Absurd Anti-LGBT+ Video Urges Russians to Vote in Upcoming Presidential Election

Three weeks ahead of the 2024 Russian presidential election, a bizarre video campaign has cropped up on the internet, urging Russians to vote in order to avoid a dystopian, LGBT-dominated future.

Titled ‘THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA?’ the 6-minute video is set in Moscow, 2036, and portrays a future where LGBT+ ideology has prevailed as a result of the “great rainbow revolution.”

In this imagined future, the country is under an authoritarian regime, ruled by the “rainbow tribunal” and policed by the “tolerance patrol.” Traditional family values are outlawed, children are born out of test tubes, and heterosexuality is punishable by time in the “rainbow labour camp.”

The video follows a young heterosexual couple, Nikolai and Zoya, who live on 69 Gay Liberators Street, and who are forced to hide their sexual orientation. Their son, Barak, is forbidden to call them “mum” and “dad” as these “bad words” are outlawed in the country and could land the family in “gender harmony courses.” Instead, parents are to be called “parent 1” and “parent 2.”

Barak goes to school, where education is focused on gender. We learn that there are currently 102 recognised genders, but there will soon be 103.

The male protagonist, Nikolai, works at the “Ministry of Justice and Anal Punishment,” where the dress code requires him to cross-dress, and where dissidents of the regime are executed via anal penetration with a large vibrator known as the “electro-phallus.”

To commemorate the first anniversary of the “great rainbow revolution,” Nikolai is to execute his own father, Mikhail, who has been condemned as a “fundamental sexist” and “leader of the virgin asses movement.”

Having publicly denounced his father in order to protect his family, Nikolai is prepared to go through with the execution. He faces his father, who taunts him about his lack of masculinity and says that he should have beaten him more as a child (presumably, to cultivate more masculinity).

In the last moment, Nikolai rebels and frees his father, who then congratulates him for “being a man.” The video finishes with Mikhail saying “I told you in March 2024, be a man and vote!”

The video doesn’t specify who to vote for, but it is easy to speculate that the implied candidate is Putin, whose campaign focuses heavily on the preservation of “traditional family values” and anti-LGBT+ ideology.

Although the video was published on YouTube under the name of the Communist Party’s presidential candidate, Nikolay Kharitonov, Kharitonov and the Communist Party deny any affiliation with the video or the channel.

The release date, February 22nd, is highly strategic, landing a day before Defender of the Fatherland Day (February 23rd), a Russian public holiday that celebrates the military, men, and masculinity, and two days before the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (February 24th). “Western values have no place in Russia,” reads the video’s tagline on YouTube, reminding the public of what Russia is fighting against.

‘THE FUTURE OF RUSSIA?’ is a brazen piece of anti-LBGT+ propaganda, which employs fear-mongering tactics to convey the message that not only is the rainbow community a danger to traditional family values and morals, but that if allowed to flourish, it will exterminate straight, cis people entirely.

The portrayal of this message relies strongly on symbology which parallels the Nazi regime. In this proposed future, Russia’s flag is a rainbow overlaid with the image of a bird, clearly modelled on the Nazi eagle. Citizens start their morning with the “rainbow hymn,” which increases their “social rating,” and greet each other with the words “glory to the rainbow, glory to the gays,” which in a “hail Hitler” manner, goes along with a salute.

The video perpetuates the common homophobic trope that all gays are perverts and are obsessed with genitalia and sex. It features prison guards dressed in BDSM outfits holding dildo-shaped batons, and a prisoner tied up in a phallic pose with fluffy handcuffs, who is due to be executed through anal penetration.

Interestingly enough, although the video targets the rainbow community as a whole, there is a clear focus on homosexuality in men and a concern for diminishing masculinity in society. While the men in the video are hyper-feminized, Nikolai’s wife, Zoya, is portrayed as a feminine cis-woman.

Ironically, the level of intolerance portrayed in the video is a direct inversion of the current situation in Russia, where LGBT+ individuals are forced to hide their true selves in fear of both social and legal repercussions.

Steeped in absurdity, the video fits into a disturbing pattern of Russian politicians demonizing the rainbow community in order to secure power. As the Russian saying goes, “It would be funny, if it wasn’t so sad.”

See the video on your gay nation, without subtitles, below

Last Updated on Feb 26, 2024