated by the deep crisis that has hit the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant associations. Their reputation has been damaged by numerous scandals. Today, the church in the West faces accusations of spreading “white Christian nationalism” and “white supremacy” as well as attempts to marginalise the LGBT community. The clumsy attempts by some religious communities to win sexual minorities to their side, even to the point of willingness to allow same-sex marriages, have left many people aghast. As a result, many in the West are unable to find peace and solace in the church. [My Emphasis]

1% of any nation’s polity is a large amount and in Russia would amount to 1.5 million people. Drobinin’s conclusion is thus a warning to Russia while also explaining why it has issued this evaluation:

The entire neoliberal agenda is, in one way or another, a product of big money, designed to serve the interests of transnational corporations through political, economic, and social shackles. The pseudo-democratic and neoliberal attitudes imposed by the West are not at all what Russia or other countries signed up to as part of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1975 Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, or other international commitments that we took on after 1991.

Observing these processes from the outside, from Russia, we cannot avoid noting that the underlying ideology is morally defective and toxic for its own bearers. But, after all, it is their choice and they have to live with it. Every nation has the sovereign right to choose its own path of development. However, this does not mean that we will not defend ourselves against such a lifestyle being imposed on us. Let degeneration be confined to the neoliberal segment of Western societies.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his remarks at the 9th St Petersburg International Cultural Forum – the Forum of United Cultures on November 17, “The experience of the millennium-old history of our country convincingly shows that cultural diversity is the greatest blessing while the interaction of cultures is one of the conditions for stable and peaceful development. After all, some of the main reasons for today’s international tensions are rooted in the claims of some forces to exclusivity, including cultural exclusivity, their disregard for the customs and spiritual values of others, a striving to subject everyone and everything to unification under their own pattern that they consider the best and most universal. This distasteful globalisation and, let me add, cultural expansionism, have led to cultural suppression and deprivation and have multiplied the potential for conflict.”

The goal of the intellectual and political community, which cares about the future of its own people, is to identify and consistently neutralise any threats to the original way of life and traditional values, which are crucial to Russia’s full-scale and successful development in the 21st century.

In Alastair Crooke’s essay today, “Black Pattern Forming?” also hits on these issues:

[T]he West has been sinking beneath the waves of its’ Cultural Revolution – the deliberate cancelling of virtues and legacies of traditional civilization, to be replaced by a cultural hierarchy that upends and inverts the societal paradigm that is close to conquering all.

Serious stuff, yes? Fortunately, we are fortunate to have writers able to see through the garbage and write about what’s really happening along with two nations that won’t allow themselves to be steamrolled by the West’s contrived “Cultural Revolution,” although I wouldn’t call it that, favoring Drobinin’s “neoliberal agenda” which is employing Cultural Imperialism as one of its tools to undermine and destabilize. The warning by Hanson Crooke cites is more of a CYA for the crimes of Biden/Obama/Clinton as that’s what the Ds are actually fearful of, not of Trump per se; I call it real time PTSD that some others have called Trump Derangement Syndrome. Although preoccupied by the events in West Asia over the last two months, Crooke has found time to continue his observation of what’s happening within the Outlaw US Empire. He continues:

A nascent counter-revolution however, is under way – in which a segment of the electorate is driving towards the re-installation of those civilisational and metaphysical principles which gave national sustenance over centuries. They are (rightly or wrongly) not prepared to recant those values, nor prepared to assume ‘guilt’ by submitting to the demands for reparation.

The point here is obvious: The scale, complexity (and viciousness) of the problem is growing. And with it, anger mounts.

‘Black patterns’ are forming. At one level, the U.S. President is senile, and the ‘permanent functionaries’ are terrified: “They thrust a stake through Trump’s heart, but they are afraid that stake could come out, any time”, Hanson writes. Should Trump win, then vendetta follows, and “their goose is cooked”.

The present Israeli-Palestine conflict is sending further ‘shivers’ up the ‘functionary spine’: Biden may prioritise his loyalty to Israel over Democrats winning the 2024 election. He is haemorrhaging domestic support.

The anger currently seen is at the Pro-Palestine protests and related polling results as well as at some of the few political rallies for POTUS contenders. The rest of his essay dissolves into an olio mishmash that mostly moves away from our topic, although immigration is touched upon.

One of the tools long used by the Establishment is the promotion of the Cult of the Individual in an effort to continue the atomization of society so to increase the efficiency of Divide and Rule, for to defeat the Establishment solidarity of society is required whereas the individual is rendered mostly powerless. Drobinin again:

Neo-liberal Western ideologists actively promote individualism and the priority of an atomised individual over any other factors and considerations.

Social historian Christopher Lasche also noted that in his last two books before his untimely death in the 1990s. Team games that emphasize the need to operate together are at the same time opposed by the individualization of everything, including one’s identity, that’s promoted from an early age. And as people cease attending the fonts where values are taught, they aren’t replaced by activities within the family as everyone’s too busy doing their own thing—you gotta have a smartphone to be part of the in-crowd nowadays, even though the in-crowd isn’t as “in with itself” as it was once.

One of the interesting aspects of the UDHR is it combines collective and individual rights thanks to Pengchun Chang’s Contributions to the Drafting of the UDHR whose been mentioned here before as one of the great unknown stories behind the UDHR. All the linked writings deal with various facets of human rights and the need for them to be both protected and enforced. Today, Gazans are having their rights obliterated by the Zionist Genocide Project but no nation has stepped forward to defend/protect the Gazans from being murdered—only non-governmental organizations, although Ansarallah can be said to be a national group. NATO, since 2014, has used Ukrainians as its tool to kill Russians and apply genocidal methods against them. The West’s promotion of Russophobia violates the rights of all Russians. Syrians are having their national resources stolen from them and are being denied humanitarian assistance by the Outlaw US Empire and its vassals. Iraq has told the Outlaw US Empire to remove its troops from the nation but refuses which violates Iraqi human rights. NATO subterfuge in Moldova and Armenia also violates the human rights in those nations. The illegal embargo and blockade of Cuba is yet another ongoing crime against humanity for which the Outlaw US Empire’s guilty. And that’s not an exhaustive listing. The censorship pervasive within the NATO/EU nations of information outlets that deprive their citizens of their rights to other opinions is yet another serious violation of human rights on the individual and collective levels.

Myself and others have written that the world is clearly dividing into two geopolitical and geoeconomic Blocs, one comprising the Global Majority and the other those within the NATO/EU Bloc. Part of the geopolitical divide is related to the human rights issue where the West is clearly abusing and supporting the absolute worst form such abusing can take—Genocide—while the Global Majority seeks to enhance human rights by promoting people centered development aimed at lifting several billions out of poverty. And it’s also possible to see how the values issue is related to the human rights issue as currently it’s clear the Western Bloc doesn’t value the most important thing—a person’s right to his/her priceless life—as proven in Palestine, Ukraine and elsewhere. (Russia’s annual Meeting of the Council for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights I wanted to include in this discussion, but the transcript is quite long and the discussion quite varied. The result is it will be showcased in my next effort.)

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