March 4, 2016 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin
55:43
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| One of my favorite aspects of the Rubin Report is the feedback that we're getting from viewers literally all over the world. | ||
| Just last week, I had viewers from countries like Egypt, Denmark, Mexico, Spain, and Australia reach out to me just to name a few. | ||
| I'm truly humbled that so many of you take the time to share your feelings with me, and although I don't have time to respond to everyone, I do try to at least read the messages that you're sending. | ||
| To me, the most amazing part of this is that the conversations we're having on this show Our transcending race, religion, sexuality, and nationality. | ||
| The fight for free speech, the importance of not giving in to the authoritarians, and the awakening against the regressives are all ideas that bring us together. | ||
| The power of ideas is universal. | ||
| When we discuss free speech, free thought, and free expression, it's vital that we mean it equally for everyone, not just in an identity-politics-based pecking order. | ||
| This device, this thing that we all have in our pocket, is bringing us closer together in ways that were literally unimaginable only a generation ago. | ||
| Right this very second, one of you is watching this direct message while on the subway in New York City, one of you is listening to the podcast while at the gym in London, and one of you is streaming this while on your couch in Moscow. | ||
| Not only are you all tuning in on a variety of platforms, but you're furthering the discussion of these ideas on Facebook and Twitter, or just by talking with your friends and family. | ||
| That expansion of our conversations makes me want to do better work, even if talking about difficult topics comes at both a personal and professional cost. | ||
| As the world has gotten smaller, it has never been more important to hear voices that challenge our thinking and give unique perspective based on their own personal story. | ||
| My guest this week is Ina Shevchenko. | ||
| Ina is the leader of the women's movement Femin International, a columnist for the International Business Times, and a free speech activist. | ||
| She was born in Ukraine the same year that the USSR fell, has been kidnapped by the Belarus KGB, and in 2013 was granted political asylum in France. | ||
| She has lived a truly controversial life and paid the price for being outspoken more than once. | ||
| This is not someone who only talks about the news, this is someone who actually lives it. | ||
| There are many issues I want to discuss with Ina, from women's rights and free speech to Islamism and political correctness, but I also want to talk to her about life in France right now. | ||
| Has it changed since the Paris terror attacks? | ||
| What's the political climate? | ||
| You know, there's a catch-22 to all this connectivity. | ||
| mainstream thus weakening free speech and helping the authoritarians. | ||
| The only way we can find answers to questions like these is to be connected with people | ||
| who aren't afraid to share their views. | ||
| You know there's a catch 22 to all this connectivity. | ||
| As it brings us closer and transcends cultures and borders it can also make everyone else's | ||
| problems seem like our own. | ||
| On one hand we can see how others live and have empathy for our fellow man. | ||
| On the other hand sometimes it's hard to gauge just how much something across the globe should | ||
| affect us in our day to day lives. | ||
| I try to do this show each week in the spirit of finding balance between those two concepts | ||
| and I hope Ino will provide perspective on some of the big questions I've mentioned here. | ||
| The more we focus on our common humanity the less chance we'll be able to be ripped apart. | ||
| Ina Shevchenko is the leader of the international women's movement FEMEN, a writer, a speaker | ||
| and a fearless free speech advocate. | ||
| Ina, welcome to the show. | ||
| Hello. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hi. | |
| Thank you for the invitation. | ||
|
unidentified
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I've been waiting for a long, I should say. | |
| Well, I'm really glad that we connected. | ||
| I've known about your work for a while, and then I saw a piece that you wrote in the International Business Times last week about the regressive left and the racist right, and that basically most of us are in between, and that's very much what we've been talking about here on this show, so I thought it would be a perfect time to talk to you. | ||
| So you're in Austria right now, is that right? | ||
| I'm right now in Austria, yes, for a conference. | ||
| Can I ask what you're doing there, or is this a top secret mission? | ||
| Yeah, no, I'm here for a conference about free speech, of course. | ||
| I hope that this time it will not be interrupted by a terrorist. | ||
| We will be speaking and enjoying this topic, discussing this topic. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, we're going to talk about some of the interruptions that you've had. | ||
| By terrorists, when you're giving talks on free speech. | ||
| But first, let's do a little bit on your biography, because I think it's pretty amazing. | ||
| I mentioned at the top of the show, you were born in Ukraine, not the Ukraine, you were born in Ukraine the same year that the Soviet Union fell. | ||
