Peter Tatchell: You Gotta Have Friends

Congrats to Peter Tatchell on his in--no-way self-congratulatory Peter Tatchell Is Great! fundraiser last night.

Here he is shaking hands with James Wharton, a leading gay Tory, but they're seemingly the only people these days who don't think he's a complete mentalist and a self-publicising joke.

PS Interested to know where the funds raised will be going? Here's the Peter Tatchell Foundation's accounts.

PPS Oops! Seems that Saint Peter has some loopy racist friends.

Russia: The Alexeyev Letter

Click to enlarge!

The US embassy in Moscow has given a Russian newspaper a grammar lesson over a fake letter that purports to show that the US pays gay rights activists to smear Russian officials.

The embassy marked more than two dozen mistakes in a copy of the alleged letter that it posted on its Twitter account. “Dear Izvestia, next time you use fake letters, send them to us – we will be happy to help correct the mistakes,” it wrote at the bottom.

The post was in response to an article in Izvestia on Wednesday that said activists were accusing the Russian officials of homosexuality to “earn grants” from the US State Department.

The article focused on prominent activist Nikolai Alexeyev, who told Ekho Moskvy radio station in May 2013 that Vladimir Putin’s aide Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of a state-owned bank and a director at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport were gay.

As proof of the US-backed “campaign to discredit” these officials, Izvestia quoted what the newspaper said was hacked correspondence between Alexeyev and the US State Department. Although it failed to provide a direct link, several quotes come from a letter posted on the CyberGuerilla website earlier this year.

In the letter, dated 11 May 2015, a rights envoy supposedly thanked Alexeyev for helping to organise a rally against Russian aggression in Ukraine, which drew “negative responses from Russian officials … a clear sign of excellent training and qualification of the protesters”.

“LGBT organisations will get increased financing at the expense of other opposition democratic organisations considering their low efficiency in developing civic society in Russia,” the alleged letter said...

The Guardian.

Might one suggest that as this letter was said to have been sent to Nikolai Alexeyev it might have just possibly been the creation of this increasingly nutty fantasist and master of the counter-productive publicity stunt?

The Interpreter Russia Update today notes...

Alekseyev himself is controversial figure in his own terms and is widely-traveled and publicized; when he appeared on Ekho Moskvy, some listeners texted that he himself was a provocateur within the gay movement.

From his first attempt at a gay demonstration in 2005, other gays denounced him as "a provocation of officials," since they believed he cooperated with the presidential administration to make the gay movement radical and visible, and then attract a police crackdown and angry public opinion.

These types of accusations are common in social movements in Russia where groups are split about tactics given the reality of state oppression and where it is easy to believe someone is a secret police informer given Soviet history. An American blogger accused Alekseyev of collaborating with the Kremlin when he claimed that a new anti-gay law would not be enforced, when it fact it was to charge a solo picketer. 

As Ekho Moskvy host Timur Olevsky commented during the talk show:

The co-organizer of the gay parade in Moscow, Nikolai Bayev, an acquaintance of Alekseyev, Nikolai Alekseyev believes that he is too rigid, and that this harms the cause of the gay community, however even so, he says that only coming out, only publicly emerging from the shadows, that is designating the right to be yourself, can help the LGBT movement in Russia.
 
Alekseyev has been arrested numerous times both for his attempt to stage the gay parades and campaign for same-sex marriages in Russia, where they are outlawed. He has also launched winning cases before the European Court of Human Rights on gay rights.

But he also became controversial in the West in August 2013 when he made a series of antisemitic comments on Twitter and Facebook about Advocate editor Matthew Breen and the magazine OUT. As a result, the organization Human Rights First, which had been active on promoting non-discrimination and tolerance of racial minorities and LGBYT withdrew from a planned conference call with Alekseyev. Alekseyev's social media outbursts at the time then culminated in slamming Peter Tatchell's "Love Russia, Hate Homophobia" campaign [Who could have predicted the two biggest egos in LGBT campaigning would fall out? FB]. Finally, he issued a death threat to Michael Lucas, a Jewish American with Russian and Israeli roots. Alekseyev then claimed to quit LGBT activism after the scandals...

See also, Is Nikolai Alexeyev The Russian LGBT Community’s Greatest Asset, Biggest Liability — Or Both? Max Seddon, Buzzfeed.

Thanks to Paul Canning (who thinks everything I write about Russia is the mad ranting of the last gay Stalinist). x

PS Fagburn's favourite entirely believable stories about the eminently sane Nikolai are his two (2) claims to have been kidnapped!

Russia: Far-Right Racist Publicity-Seeking Twat Arrested

And just as he wanted to be...

