Our LGBT kindred in Russia, after the Winter Olympics in Sochi

I know it's been a while since I blogged, but I've been very very busy. However, here's something I think we need to be aware of.


If you're truly committed to helping LGBT Russians, you may want to consider how many you'll be able to take in after the Winter Olympics are over. 

Yep, that's what I said, take in. Vlad tipped his hand before the Olympics by supporting legislation outlawing homosexuality in Russia, and between the police and the hate groups, the LGBT community there very well may see a pogrom of epic proportions executed against them. 

I spent 14 years in special operations intelligence with a focus on the Soviet Union. I speak Russian. I've been to Russia. They hate gays and lesbians! They merely dislike Jews, but they hateLGBT people. 

Russia is huge. There are already prisons scattered throughout central Russia and Siberia that would take very little to be turned into prison labor - or extermination - camps. Basically, modern day concentration camps or gulags. Russians have a history of dealing harshly with those who oppose authority or who go against the grain. 

This is a pot that I've watched simmer since I was a soldier and it was still the USSR. The fall of the Berlin Wall, the break-up of the Soviet Union, and "democratization" - as such as it exists there - have kept the focus off LGBT issues and the real hatred a-bubble right under the surface. It took very little for it to boil over, though.

Post-Sochi, the best these folks can hope for is for Putin to denounce violence against gays. Putin is well respected among the Russians and they'll pay a certain amount of attention to his demands, but that's only if he requires this. Frankly, he probably won't. 

When Adolf Hitler began his persecution of homosexuals, Jews, and foreigners, he began with gays. All of those he sought to suppress needed to flee the country as even hiding would do no good once the pervasive cloud of Naziism took hold. Other nations reached out to Jews and foreigners, but then, as now, no one reached out to gays (or lesbians, bisexuals, or transgendered).

If others won't, who will? Will we be the new Germans, those who turn aside when they see their neighbors oppressed, or will we step up and say 'not only no, but HELL NO? 

Electronic activism won't do a damned thing for the LGBT community in Russia after the Olympics, if things should go sideways; the Russians don't give a damn what people do on Facebook and Vlad damn sure doesn't care. 

There may soon come a time when we - WE - will be called upon to open our wallets and our homes and not merely our gadgets. There may come a time when WE become the partisans who find it necessary to create an Underground Railroad for our sisters and brothers in Russia. Will we? Will we step up and say 'count me in', or will we scroll past that TowleRoad item and look for a slightly less disturbing article?

Well, I'll go on the record here, and now:  Count ME in! My home and my resources will be open to help. I hope that a peaceful solution can be achieved, but I give it almost zero chance.

Be vigilant, because when it starts, it will go like wildfire. One thing about having so many former military members, as Russia does, is that they know how to assault an objective and overwhelm it. They're actively organizing, even now, so they're already ready to attack. 

The Soviets kicked off invasions of both Poland and Czechoslovakia with single-word radio transmissions. My point is, violence against our brothers and sisters could happen at any time, like a lightning strike.

Let's not let the worst happen.

Neo-Naziism, White Supremacists, Dominionist Christians, and the US Military

Neo-Naziism was rampant in the military as far back as the mid-1980s, at least. Later, in the late-80s, our intelligence unit was conducting witch hunts for gays but left neo-Nazis, Aryan Nationals, and other white supremacists alone even when they had racist symbols clearly displayed. 

But that's probably due to the fact that our battalion commander was himself a racist. He despised gays and atheists and made no effort to hide it. His behavior toward service members of color was somewhat more mitigated, but it bubbled just beneath the surface on his cigar-chomping face. You could watch the muscles in his face twitch when he had to speak to any lower enlisted soldier, especially those belonging to groups he hated. 

In a unit whose roster was filled with soldiers with codeword security clearances and years spent learning foreign languages - both of which cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars collectively, and millions alone individually - he set soldiers against one another to ferret out any whose least characteristics showed up on his hate-radar. Soldiers with perfect records were ousted, even jailed, for the least homosexual infraction while he permitted fraternization, even marriage, between heterosexual couples, even when one member would fall into the other's chain-of-command.

His activities eventually caught the attention of Congress, a difficult low-point to hit for a battalion commander. He had managed to achieve the worst retention rate - that is the rate of re-enlistment, a crucial goal for intelligence units because of the money spent on up-to-yearlong background checks, clearances, language training, and other training, making re-enlistment, even with a $25-35K bonus, a real bargain for taxpayers - in the entire US military. Typically, intelligence units have a very high retention rate because of the specialized training, re-enlistment bonuses, and the fact that so much time is spent in uniform to achieve the necessary skills that the lure of retirement may only be a single re-enlistment hitch away.

So, when you walked through the barracks rooms - in buildings built by Hitler specifically for his SS troops, the original Nazis - and saw swastikas and other neo-Nazi paraphernalia displayed, you knew why those displaying it could sneer at your recommendation to take it down: They had the full support of their battalion commander. 

The battalion commander was a Dominionist Christian, as well. In the 2 or 3 experiences I had with those in the military, they also sympathized with the white supremacist movement. I don't know if that's a 1-for-1 ratio or if I found some overlap, but it has always struck me that Dominionists are white supremacists, also.