| And I think that had a lot to do with sort of your path right now, because of things that you saw in a sort of newborn country. | ||
| So can you talk a little bit about your history first? | ||
| Well, right. | ||
| I was born the year my country was born, actually. | ||
| And of course, the situation, you know, for me as a child, for me, it was just childhood. | ||
| But for adults, it was, of course, a rough reality. | ||
| Then later, I understood that I had a rough childhood. | ||
| However, you know, for me to make a homework under the candles, because all electricity in the city was shut, for the sake of economy, we didn't have a national currency | ||
| and my parents were receiving celery with sausages or with bread. | ||
| And yeah, I mean, poverty was poverty, and I think that this is not something special | ||
| to tell you about, because still until today, many people live in poverty and 25 years after | ||
| After Ukraine, well actually right now in a similar situation, and you know already my nephew, small child, who is eight years old, he lives in a similar situation and has a similar childhood to what I had. | ||
| So the situation is not really changing and progressing, but of course it had a really huge impact on Me and I think on all generation that was born after collapse of USSR, because we saw, well we saw that, you know, as adults were saying, our country was ruled by 450 idiots. | ||
| This is I'm quoting. | ||
| Particularly, yeah, my grandma and my mother, they were calling them, all adults were calling politicians always, you know, there was always this clear gap between society and those 450 idiots. | ||
| again, as they say, there was always a gap between government and actually citizens. | ||
| And you could, as a child, I never could imagine that there could be any connection between | ||
| those people, between this small group of people that we could call 1% and 99% of population. | ||
| There was always an impression as if we were living in different countries. | ||
| I saw, of course, I grew up in a very traditional society where a woman has to work and, well, | ||
| to have a job and also, of course, take care of everything at home. | ||
| And even though my father was not a particular patriarch, but of course, all, well, my mother | ||
| was housewife as well as working full time. | ||
| And in 90s, during. | ||
| Well, during this time of, you know, trying to create a government in the country after collapse of USSR, parents had to work on different jobs and my mother was working on three different jobs and of course taking care of us at home, which of course gave an impression and kind of, you know, Well, yeah, we had a painted picture of what woman is supposed to do and what her mission is and what man is supposed to do. | ||
| And even in such a hard economically time, my father was, of course, earning much more and had access to more jobs and could, yeah, had possibility to find different jobs more interesting than my mother. | ||
| Women really were doing two jobs because they were working and they were taking care of the home and the kids and all that, yeah. | ||
| But I, yeah, I think it's incorrect to speak in the past because, as I already said, it remains, the reality is still exactly the same and maybe sometimes we have an illusion, you know, it's packed in a different cover and we can see more women who do not do that. | ||
| However, still majority of women live that life and my mother still continues to work at two different jobs today and, well, she doesn't have children anymore, we are gone. | ||
| So I don't think you think there's anything wrong with that in and of itself. | ||
| You just sort of want people to acknowledge the role of the woman, right? | ||
| What do you mean? | ||
| I don't think... Well, that they're doing both these things, that it's not bad to take care of your kids in and of itself, right? | ||
| It's not bad to take care of your kids, but it's bad if you're the only one who's supposed to take care of your kid. | ||
|
unidentified
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Right. | |
| So the role, the role. | ||
| Well, yeah, exactly, that you have to follow the rule and you have no choice. | ||
| And I think there's a lot of things that are wrong in this concept and in this reality. | ||
| And therefore, we started our movement in Ukraine as a women's movement, feminist movement, even though at the beginning, I should confess, when we started our activity, we didn't really have a clear understanding what feminism was about, because For example, to give you an example, I was studying in the best university of Ukraine, I was studying journalism, and in four years of my studies, I never had even one hour lecture on what feminism is. | ||
| I didn't even hear the definition of such ideology, because that was something which is not close to Eastern European society, again, | ||
| where women have to be at home and take care of family, but not go in the street and demand | ||
| their rights. | ||
| Actually, it's not concerning only women's rights, but generally I grew up in a country | ||
| where people do not, until 2008, 2004, sorry, the moment of Orange Revolution, the first | ||
| revolution that happened in the history of independent Ukraine, until that moment, people | ||
