Western media coverage of the Russian organization known as "Pussy Riot" (PR) has been among the most egregiously distorted in recent memory — in an era where Western media coverage of most everything about Russia is agonizingly superficial and propagandistic. Now that they have been found guilty of hooliganism it is worth stepping back and looking at this group and the media phenomenon surrounding it a bit more clearly.
These young women are uniformly portrayed as an innocent punk rock protest group who have had their freedom of expression shut down by the evil monster Vladimir Putin who just cannot help crushing anyone and anything opposed to his government because he was once in the Russian KGB! It is as simple as that for the Western press. And those creations of the Western media, the various vapid pop stars and other entertainers, who have through history served as useful idiots to push the cause of the day, have all lined up against the KGB monster who wants to silence all dissent and bring back the Soviet Union.
That so much about the infamous incident of February 21, 2012, when this group ascended the altar of Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in central Moscow clad in bright clothing which masked their identities to scream out a poem, remains unreported, unexplored, unconsidered speaks volumes about the Western media abrogation of its historic role in a free society. As it has come to be expected, thanks to the Internet and what the libertarian website the Daily Bell calls the "Internet Reformation," individuals are stepping in where the media/propaganda outlets have failed and providing real information and investigation.
Thanks to an extremely well-researched blog post by "Mercouris" we come to understand much more about the event, the actual charges against the perpetrators, and the background and origins of this strange group of individuals whose philosophy seems to be much more akin to shock for shock's sake and nihilism than any kind political position or attraction to feminism -- though again, in the Western mainstream media they are portrayed as "feminist punk rockers," akin to a movement in the US known as "Riot Grrrls."
In fact the "group" never seems to have recorded or actually written a single song.
They do have some interesting backers in addition to the usual Western entertainers, however. As is well-documented, PR has open connections to the National Endowment for Democracy (surprise). Oksana Chelysheva, listed as the head of the group's support campaign, also happens to have been "Deputy Executive Director" of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, a strange pro-extremist outfit which is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. Chelysheva also has other extensive US government ties through her leadership roles in other NED and George Soros-funded outfits like the Finnish-Russian Civic Forum and the EU-Russia Civil Society Forum.
Does Chelysheva funnel State Department money to the members of Pussy Riot through these front groups? It would not be the first time such support is covertly given to an organization seen as undermining a foreign leader viewed as out of favor with Washington.
[...]
Also seldom reported is what the women actually said while trespassing in the altar area of the church. Falsely reported as a "punk prayer to the Virgin Mary," the poem they recited was in fact grotesquely scatological and objectively disrespectful and blasphemous. It was not a prayer of any sort, and in fact was a kind of a vulgar parody of the beliefs and rituals of believers.
[...]
Some defenders of the group laud the invasion of the church to spew scatological verses as an exercise in "civil disobedience." In fact that may be considered the case if any kind of clear political statement can be discerned from the actual words screamed from the altar, and if one accepts the premise that the Russian Orthodox Church is an arm of the Russian government -- which most would not accept. Indeed there is little relationship between those who resisted the unjust laws in the United States against racial minorities decades ago and those who invade a place of worship to pointedly attack aspects of that worship and the leader of that particular faith. As someone else pointed out, imagine the outrage were a skinhead group to occupy a synagogue in the US. It is certainly a far cry from sitting down at a lunch counter.
While one hesitates to applaud when an individual faces incarceration by the state, it is remarkable how little time is spent considering the rights of the targets of these protests. What about the right to go into a grocery store and not see women placing food items inside their private parts? What about the right to religious activity free of scantily clad women screaming expletives at the Lord, the Virgin Mary, and the local Patriarch? Well sadly those are not much considered by the defenders of these women in the entertainment and media industry because by and large they have long since abandoned any of these sorts of "retrograde" views and beliefs. They are members of the elite who look with scorn on babushka-wearing women who still believe in God and the Church. As from Lenin back to Robespierre back to the original rebel, the old order must be overturned in the name of freedom and progress. In their view, those who resist this inevitable march of history do not deserve to be considered. They do not count.
) was 9 month pregnant at that time. the act was performed under a big banner that sad "F.ck for Putin". In the interview the girl called it "political art".
