The more I read about this Pussy Riot story, the more I discover there is more to dig than what the average media has just told us. The all-girl feminist punk band is now more backed up by the Western world than any Russian dissident has ever had, Madonna has talked about them, Bjork is selling Pussy Riot t-shirts on her own website,… and I wanted to buy one for Iman.
But you always have to ponder when a case like this attracts so much media attention and scrutiny. I bet a lot of people are thrown in jail every day in the world for similar reasons and no one is talking or writing about them. So was it the colorful dresses and masks? The punk music they chose to deliver their message? The fact that they are female, young, and well, good looking? Sure, the very cute Nadezhda Tolokonnikova has become the poster girl for rebellion against oppression, but almost nobody is talking about her quite extremist ideas and her involvement with the Russian street-art group Voina known for doing provocative and politically-charged performances,… such as vandalism and destruction of public property! Voina is a group with no income living by scavenging and stealing food from stores, you can read about some of their infamous acts and happenings on wikipedia, and there is no doubt they are plain anarchists, a word I haven’t really read anywhere.
Provocation? Tolokonnikova knows all about it! She and her husband took part in an orgy in Moscow's biological museum to protest against the election of Dmitry Medvedev, and with Voina, she took part into the drawing of a giant phallus on a drawbridge across from the FSB headquarters in St Petersburg… Is it still regarded as freedom of expression in any country? I wonder how the right-wing and conservative Christians would feel about similar acts done in the US, I bet Fox News would want them in jail too. So there is a sort of double standard there, in other words, it may be hypocrite (and dangerous) to support Pussy Riot if you don’t support completely their anarchist views ,… the Pussy Riot girls are anti-Putin, but also may be just anti, period, very probably anti-capitalism, anti-religion…, and we just have to know about it!
Putin’s regime is despotic and authoritarian and I won’t stop supporting the cause of these brave women, but I just wonder whether the majority of the West would still wearing ‘Free Pussy Riot’ across its chest if all the other backside stories were made more visible.