| didn't have a, you know, to protest was an activity of a bad taste, mouvegu, you know, | ||
| it was something that you wouldn't do, it was something that you would do only to probably | ||
| earn money, because political parties in Ukraine pay you for standing with their flags in the | ||
| street and protesting and supporting one or another politician. | ||
| So when we started our activity, we were, of course, accused for being paid by someone | ||
| and being political project, or also being named by our parents or relatives who knew | ||
| that we don't get money for that. | ||
| We were just simply named either witches or psychologically sick girls. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So I don't want to jump too far ahead yet. | ||
| So we're going to go into all that. | ||
| But just to sort of wrap up the Ukraine part, because I think a lot, you know, there's so | ||
| much happening with Ukraine. | ||
| And as you said, it is a young country. | ||
| It's only 25 years old in terms of independence. | ||
| What do you make of what's happening in Ukraine now, because it sort of seems like the quest Well, Ukraine is an independent state, and I think that nobody should question it. | ||
| is back in Ukraine, right? | ||
| So do you feel like you're part that Ukraine is really an independent state at this point? | ||
| Well, Ukraine is an independent state and I think that nobody should question it. | ||
| Well, of course, Putin questions that. | ||
| Right, I mean, Russia's questioning it, yeah. | ||
| But Ukraine is an independent state, of course. | ||
| Even though our territories were already taking and occupied like Crimea was recently occupied | ||
| Ukraine lost it right now. | ||
| And still there is the eastern part of Ukraine occupied by Russian military troops. | ||
| And I will say it bravely, I will claim that they're Russian troops, as it was proven. | ||
| Well, Ukraine is an independent state, which is definitely at the stage of its development and creation and, you know, choosing the path, while 99% of the population today are screaming For euro integration and for a wish to join the European Union, or a dream, because I think it's quite a dream, not a possibility yet, there is still the government, the one that I mentioned, about 450 Egyptians, they remain those people, because, well, I should say that the problem of my country, well, my country, the country where I was born, | ||
|
unidentified
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Because I don't feel like I have a country. | |
| I think that the problem of this country is that for 25 years at least, I observe the same faces in the parliament. | ||
| I hear the same names of politicians. | ||
| The country is ruled by the same, if you want, you know, mafia, oligarch unions, fractions. | ||
| And for example, today's president Poroshenko, who is, you know, supposed to be and he claims to be the one who is for your integration. | ||
| He was a minister of foreign affairs in the cabinet in the parliament of President Yanukovych, who was | ||
| recently the dictator against who people went out recently at the square in Maidan in Kiev. | ||
| So definitely I should say that this revolution, you know, I think that it's intellectually | ||
| unfair and wrong to think that after people go out in the street, that revolution is when | ||
| people go out in the street. | ||
| Well, no, it's beginning of it. | ||
| It's beginning of the process. | ||
| And I think that the process started in 2004, the first Orange Revolution, 10 years after people again went out in the street because the changes didn't happen. | ||
| Today, again, many people are deceived because they don't see rapid changes. | ||
| I think that it's mistaken and wrong to expect changes right away, and I think that Ukraine will have to have a few more revolutions. | ||
| Yeah, so speaking of that, what does the average person in Ukraine feel about how the rest of the world views them now? | ||
| Because I sense that the people of Ukraine want more help from the West. | ||
| And that, you know, in America we talk about it, you know, we talked about it for like the two weeks that Putin was moving troops in or whatever it was. | ||
| There was a two-week window where we talked about it. | ||
| Now we just completely forget about it. | ||
| Is there a disappointment on behalf of the people, sort of how the world has reacted to what's happened there? | ||
| Well, of course, yes. | ||
| There is a disappointment because, you know, people feel that, people know that their government is actually unable to do something, to change something. | ||
| And since people give, you know, from the square in Maidan, they were giving the messages to the world. | ||
| Of course, they do expect from Are there states more powerful or so-called democratic who | ||
| already reached a certain level who could help and support, and especially those who | ||
| supported verbally but do not support practically? | ||
| Of course, many people are, as I said, deceived and disappointed today. | ||
| And even some come to the point when they say that with Yanukovych, with the dictator, | ||
| it was better because at least we had what to eat and his government didn't touch us. | ||
| Yeah, so last thought on this and then we're gonna move on to some of the feminism stuff. | ||
| I mean wasn't, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think didn't Ukraine have nukes which they gave up as part of that they would get NATO protection once they were an independent nation? | ||