His millionaire boyfriend will pay it off.

On the noted anti-semites very dodgy ideology.

We must overcome these fascist stunts.

Moscow Pride: Selfie!

First photo of my arrest at 10th Moscow Pride a few minutes ago! @ Мэрия Москвы https://t.co/UJqAPdM8vQ

— Nikolai Alexeyev (@n_alexeyev) May 30, 2015

Fagburn has written approving things about Nikolai Alexeyev in the past - then various people told me he's a really dodgy racist, right-wing loon.

Nik, you wanted to get arrested, so you could tell the Western media, this is vanity, not gay activism.

One must ask what other Russian LGBT campaigners think of his tactics and aims.

PS As ever, you can't beat the reader comments on Pink News for well-informed and thoughtful political discourse...

Russia: The Empire Strikes Back!

L: Bad but unboring Russian activist holds easily comprehensible sign, Moscow, September 25; R: Good but boring Russian activists hold signs nobody cares about, Moscow, September 24. Police equally unimpressed.

John Aravosis published an article about Nikolai Alekseev’s latest Moscow protest on his blog today. It’s interesting how he excuses doing this. He objects to other media covering Alekseev (“I’ve noticed some top gay ‘news’ sites continuing to go to the anti-Semite Alexeyev for comment”) but not to himself covering Alekseev. He squares the circle by pretending that Alekseev wasn’t behind the demonstration (“it’s unfortunate that the protesters included in their group known anti-Semite, Nikolai Alexeyev“) when of course Alekseev didn’t simply happen along for the ride, he organized the whole thing. It’s all a bit like: I didn’t want to show you Britney Spears’ privates on my blog, people, it’s just that they walked right onto my computer screen.

The truth is, it’s much more sexy and clickworthy, from an American perspective, to run photos of Alekseev holding an catchy English-language sign (no Google Translate needed!) and getting chased by police, than photos of other Russians holding up Russian slogans about substantive things like the fate of Russia that only Russians care about. It would be nice if Aravosis would admit this — and admit there’s a symbiotic relation between the Alekseev lust for controversy and the Aravosis lust for blog hits. It would spare us all the denials...

Bull-fighter Scott Long - the writer and campaigner who's worked together with LGBT Russians for Human Rights Watch - writes perceptively, yet again, on his excellent blog, A Paper Bird, on the strange priorities of the US/UK media in the debate about LGBT Russians, and the hypocrisies of the likes of AmericaBlogGay's Michael Aravosis - brave champion of the far-right, racist and Zionist, Michael Lucas.
In a companion piece yesterday, In Russia They Resist Too, Long asks why a one-man shouty interruption at an opera house in New York "in solidarity with LGBT Russians" got so much media coverage here, while a protest in Moscow against homophobia in schools got next-to zero.

"There was a demonstration in Moscow too yesterday – even if nobody in New York paid much attention. You can demonstrate in Moscow: the LGBT and democracy movements in Russia may be in retreat but are not silent or submissive. This is important to understand, since the tendency now is to paint them as pure victims who can’t say anything for themselves."

Note also how on the day of the #Russia4Love protests earlier this month, an action outside the Russian Embassy in London, and ones in other cities around the world, got massive coverage - while the infinitely more meaningful and important protests in 14 Russian cities by your actual LGBT Russians was ignored.

Scott Long reprints this photo from the NYC Met protest and comments...

"We all know Pastor Niemoller’s moving message. Yet here it isn’t true. They didn’t come for the gays first. Putin came for the Chechens first (actually, Yeltsin did before him); for the journalists; for the odd oligarch and whistleblower; for the punk rock feminists and the environmentalists; for the protest marchers; and then, somewhere down the list, he came for the gays. Where were we when the truth-seekers were slaughtered, when Pussy Riot went to prison, or when Grozny burned? Would things be different now, if some of that emotion had been transmuted into actions back when the right-wing thugs were mainly killing black people; or when the “foreign agents” law was first bruited about; or when cops were beating up Muscovites in the street after a faked election?"

All too often we have seen acts of "It's all about ME!" solipsism masquerading as acts of solidarity.

To complete a stunning, damning quintent* of recent articles, Long writes here about the sudden volte face over fallen idol Nikolai Alekseev, by those who knew of his dodgy political leanings and anti-semitic outbursts, but were silent about them until he began criticising the tactics of US/UK campaigners...

