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Profs and Pints DC presents: “Putin’s War on Queer Russians,” an analysis of a state campaign to vilify and persecute LGBTQ people, with Ksenia Turkova, linguist, former news anchor in Russia and Ukraine, and guest lecturer at American universities.
On November 30th Russia’s Supreme Court banned that nation’s LGBTQ movement as “extremist,” jeopardizing its rights activism. The following day police carried out raids on gay venues in Russia, with those swept up subjected to having their passports photographed and being forced to undress. Broadly speaking, most Russians’ attitudes toward that nation’s LGBTQ people are negative, and that nation ranks among the worst when it comes to respecting gay rights.
Russia didn’t become that way overnight in the wake of a court decision—the homophobic rhetoric of its government has been building for years.
Gain a deep understanding of how an authoritarian government uses propaganda to oppress a segment of the population with Ksenia Turkova, a linguist and former Russian and Ukrainian journalist who previously has given several excellent Profs and Pints shedding light on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to control what Russians hear and think.
She’ll discuss how one of the main narratives of Russia’s official propaganda consists of warnings that the “rotten West” is bent on turning everyone in Russia, especially children, into those Putin labels “perverts.” The state’s efforts to promote homophobia can take absurd forms, such as the alteration of images of rainbows to make them black and white, as well as including the banning of books and advertisements with LGBTQ characters. For his own part, Putin is infamous for his openly homophobic comments and jokes.
We’ll look at how the Russian government has used such rhetoric to bully critics of Putin and opponents of the invasion of Ukraine, and why the Kremlin sees a need to strengthen its homophobic rhetoric before Russia’s upcoming presidential election. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: LGBTQ activists protest Russia’s previous invasion of Ukraine in 2014 (Wikimedia Commons).