| And basically that just didn't happen, right? | ||
| So they sort of gave up their protection, the weapons that would have protected them, and then they get this invasion or whatever you want to call it from Russia and And now the other countries right there are doing nothing. | ||
| We're doing nothing. | ||
| So it was really like an unfortunate decision, I suppose. | ||
| Well, I mean, if we will go right now and discussing about decision on NATO, I think it will be too complex. | ||
| Okay, fair enough. | ||
| Because, well, there are a lot of sides of this question. | ||
| But yes, this is what happened. | ||
| And of course, many people today thinking back and think that what kind of mistakes were done. | ||
| But at that moment, it seemed to be a very correct decision, because nobody could expect | ||
| that Putin would suddenly decide to occupy the territories and prove the world that he's | ||
| even bigger dictator than already the world perceived him as. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, I know we can talk about that political stuff forever. | ||
| So let's move on to the stuff that you're really passionate about. | ||
| And it's funny because at the top of the show, I do my direct message where I give my feelings of the week and I wrote my little piece about it yesterday. | ||
| And then right after I wrote it, I watched your TED talk. | ||
| And basically your TED talk was a 20 minute Sort of much broader version of exactly what I happened to write about yesterday by total coincidence. | ||
| And I know that the things that you talk about are the things that I'm incredibly passionate about and that I've made this show about. | ||
| So you had a great quote in your TED talk. | ||
| You said that FEMEN is a movement that is trying to rebuild society without permission. | ||
| I love that line. | ||
| So can you just expand on that a little bit? | ||
| What made you start FEMEN and where do you think it's going? | ||
| Well, particularly about that statement, I should say that anyone who is dreaming to rebuild the world should count that you should not ask for permission because nobody will ever give it to you. | ||
| So if you dream, To change something, you should not ask for permission or wait when someone will give you that permission. | ||
| You'll be waiting a long time. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And it will never happen, yes. | ||
| Because, well, in Ukraine, as I said, we started the Ukraine movement in 2008. | ||
| The movement already exists for eight years. | ||
| And I should say that when we started, we didn't have any particular knowledge of, you know, political knowledge or didn't know how to work with media. | ||
| I told you already that we didn't really have a clear understanding what feminism is about. | ||
| And I don't feel embarrassed or shy to say about that, because I think this should show and reflect the society in which we were growing up. | ||
| I remember joining this little group about which nobody knew at that moment yet. | ||
| We had a meeting in a very Soviet-style cafe in the center of Kyiv, sharing two cups of tea for 15 of us, because we were all young students coming from small cities to Kyiv, dreaming that this will be the place where we will have as women opportunities. | ||
| The only opportunities we were proposed, even in this big city and capital that looked for | ||
| us as huge, tremendous place, we only had opportunities, well, similar to those that | ||
| I saw, opportunities that women had in my childhood, you know, to serve someone. | ||
| And of course, very often Ukrainian women are, because many claim that they are beautiful, | ||
| but what is true, they are not educated and poor. | ||
| And this becomes a reason to involve, easily involve women in sexual exploitation, prostitution. | ||
| And of course, you know, on my way to university every day I could be, first of all, harassed, | ||
| second, receive many flyers from, well, pimps or brothels who would propose you to go to | ||
| And many women, many girls did go and, you know, applied for such a job because you don't have other possibilities, because you're not proposed anything else. | ||
| So for us, the first reason to start our activity was to fight this disease, this illness of Eastern Europe. | ||
| Considering women as sex slaves, as prostitutes, and we were campaigning against prostitution and sex tourism, which is a really widespread disease in Ukraine, particularly. | ||
| And we were campaigning against that, wearing pink clothes and carrying pink balloons and pink flags, believing that with this pink color we will attract attention to this problem. | ||
| However, of course, we failed. | ||
| Organizing protests with 100, 200 female activists. | ||
| Nobody was even stopping when they were passing by to read our banners. | ||
| And we were in search of tactics. | ||
| How we can attract attention of this very apolitical, again, desperate society to something very essential, to the rights of women, something that the whole world is already talking about, accepting, changing, adopting laws. | ||
| For two years we were in this desperate search, and in 2010 we saw that the situation in Ukraine was changing. | ||
| The dictator, which we understood later, dictator Yanukovych, was elected as a president, and the situation was changed. | ||
