Two common people -- Beshir Sassi, a jobless from Tunisia, and Abdelhamid Gohar, a peasant from Egypt, told me: "We are glad that we had a Revolution. Now we have a lot of freedom and democracy. Nobody can arrest us because of our thoughts which are different from what our rulers think. Life has not become better yet we have become freer -- this is the main thing." This was my strongest impression of people in Tunisia and Egypt I met during the last few weeks on the eve of the second anniversary of the so-called Arab Spring, which had started in January 2011 in Tunisia and spread to Egypt in February 2011. Adapted from the source document.
Recent events in the Middle East have shown a more secure world lies in the democratization of societies. Instability in the Arab world was normally blamed on the United States and Israel. Adapted from the source document.
The article analyzes the role of Russia in the framework of the current opposition of traditionalists to Western anti-identity influence. In this context, anti-identity is the main characteristic of the modern "new liberalism", or liberal democracy. It is emphasized that the "new liberalism" has little to do with traditional European liberalism, it has completely different roots, which go also into the Russian soil. The authors see the origins of the "new liberalism" in Marxism, on the basis of which the ideology of overcoming identity was born in the second half of the 20th century. The dictatorship of minorities and a specific form of ostracism – Cancel culture – have become a tool for combating identity as the need to realize one's connection with any community and its values. In contrast to Western countries, radical forms of anti-identity in Russia were already embodied by the Bolsheviks after the 1917 revolution in the field of gender policy, sexual morality and the national question. The rollback of Soviet policy from Bolshevik maximalism did not lead to a complete return to traditional values, which especially affected family values. From the point of view of the Central and Eastern European traditionalists (Poland, Hungary), whom the leaders of the European Union consider authoritarians, Russia is a defender of traditional values, but there were no statements that the Russian government embodies "true European values" and the ideals of "real" democracy. For many conservative politicians in Western Europe and the USA (Protestants and Catholics, Muslims), although Russia is important as a country that opposes anti-identity, its role is largely symbolic, since in Russia there are no influential political and significant public circles that consistently defend, for example, biblical values, like in the United States (prohibition of abortion, in addition to rejecting same-sex marriage, a high degree of religiosity and protection of the interests of their church, following biblical norms in life).
The article analyzes the ideological contradictions of liberal democracy, or neoliberalism (antiidentism), and traditionalism (identism) on the example of Christian churches. Antiindentism considers traditional religiosity to be hostile: it should be reformed to conform to neoliberal values, and it should be banished from public space. At the same time, antiidentism does not want to eliminate religion, because it is one of the identities that have to be redone like other human identites. The article examines anti-Christian movements (like the "Black Lives Matter") as well as conservative and liberal movements within various confessions. The authors emphasize that the antiidentist demands are based on the Christian values of respect for any person, for women and men, regardless of anything, for humane methods of raising children, mercy for any categories of people, regardless of their sexual orientation, etc. On the other hand, the demands of antiidentists go far beyond Christian principles and even common sense (not to quote inconvenient passages of the Bible, to change the rules of church life and the appointment of clergy). The article proposes a classification of confessions by direction and by territorial feature, depending on specifics of divisions based on the attitude to antiidentism (American Churches, the Catholic Church, Lutherans and Anglicans as well as diversity of Orthodox churches that are also touched by the antiidentist wave). The authors conclude that the Christian churches, despite the existence of liberal factions, are primarily a traditionalist force in modern politics. Because of fundamental ideological differences, the consolidation of diverse Christian forces is a difficult task. However, there is some progress in this direction. Evangelicals, traditional Catholics, who make up the majority of the Catholic Church, as well as the majority of Orthodox Christians, are a serious political and, what perhaps more important, ideological force.
