Scarcely a day goes by without some nut whining about "oppression" in the United States. The simple fact is that the United States is one of the least oppressive countries in the world; to see how true that is one need only look at most Muslim-majority nations - or Vladimir Putin's Russia, where dissent is not seen as patriotic, or even allowable. This is what real oppression looks like.
It’s not just opposition politicians who are targeted in the crackdown by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government in recent years. Also falling victim are independent voices as well as those who don’t conform to what the state sees as the country’s “traditional values.”
Those traditional values have a lot to do with what Vladimir Putin thinks those values are, and dissent and free speech certainly are not among them. It didn't start with Putin; Russia has a long history of oppression. But Putin is certainly turning in the screws.
Independent news sites largely have been blocked in Russia since the first weeks of the war in Ukraine. Many have moved their newsrooms abroad and continue to operate, accessible in Russia via virtual private networks, or VPNs. Reporting inside Russia or earning money off Russian advertisers has been difficult.
Russian authorities since 2021 also have labeled dozens of outlets and individual journalists as ”foreign agents” – a designation implying additional government scrutiny and carrying strong pejorative connotations aimed at discrediting the recipient. Some have also been outlawed as “undesirable organizations” under a 2015 law that makes involvement with such organizations a criminal offense.
Here in the United States we certainly have independent news sites - you're reading one right now. The U.S. guarantees our freedom to speak and freedom of the press in the First Amendment, a guarantee that few nations, even today, enjoy.
A well-informed populace is probably the most important factor in keeping a nation free. While we could do better here - a lot better - thanks to the wonders of our modern, technological lifestyle, we enjoy a much broader access to information than just a few years ago, when we relied on three television networks for news.
Not so in Russia. But Putin's war on liberty encompasses more than just journalism.
In November, the Supreme Court banned what the government called the LGBTQ+ “movement” in Russia, labeling it as an extremist organization. That effectively outlawed any LGBTQ+ activism. Shortly afterward, authorities started imposing fines for displaying rainbow-colored items.
This isn't about whatever any one person thinks of the LGBTQ+ movement, especially the TQ portion, which has yielded some pretty eye-popping logical inconsistencies, like insisting that men be allowed to compete on women's sports teams. This is about the outright outlawing of a group's freedom of expression. That, outcry from activists aside, hasn't happened here. Things have gone in the opposite direction in just a few years since Barack Obama piously announced that marriage was between "one man and one woman" before "evolving" his views.
American LGBTQ+ people, as I've said before, don't know how good they have it.
See Related: American LGBTQ+ People Don't Know How Good They Have It. They Should Try Zimbabwe.
Putin's Russia Tackles the 'My Little Pony' Threat
But here in the "oppressive" United States, you can get a Lyft ride from a dude posing as a woman under Lyft's "Women +" program.
The ride service group Lyft recently announced a new program called “Women + Connect.” The program is set up to help women and non binaries “increase their chances of matching with more women and nonbinary riders.” One of its employees is a transgender woman, so a man, who is looking forward to driving other “women” around.
Tell me what about that makes the U.S. an "oppressive" nation.
But wait! There's more! Religious minorities are under attack in Putin's Russia as well.
In perhaps a similar vein, the government, closely allied with the Russian Orthodox Church, has cracked down on smaller religious denominations and groups, banning some. Authorities went further with Jehovah’s Witnesses, prosecuting hundreds of believers across the country, often simply for gathering to pray.
The Supreme Court in 2017 declared Jehovah’s Witnesses to be an extremist organization, exposing those involved with it to potential criminal charges.
There is no freedom of speech in Russia. There is no freedom of conscience in Russia. There certainly is no freedom to be gay or any other part of that "rainbow" in Russia. Russia is increasingly an autocracy under the control of Tsar Vladimir I, and the Russian people are only entitled to what freedoms Putin deigns to allow. There's an old saying: "A government powerful enough to give you everything you want is powerful enough to take away everything you have." Russia sure seems to be following this rule.
One can only draw one conclusion from all this: If you want to see a real oppressive state, a totalitarian state where one man effectively runs things and dissent is aggressively squashed, one need look no further than Vladimir Putin's Russia.