| You could immediately feel the censorship in media, you could immediately feel the change of political situation and the mood in the country. | ||
| And we understood that we probably have to go as a female activist, as female voices, we probably have to campaign about something broader. | ||
| Something that brings us to this problem, you know, more limited problems such as prostitution and sex tourism. | ||
| Something that is, you know, to the root of the problem. | ||
| The political situation, the economical situation, those people who bring the society in such states. | ||
| So, we did our first topless protest in 2010. | ||
| To be honest, it was more as an experiment. | ||
| It was also sort of a scream from inside. | ||
| And as I said, it was a decision made during this, you know, being in a very, in a desperate | ||
| search of how to let people hear women's voices and their problems. | ||
| How did that first moment feel for you when you did the topless protest? | ||
| Because you guys, even if it hadn't picked up much traction, you were already talking about things, as you've said, that were sort of not accepted in your society. | ||
| So you're already going against the grain. | ||
| But then, yeah, you realized, all right, we've got to do something that's going to really get us publicity the right way and all that. | ||
| How did literally that first moment when you took off your top feel? | ||
| Well, I should say that I didn't do that at that moment, because I did it a year after, because we had a huge discussion in the group. | ||
| Well, sort of even a fight about whether to do it or not. | ||
| And I was one of those who were against the topless protest, so that came later for me. | ||
| Definitely it had a huge effect because now we not only had an unpopular speech, but we also used a very unpopular tactic. | ||
| We were showing something, an image of a woman, which is very unpopular in this society. | ||
| The image of woman which was popular in Ukraine was the, you know, a nice, smiling, sexy, cleaning lady. | ||
| But we were showing a screaming, angry, bare-breasted woman with a message, with a slogan written across her chest, which was something that was breaking completely the definition, you know, the definition or imagination, the context in which people could see the woman and the definition of woman. | ||
| In general, in Ukraine. | ||
| And of course, it attracted a lot of attention, different attention, as well as some support, very small support from Ukraine. | ||
| And of course, we felt a huge support from abroad and a lot of criticism, of course. | ||
| Of course, we've been named prostitutes immediately because we were naked, which again revealed something that for people, you know, naked women women is equal to prostitutes. | ||
| And actually, I should say that with this topless protest, what we are reaching, I think | ||
| that we are committing sort of a test for democracy. | ||
| We commit a test, we test the society. | ||
| And with this tactic, with the messages and speeches that we have, we test society and | ||
| we reveal a lot. | ||
| We reveal a lot on the reaction on those protests. | ||
| So I should say that what we actually do, very often people say, "Feminists are violent | ||
| because we are aggressive, because we are screaming." | ||
| So which immediately makes me... | ||
| It's clear that for people, you know, a woman who is angry is violent, is something violent. | ||
| You're fine to see an angry man, but a woman which is not smiling or keeping silent but who's screaming is something violent. | ||
| Right, and you're not out there killing people, right? | ||
| Like they're killing people. | ||
| Well, we probably kill, we're probably killing some people by our messages. | ||
| I mean, of course, literally, we do not harm, we do not, you know, we don't touch anyone physically. | ||
| We can touch and attack ideas. | ||
| We buy our ideas. | ||
| But what we actually do is we appear, take off our top and strip our ideas written on our bodies. | ||
| We create, I think that we transform our bodies in political messages, in our manifesto, in posters, if you want. | ||
| These are our posters on which we write our slogans. | ||
| And I think this way we... I think it's kind of... Yeah, there are a few functions. | ||
| Because first function, of course, is to provoke, to attract attention. | ||
| Second is that we change the meaning of what naked body is. | ||
| It's not, you know, there are so many, you can see women, naked women everywhere on covers of magazines, on billboards. | ||
| They're posing, smiling, they're sexy. | ||
| What we're showing, we're showing a woman who's not sexy but, you know, she's political, her body's political, she's not smiling, she's screaming, she's not inviting you to use She's refusing. | ||
| She's showing her anger. | ||
| She's showing that she's demanding something. | ||
| And, of course, this is something that breaks a lot of stereotypes and rules and traditions, particularly in society like Ukraine. | ||
| Generally, in many countries, we received a very different reaction on such protests. | ||
| And I think it reveals a lot. | ||
| It mirrors a lot. | ||
| Well, what's interesting is you're really talking about the true roots of what feminism really is. | ||
| You are demanding to be accepted as an absolute equal to a man, which really is what first-wave feminism here in the West was. | ||
