Russia a safe haven for ‘normalcy’ – RT head

The West is in the grip of a “wokeism catastrophe” and is constantly trying to force other nations to adhere to its ideology, RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said on Thursday. She added that Russia’s defense of traditional values could allow the country to become a “safe haven” for those who reject the “aggressive Westernization” and “woke religion.”

Simonyan made the comments while moderating a panel discussion at the Fourth Eurasian Women’s Forum in St. Petersburg. The discussion revolved around a need to prevent ideas currently popular in the West from contaminating other cultures.

Simonyan recalled many recent examples of ideas that run counter to traditional values being lauded by Westerners, including same-sex marriage, the child-free movement and gender reassignment practices, as well as the latest Olympic Games in which “two physiological males were pummeling women.” She accused the West of “aggressively” promoting this “unpleasant, unfamiliar and often shocking agenda” and mocked it for confusing progress with degradation.

“So they woke up, and we seem to be sleeping still,” she said, referring to Russia constantly declaring its adherence to traditional values, such as human dignity, high moral ideals, family, and patriotism.

“Progress is like yogurt: not all are equally healthy… [Western] missionaries promote the religion of wokeism… They claim that their ideology came out of humanism and progress, and that we [Russians] are inhumane because we do not let people follow their sometimes perverted ideas and do not let these ideas be realized,” she argued. She noted that encouraging a three-year-old child to choose his gender, something the West claims is part of the progress, is a “wokeism catastrophe.”

Simonyan noted that promoting traditional values as Russia’s national ideology could not only help the country’s demographic situation, but also allow people from all over the world to escape wokeism and all it entails.

“The secret of the Soviet Union was in this beautiful idea of universal equality… a powerful idea that resonated in the souls of people – that is why [the West] was so afraid of us – they were afraid that we would convince people that what we have is better. This idea has been lacking in the new Russia all these years – we can offer the world a safe haven for normalcy,” she suggested.

Earlier this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree which eased visa rules for foreigners who want to come to Russia on moral grounds. The preferential conditions will be offered to those who disapprove of the “neoliberal ideological attitudes” of their home countries, and prefer traditional Russian spiritual and moral values. The Foreign Ministry is scheduled to start issuing three-month visas for such applications later this month.

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