(
NewYorker)Before their arrest, Tolokonnikova was a student of philosophy; Alekhina studied journalism and creative writing and was engaged in religious charities and environmental causes. Samutsevich, the oldest of the three, has a degree in computer programming. They are members of a larger group that also goes by the name Pussy Riot—they use a transliterated version of the English words—that combines radical performance with leftist ideas ranging broadly from anti-authoritarianism to feminism; the group cites figures such as Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva among their many sources of inspiration, as well as the American punk-rock band Bikini Kill and the riot-grrrl movement of the nineties. Tolokonnikova and Alekhina are mothers of young children whom they have not seen since their arrest.
what are these girls smiling for?
PC and cultural relativism are the godchildren of Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault, the philosopher apologists, respectively, for those most totalitarian of leaders (and great supporters of homosexuality… yeah, right) Adolph Hitler and the Ayatollah Khomeini. I know this flies over the heads of A&E executives who are unlikely to have read much, if any, Heidegger or Foucault, or know anything of the philosophers’ relationships to those dictators, but they should know how their minds have been manipulated, because what they have done is outrageous and reactionary.