| It's now changed and morphed into something else. | ||
| But all you're demanding, sort of, is equality. | ||
| I've seen you described as a sextremist. | ||
| Do you like that word? | ||
| You've used that word a little bit, but I've heard it about you more. | ||
| Well, this is the word that we created, actually, and we identify ourselves as sextremists, because we use our sex, the fact that we are female, as our weapon. | ||
| Our bodies are our weapons. | ||
| And I think this is also sort of an answer to fundamentalists, to terrorists who use the gun. | ||
| who actually kill people. | ||
| We show them, "My body is my weapon," | ||
| because first of all, you are scared of it, as if it was actually a weapon which could kill you. | ||
| And second, we see that this body really can destroy, you know, can destroy bad ideas, | ||
| or at least challenge them, or provoke them, and create discussion. | ||
| So, yes, we call ourselves sex-tromists because we use our sex as our weapon. | ||
| Our body is our weapon. | ||
| Okay, so as I mentioned at the top of the show, and as you've illustrated here quite obviously, | ||
| it's not just that you talk about these things, but you literally are putting your life on the line. | ||
| I mean, just by taking your shirt off the amount of people who you've angered, it's incredible, it's crazy. | ||
| But you've also had very close brushes with the law, with actual terrorism and violence. | ||
| Can you go into a couple examples, the KGB example in Belarus, and just, and you were literally, an event that you were speaking about, free speech, was shot up, and there's some crazy audio of that. | ||
| Can you just talk about those two examples? | ||
| Well, yes, I think this is what I was talking about, that we reveal a lot of things with this protest. | ||
| But to be honest, we didn't expect that we will, you know, just a topless woman with words written across her chest could, you know, could invite the governments and secret services to chase them, arrest them, kidnap them and torture. | ||
| We have been literally tortured in Belarus after one of our protests that we staged in December 2011, which was an anniversary, it was | ||
| 19 December 2011, anniversary of, a one-year anniversary of a huge demonstration in Minsk, | ||
| where, during which many people have been arrested, many disappeared, and some reportedly | ||
| have been killed, but the information is always hidden there. | ||
| And we staged an ironical protest mocking dictator Lukashenko in front of KGB office, | ||
| which is officially, official KGB service there. | ||
| And during the protest, journalists have been grabbed by the staff, KGB staff, the men who | ||
| came out of the office of KGB. | ||
| And we were ignored. | ||
| So we could leave the place. | ||
| They certainly knew that they will be able to catch us before what was important at that | ||
| moment for them to stop the journalists from releasing the images. | ||
| However, some journalists managed to do it. | ||
| They left before, having experience, obviously, working in Belarus. | ||
| And later, a few hours after, when we were at the bus station in Minsk on our way back to Kiev, to Ukraine, we have been grabbed and thrown into a bus in which we spent the whole night being questioned by men Well, we saw their faces. | ||
| They didn't hide themselves, but they were clearly saying that they're KGB, and they were asking us who paid us for this protest. | ||
| They were saying that they know that Europe pays us, which is ridiculous. | ||
| You know, who is Europe? | ||
| I was trying to ask them as well. | ||
| They didn't answer, because they were the ones asking questions. | ||
| So, yeah, and after that night we have been brought to a forest in which we changed their buses. | ||
| We were taken in another bus and there was another troop of men, faces of whom we couldn't see anymore, because they put plastic handcuffs on our hands and we were not allowed to move. | ||
| I had to keep our heads down and looking on the floor. | ||
| Well, we heard during, I think, five, six hours drive, we heard that we will be killed. | ||
| We heard the description, you know, different description of how we can be killed. | ||
| And we were asked to breathe loud because they wanted to hear us breathing, saying that in a few hours we will not be able to breathe. | ||
| They were saying that they will send our corpse or parts of our bodies to our mothers, and so on and | ||
| so forth, which was of course done very professionally. You know, you could feel that | ||
| these men do this every day. It's their job, actually, to torture people like that. We received a few | ||
| hits, but they were not beating us severely. But later we were taken out of the bus | ||
| in a forest, and there, well, they were doing horrible things, such as putting gasoline | ||
| on us and coming with a fire very close to the body, so you feel like they will burn you alive | ||
| right now. | ||
| They made us undress. | ||
| They were creating situations when you feel like next second they will rape you, they will burn you, they will kill you, they will cut you. | ||
| What they did, they cut my hair with a knife, they threw some green antiseptic in my face which I couldn't wash away. | ||
| Things that at some point would sound ridiculous but It was torture. | ||
