this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Extremely disappointing to see this, this is not a Sankara thing to do at all.

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[–] DancingBear@midwest.social 4 points 17 hours ago

Hey assholes! Gay people exist, and will continue to exist, have existed since the dawn of people. Gay people are in your family, yes, you reading this now. You have gay people in your family.

[–] umbrella@lemmy.ml 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)
[–] someone@hexbear.net 47 points 2 days ago (8 children)

Fuck's sake. Why is the venn diagram of "not an imperialist puppet" and "okay with queer people" just two almost entirely separate circles with maybe a sliver labeled "Cuba" between them?

[–] newacctidk@hexbear.net 36 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Filipino Maoists.

Nepal is good on LGBTQ rights relatively, though the communist movement is kinda split, though their first gay politician did recently defect TO CPN (Unified Marxist Leninist)

[–] Kopfrkingl@hexbear.net 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Nepal's communist/maoist parties — at least the ones with power — are in name only. You can't call parties that have unbelievable amounts of corruption and nepotism rampant in them communist — you could supply these people with enough money and they'll forget communist ideals entirely. Not to mention that their leaders have a handful of controversies at any given time. However, the country does have LGBTQ rights in the constitution itself; but queer people can't freely express themselves due to the backwardness of society.

[–] SuperNovaCouchGuy2@hexbear.net 20 points 2 days ago (6 children)

could we get some examples of imperialist puppets which are okay with queer people, cant really think of any, ig the problem moreso is that many countries generally are not ok with queer people

[–] Aradino@hexbear.net 11 points 1 day ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Australia has many issues but it's a very good place to not be cishet

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[–] Cowbee@hexbear.net 86 points 2 days ago

Extremely disappointing, but there is on the ground resistance to this. My hope is that they go the way of Cuba and correct this mistake down the line.

[–] godlessworm@hexbear.net 43 points 2 days ago (2 children)

terrible way to create national unity as well. he needs his people behind him to help him build the country. he does have that but this takes some of those people away and criminalizes their existence. there will be many people whose loved ones are adversely affected and they wont be feeling that national unity either. appeasing old conservatives ideals is not how you move a country forward

[–] TraschcanOfIdeology@hexbear.net 44 points 2 days ago (4 children)

It's also going to create a group of people much more easily recruited by the CIA and similar orgs, because they'll either resent the revolution for oppressing them, or be blackmailed into collaboration.

The GDR didn't deciminalize homosexuality out of a progressive concern for gay people's wellbeing (far from it), but because they were all getting turned into spies by the west.

[–] godlessworm@hexbear.net 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

very interesting, i hadn't heard of that before but it makes sense.

[–] FunkyStuff@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago

It's a problem in Palestine, too. One of the common arguments against Israel being LGBTQ friendly is how they blackmail queer Palestinians and use them as intelligence assets, but obviously that wouldn't be as much of a problem if the secular socialists who are fine with queer people were in power in Palestine.

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[–] MaoTheLawn@hexbear.net 29 points 2 days ago (1 children)

True, but I think we forget just how homophobic some countries are - to the extent that homophobia and religious adherence is more of a unifier than a splitter, even for those who have queer family members.

Not that I think this is a positive move or that socialism is ideologically compatible with homophobia, but I don't think this is as bad of a move as you're thinking for national unity.

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[–] Agrajag@scribe.disroot.org 55 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I think a lot of people want to project Sankara onto him, partially because he emulates parts of his style and rhetoric. But if you were a military leader of course you would be inspired by your country's most famous and inspirational modern figure. He'll likely be better in terms of breaking away from neocolonial arrangements with France, but time will tell what else will happen, stuff like this included.

[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 33 points 2 days ago

And people are projecting their queer politics to Sankara for that matter. Was Sankara even that good towards queer people?

[–] Vampire@hexbear.net 60 points 2 days ago (4 children)

The core contradiction of the Hexbear community is trying to reconcile AES with social liberalism.

