Forced video apologies have become increasingly common since Russia's war in Ukraine began.

Cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/8085591

The trend initially came to prominence in 2015, when apology clips started emerging on social media or local state TV in the Russian republic of Chechnya in the North Caucasus.

Most of the videos showed people saying sorry for criticising Chechnya’s strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

One featured a man apologising for being gay. Another featured a man wearing no trousers who had criticised the Chechen leader for singing a song called “President Putin is my best friend”.

  • tygerprints@kbin.social
    17·
    5 months ago

    They could threaten me with public execution and there is no way at all that I’d ever apologize for being gay. It isn’t anything that requires an apology and nobody has any right to ask for one. Given that most of Russia’s most prolific writers and composers were gay, it’s fucking terrible that Russia is still so mired in small-minded bigotry and hate for their own culture.

    • jarfil@beehaw.org
      15·
      5 months ago

      That’s a nice sentiment… but I’m afraid they’d be equally happy to make a viral video with a public execution, they wouldn’t be the first ones either. This is about finding scapegoats, not about reason.

      • tygerprints@kbin.social
        1·
        5 months ago

        And I’m not afraid of having a public execution, whether they know that or not. They have no power to scare me with anything. I’m a gay man, I’m great - and I know that I am a bigger part of a greater intelligence out there. There’s nothing another human can do to take any of that away even in death. I am no one’s scapegoat, and cannot be made one.

        Death is a just a step to becoming something bigger and better than men have achieved on earth.

        • jarfil@beehaw.org
          2·
          5 months ago

          There are two truths confronted here: on one hand, you can’t be made to do anything you don’t want; on the other, things can be done to you without your consent, then presented in any way once you can’t say anything about them.

          Death may or may not be the better choice, depending on whether you’d rather live to fight another day. Pretty sure the ones asking for forgiveness in the videos, have chosen the latter.

          • tygerprints@kbin.social
            1·
            5 months ago

            Unlikely that things will be done to me without my consent. You don’t me very well. People have tried it and paid the price.

            Death is just the cracking of the shell that holds us down on earth, that’s all. No one and no thing can coerce me into asking for forgiveness, especially where I’ve done nothing at all that requires me to ask it. They should all be on their grubby little hands and knees asking ME for forgiveness.