| It was psychological and physical torture. | ||
| They were filming everything on two video cameras, so it was supposed to be reported to someone. | ||
| And we saw 15 men around us in masks. | ||
| And the fact that they were wearing masks made me think that they will not kill us because they hide their faces. | ||
| However, I didn't know how far they will go in their action. | ||
| And after this torture, they throw us out. | ||
| We were in the forest and we spent another five hours, six hours to find someone and we found a village. | ||
| It's a big word probably for seven houses, you know, in the middle of the forest that we found. | ||
| And we were lucky enough that at that moment there was someone who came from the city and had a mobile phone. | ||
| And of course for 24 hours already all, at least Russian-speaking world, They were searching for us and information was spread | ||
| everywhere and we easily contacted our colleagues and journalists and later, four hours later, | ||
| the ambassador of Ukraine arrived to the police station, which we were staying for | ||
| some time and took us back to Kiev. | ||
| Well, this is one of the experiences. | ||
| You know, in Ukraine, also, we constantly were followed by secret services, threatened. | ||
| Well, they opened four criminal cases against us for hooliganism. | ||
| This is something that they use in Ukraine, in Russia, against political activists. | ||
| For example, right now there is an artist, Pyotr Pavlensky, who burned the door of a Russian secret service, and he's also treated as a hooligan. | ||
| Well, they treat us as hooligans because this is something very vague, you know. | ||
| Yeah, you could call anyone a hooligan. | ||
| And yeah, and in Ukraine, after our first and very loud protest against union of church and state, I had to flee. | ||
| I had to leave the country because, well, literally I had to jump out from the window of my apartment, jump in the car and run away. | ||
| When this stuff has happened to you, I mean, I know you can, you have so many examples of this, which we could, you know, we could spend hours talking about, but when these things have happened to you, I mean, what happened to you in that farce, it sounds horrific, you survived, but obviously their goal is intimidation. | ||
| Their goal, of course, is to silence you, and then by silencing you, they silence your followers, and that's how they end you guys. | ||
| They don't have to actually kill you. | ||
| So I'm curious, afterwards, after something like that happens, Do you or did you feel, all right, maybe we've taken this as far as it should go? | ||
| Or did you immediately double down and say, now we're getting somewhere with this? | ||
| Well, of course, I'm not going to play a superhero. | ||
| And of course, you have all the fear you feel. | ||
| You feel that I will not, right after you feel, I will never do it again. | ||
| But then, you know, after some time thinking about it and really spending time on repeating in your mind what really happened, you understand that it's not us who went too far. | ||
| It's their reaction goes too far. | ||
| Probably because we do something which they don't want to happen. | ||
| So it means that we do something very right. | ||
| And I think, of course, again, I will never deny that we have fear. | ||
| We do have fear. | ||
| But I should say that the fear of giving up to those people is much bigger than fear of being taken to the forest. | ||
| At least you already know how it feels and what it is. | ||
| And again, fear is a choice, right? | ||
| So we probably make a choice, you know, not to fear, but to deal with the fear and to continue the activity. | ||
| Because again, just think about how ridiculous actually this all is. | ||
| There are girls who take off their tops and write slogans and for that they're taken to the forest. | ||
| KGB staff are spending with them 24 hours torturing them and doing all the insane things. | ||
| How ridiculous this is. | ||
| How ridiculous is the fact that there are people planning terrorist attacks, taking guns, blowing themselves up, because they want to stop those who draw caricatures, you know? | ||
| Who draw is very funny or not funny for some cartoons, but something so peaceful, so somehow very childish as well, you know? | ||
| Something very simple. | ||
| So I think that it also reveals a lot. | ||
| It shows It shows how crippled our society is, how we replace the fight of ideas by actually the fight between people. | ||
| And I think that this is the reason to continue. | ||
| And, you know, sometimes people say, well, you already do it for six years and you're only 25 and you already have been nearly killed at least three times, but what makes you go on? | ||
| But this actually, this is exactly the reason that makes you go on, because you understand that just because you say, you know, you write three words in your body or you write an article or you draw a cartoon, they want to kill you for that. | ||
| Isn't it ridiculous? | ||
| Doesn't it show that I live in a sick society? | ||
| And because I don't want to live in a sick society, I continue. | ||
| I go on. | ||
| I know that the history of my time is written right now. | ||
| And, well, to let fundamentalist dictators, misogynists to write history of my time, well, I don't agree with that. | ||
| I want to participate writing the history. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, listen, I love everything that you just said. | ||