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 61 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

There have been and are real socialist states (not just nominally so) that were some of the most advanced countries in the world on queer issues, specifically East Germany before and Cuba now. I do kind of agree with you in a more general sense, because Hexbear as a whole doesn't know how to deal with the concept of social discipline.

AES (the state) doesn't seem to me to be socialist in any significant sense, though it is worth supporting in its struggle against the west on roughly the same basis as Iran. Parading Sankara's corpse isn't very compelling when he could barely be called a Marxist in his approach to begin with (as in his political practice, not his speeches), and they do not approach even him.

I think the anti-revisionists have a point that "Actually Existing Socialism" is a question-begging term, which makes sense when one remembers that it was popularized by the USSR after revisionists had seized power and was mostly used in the context of justifying what we now all recognize as revisionism in the USSR and elsewhere. Arguments about whether or not your approach is socialist are so much simpler when you start by assuming that you are.

The soy "A -> B, B -> C, therefore A -> C" vs the chad "C = C".

[–] filipinokilla@hexbear.net 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

sankara could barely be called a marxist?

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 2 points 11 hours ago

He was installed by a military coup, not a popular revolution, and then enacted some positive reforms but fundamentally failed to produce anything remotely like a dictatorship of the proletariat, and was thereby ousted by the military who held the power the whole time. Sankara was genuinely benevolent in his intentions, but his approach to revolution was anti-Marxist and it created a warped state that was basically a military dictatorship when it decided to be (though he did not support such a thing, he ultimately did not stop it), because popular support functioned as a convenience rather than the actual mechanism of decision-making.

[–] Leegh@hexbear.net 26 points 2 days ago (1 children)

It was Mao who once said that the party should never move too far ahead of the masses, to quote:

Communists must never separate themselves from the majority of the people or neglect them by leading only a few progressive contingents in an isolated and rash advance, but must take care to forge close links between the progressive elements and the broad masses. This is what thinking in terms of the majority means.

This is also why Stalin (unfortunately) recriminalized Homosexuality after Lenin legalized it; because he recognized that the masses of the USSR were still mostly socially reactionary and moving too far forward socially risked tearing apart the nascent Soviet state and turn said masses against the party. And he was right: see how many soldiers in the Ukrainian SSR alone willingly joined the Nazis the moment they had a chance.

This is not to say a socialist state shouldn't strive to push the masses towards social progress, women's rights were advanced far more quickly in the Socialist bloc than the Capitalist world last century for example. But such social progress must be organic and done within a framework that will be appropriate to the material conditions of the socialist society. If Burkina Faso had their stonewall moment today this law would probably never pass. But they didn't, because the masses aren't ready for it yet.

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[–] ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 44 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Bro needs to read theory, the only people who deserve prison for existing are landlords.

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[–] Meltyheartlove@hexbear.net 49 points 2 days ago (5 children)

First the defense contractor deals with Amerikkka and now this. catgirl-flop

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[–] Tomorrow_Farewell@hexbear.net 32 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Actions like these don't make much sense to me, especially as calculated moves. Why would they want to give ammo to NATO's propaganda machine?

[–] Clippy@hexbear.net 20 points 2 days ago (7 children)

it is probably something that exists as the norm in the region - a search on wikipedia on neighbouring country ghana shows that lgbtq stuff has been outlawed since colonial times

their society is still an echo from previous iterations of society at the end of the day, and focusing intensely on the shortcomings on a country which is not aligned with western interests is a propaganda tactic - this rhetoric/sentiment is most likely common among the populace in neighbouring countries

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[–] grandepequeno@hexbear.net 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Damn last time I checked this had 20 comments, that was fine because there's really not much to say Africa is conservative as fuck on lgbt stuff even in states that are economically progressive or somewhat anti-imperialist, one supports these anti-hegemonic states despite that

[–] RaisedFistJoker@hexbear.net 29 points 2 days ago
[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 27 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I know we try to use LGBT movements as CIA fronts but this doesn't feel like a reaction to that.

