Pussy Riot on trial 

Three members of Pussy Riot, a feminist riot grrrl band (with no recordings), and offshoot of anarchist art collective Voina, are set to go on trial today in Moscow.

Maria Alyokhina, 24, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, have been in jail since late February after storming the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Savior Cathedral (pissing off the male priests) where they sang an anti-Putin and Patriarch Kirill song calling on the Virgin Mary to “throw Putin out!” (For the uninitiated, Putin is once again Russia’s KGB-in-Chief.)

Independent media was quick to highlight the axis of church and state, but it took mainstream media some time before the story had enough inertia.

What the imprisonment and trial of the three Pussy Riot members represents is no less than church and state working in concert to crush dissent. As I noted several months ago in an article on Pussy Riot and free speech:

To preserve [the established] order, it is essential that Putin, the state, and willing oligarchs exercise a certain degree of control over free speech. Nothing must upset that order. Not journalists nor pranksters such as the anarchist art collective Voina, nor any other subversive forces. The Russian Orthodox Church, once the Russian outcast, has now become a willing enabler of Putin’s totalitarian capitalism.

What a symphony it shall be to hear the words “Pussy Riot” read aloud in court.

Hopefully the “hooligans” can beat the bullshit rap.

 

 

 

 

 

o