"[who] had all the evidence years ago of the man’s instability and hatred. It’s important to tell the truth. It’s important, because the Alekseev story reveals a lot about the potential pathologies of gay activism: the cult of celebrity, the belief in saviors rather than social movements, the way Westerners project their desires and fantasies onto other countries. Why did Doug [Ireland] and others keep promoting Alekseev, and actively denigrating other Russian activists? They damaged the whole Russian LGBT movement in the process. They shouldn’t get off the hook. And we need to learn lessons from how they went so wrong..."

Quite.

And finally.. Fagburn read today about a fundraising and awareness event, To Russia LGBT With Love, held in London next month - where apparently all money raised is going to the Peter Tatchell Foundation - ie to Peter, who pays himself £29,000 a year from kind donations - and oddly not to LGBT Russian groups, who surely need it more.

If true it would make the whole event look ridiculous and hypocritical, and another example of "The West knows best" gay cultural imperialism we witness above.

I've asked the organisers to confirm this, and will let you know when they reply...

A very nice man from Dalston Superstore told me they haven't decided which charities yet, and they're now working on organising video speakers from Russia.

* "Queer Quislings": Getting Russia Wrong and Top Guns: Last Words On Johnny Weir.

Nikolai Alexeyev: Oh Those Russians (Cont.)

Is Nikolai Alexeyev The Russian LGBT Community’s Greatest Asset, Biggest Liability — Or Both? Max Seddon on BuzzFeed on NA's rather odd recent Twitter outbursts.
The URL reads "Is-Nikolai-Alexeyev-the-Russian-LGBT-comunitys-greatest-ass".
It's certainly something to think about.
Niko speaks such sense about Western hypocrisy, hysteria and hegemony, but then he goes and spoils it all by saying something nutski!
But then his own Twitter handle describes him as; "unstable crazy mad controversial rich hard"
Uh-huh.
Though I can well understand if this sorry episode has made him crack up.
Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters etc etc...
Update: Nikolai says he'll be making a big announcement about the propaganda law on his Facebook page on Monday.
I presume he'll be confirming he's organising a Sochi Pride, and has evidence that the new law will not be enforced.

Update2: NA appears to have gone into a full-blown Bobby Fischer anti-semitic meltdown on Twitter.
Awful, disgusting, sad.
(Though Zionist twat Michael Lucas's latest racist outbursts get printed in your leading US gay magazines with nary a word, of course!)
Maybe this is what happens when one man starts to believe that one country's gay movement is himself?
See also...

And finally... Post-latest crack-up interview with Niko here.

Nikolai Alekseyev: Fight The Gay Fight In Russia

A Sochi Olympics boycott will only serve those who do not understand that their goal will only further isolate the LGBT community in Russia and make the lives of its representatives living in the country (and not in New York or London) even harder. Or, is this boycott nothing more than cold war nostalgia lead by some who today regret that they ran away from the Soviet Union or Russia? After all, who will the ordinary Russians (who might not be as homophobic as they are portrayed), blame for the disruption of this event? I think you know the answer. Will it make lives better for the millions who will stay? Will it lead to the repeal of the federal law banning gay propaganda? In both cases, definitely not!

From an important essay, Fighting The Gay Fight In Russia by Nikolai Alekseyev.
Still what would Russia's leading gay rights campaigner know about any of this, eh?
Obviously, I don't think Nikolai speaks for all LGBT Russians - nor does he claim to - or that he has all the answers or some magic fix, but far better listen to him than some know-nothing knee-jerk idiot in the West.
Please also read this hilarious piss-take of that publicity-seeking right-wing gay cunt, James Kirchick.
And, if you haven't read it already, What If Chelsea Manning Were Russian? - an excellent piece by Michael Arria on the double standards and hypocrisy of those power-serving patriotic all-American gay boys, James Kirchick and Dan Savage.
Right, think that's probably enough about Russia for today...

солидарность!

Russia: Nikolai Alexeyev Tweets

Western media has no respect for Russia and its people and LGBT population included. What they report about Sochi and gay propaganda is sham
— Nikolai Alexeyev (@n_alexeyev) August 17, 2013

After several western medias totally misinterpreted my comments on Sochi Olympics and gay propaganda laws I don't give interviews anymore.
— Nikolai Alexeyev (@n_alexeyev) August 17, 2013

All Western media want to hear from me that Russia is shit and I don't want to take part in this hypocrisy. So all interviews are over!
— Nikolai Alexeyev (@n_alexeyev) August 17, 2013

From Twitter. 

I post these without comment.
But maybe people in the West should be more worried about propaganda in the West?

Edit: Fagburn believes Nikolai is a heroic and brave campaigner for gay rights, but has done some things which are a bit odd, and does seem sometimes driven by vanity.
Obviously, we in the UK have no equivalent.
Whatever, I wish him well.
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