[–] Redcuban1959@hexbear.net 48 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The CIA used to finance pro-LGBT groups in Cuba and Venezuela. When Cuba granted LGBTQ+ minorities most of the rights and guarantees they wanted via a democratic referendum, those groups lost all the popularity and funding they had. Nowadays, all these groups complain about is that there is usually a lack of proper medicine to help trans people with their transition, but they don't mention that this is less the government's fault and more the result of the U.S. embargo against Cuba. The Castro family and most of the leaders of the Communist Party of Cuba supported LGBTQ+ rights.

Venezuela is a different case; it is a more socially conservative and religious society than Cuba. While Chávez wasn't homophobic, he basically ignored anything related to LGBTQ+ rights, which led the U.S. to do the same thing they did with Cuba. Maduro seems much more friendly toward LGBTQ+ groups, stating multiple times that he supports and respects them. It seems that Maduro has also cracked down on homophobic speech and views within the PSUV (Venezuela's ruling party) and the government, though the military and police still hold some reactionary views.

Maduro has previously stated that he would approve same-sex marriage. He has reformed laws recently to allow LGBTQ+ people to serve in the army and to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. He wanted the National Assembly to approve a new constitution that would have recognized same-sex marriage and gender identity, but then Juan Guaidó declared himself president and attempted a coup in 2019, and since then, those two reforms have been stuck in limbo.

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[–] AssortedBiscuits@hexbear.net 28 points 2 days ago

The rationale I see floating around is that it's an attempt to mitigate recruitment efforts by ISIS separatists. In any case, it changes very little in day-to-day life since Burkina Faso is a homophobic society anyways. Burkina Faso when it was a French neocolony was about as homophobic as it is now.

I'm not even sure if Sankara himself was cool with queer people. People thinking he was are merely projecting what they want him to be or assuming that just because he combated widespread misogyny that he would be cool with queer people somehow. Can someone find a law that Sankara sponsored or even a speech Sankara made where Sankara gave his support to queer Burkinabe?

[–] LENINSGHOSTFACEKILLA@hexbear.net 37 points 2 days ago (1 children)

A saddening development, but critical support for AES. I know fuck all about Burkina Faso, but I can't say I'm surprised. The west is generally considered to be much more socially liberal than the rest of the world, and we seem to be doing our damnedest to get rid of rights for anyone lgbtq

[–] gayspacemarxist@hexbear.net 34 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Realistically, we made major strides after breaking Jim Crow apartheid and the libs spent the whole time lording their social reforms over the global south while pillaging them and paving the way for a far right government to dismantle the same reforms.

A lot of international anti LGBT sentiment recently comes from a place of resentment against the west and was imposed by the west in the first place.

We only think we're progressive because we have the attention span of goldfish.

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[–] Awoo@hexbear.net 34 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (20 children)

Who are they trying to please with this ? What's the lawmaking process? I was under the impression the government currently mostly does whatever it wants so I'm trying to understand what actual purpose this even has. Are there groups they need to court the opinion of internally? Are they doing this because they're aiming to appeal to groups externally elsewhere in Africa as part of expanding AES?

I'd just like some insight into what forces or pressures brought this about at a time when surely their biggest priority should be territorial control of their whole borders which are being fought over with the extreme islamic groups. Maybe that's it? Maybe it cuts into one of the motivations those people have for fighting for them? I don't know, speculating.

[–] Crucible@hexbear.net 46 points 2 days ago

I have very limited knowledge but the explanation I got was the military is not secular enough and the average soldier is influenced by either old Catholic homophobia or newer Salafist homophobia, and the latter is used as a recruitment technique to pull soldiers to the Salafist militias who are the biggest threat to the current governments. The theory apparently is that making 'deviant' sexual behaviour illegal on paper means the propaganda cudgel is taken away from the militias but thje government never has to enforce it meaningfully when they decide to be allies- that last part seemed like cope on the person I was talking to's part

[–] thelastaxolotl@hexbear.net 36 points 2 days ago

Probably just trying to win over the conservative catholic and sunni groups

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[–] Red_sun_in_the_sky@hexbear.net 28 points 2 days ago

Not very cash money of mr traore

[–] PostyourJaggaHogs@hexbear.net 17 points 2 days ago

you do hate to see it :(

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