| The whole spirit of everything that I do is exactly that, and you're at the front lines of it. | ||
| So that's a good segue, actually, to in 2013, you got asylum in France, and you live in France now. | ||
| And that must have been an interesting time to move to France, because shortly after that was the Charlie Hebdo attacks. | ||
| Now, you knew some of the cartoonists, right? | ||
| You had worked with them a little bit. | ||
| So can you talk about that? | ||
| Well, I knew all the cartoonists, those who died and those who survived as well. | ||
| We had, well, we were friends. | ||
| We were really friends and we spent a lot of time just together debating, discussing and sharing. | ||
| Well, we shared a lot of ideas and to be honest, when I arrived to France and after a few of protests that we organized in France and clearly stated our direct message, Not a message which is following all these demands of political correctness, you know, unnecessary political correctness. | ||
| In Europe, Charles Hebdo was the only one who were really on the same line with us. | ||
| And we became really friends very, very soon. | ||
| And we even made one issue of Charles Hebdo together with Femin. | ||
| And well, yeah, and of course we, well, Sometime we were spending reading to each other the threats that we were receiving and laughing you know and making fun of the of the fanatics who were spending time for writing those threats and you know writing their speeches which they were | ||
| We're reading a recording on our voicemails. | ||
| Yeah, and of course, losing your friends, not only friends, you know, yeah, not only friends, but ideological friends or brothers, if you want, was, of course, was again something which, of course, is personally very hard and heavy to lose, but also is something that reveals a lot and shows you, again, shows you that if you stop, Then you will fail, and your ideas will fail. | ||
| I believe that maybe it will sound a bit odd, but even those cartoonists who died, who were killed, they didn't lose, and their ideas are not failure. | ||
| They will always remain as they were. | ||
| And those who continue to do what they believed in, and that what they believe in is the right | ||
| thing, because they were not harming anyone. | ||
| They were contributing to very important things such as freedom of expression, and they were | ||
| contributing to this, to keep and save the values of France as well, which is liberté, | ||
| égalité, fraternité. | ||
| Which is, you know, sometimes today you think that it remains only on the buildings, written | ||
| on the buildings, but not actually in life, not actually applied in life of society anymore. | ||
| So Charles Hebdo are heroes, a part of being friends, they are heroes. | ||
| However, I should also mention that just months before they were killed, they were racist, Islamophobes. | ||
| You know, they were always named for being too much, for going too far, for offending. | ||
| We all know that. | ||
| Right, and just to be very clear, I know this has been said a thousand times over, but they were not racist and they were not Islamophobes, which is a made up word, by the way, but they were not, they were pointing out the, they made fun of everybody. | ||
| And I think something like it's 3% of the covers were about Islam, but they equally attacked Christianity and Judaism and all the religions. | ||
| It was about power. | ||
| So they were making cartoons about the exact things that you were protesting in the streets. | ||
| It was really kind of amazing. | ||
| Yeah, and I think the relation with Charlie Hebdo and the fact, what you mentioned just right now, that only 3% of the covers and the all material in the newspaper was about Islam. | ||
| Also, show something that we were also discussing with them often, and, you know, as we talk about France and things that happen in France, maybe it will make sense to quote Voltaire again here, and these words attributed to him, he said that if you want to find out who rules over you, simply understand who you're not allowed to criticize. | ||
| So even this 3 percent, you know, of the information or the topic, you know, Islam, that was just taking 3 percent of the of the whole information of Charlie Hebdo really shows a | ||
| lot that of course is the youngest from three monotheistic religions, the most ambitious | ||
| probably today, the most demanding religion really reveals its face and reacts in a different | ||
| way. | ||
| So I know you've talked about the regressive left and its start. | ||
| For me, Charlie Hebdo was the beginning of my awakening, which happened over the course of the next year or so. | ||
| But what do you make of the group of people, and we had plenty of them here in the United States, and I'm sure you had plenty of them in France as well, people on the left. | ||
| People that are for women's rights and for gay rights and for minority rights that suddenly, when it came to what happened with Charlie Hebdo, said, ah, you shouldn't have, you know, you shouldn't have made fun of the cartoons. | ||
| You shouldn't have done these cartoons, talked about the Prophet, whatever it is. | ||
| People who otherwise are totally for free speech and free expression, suddenly they're not in this case. | ||
| So what do you make of those people and how pervasive is that idea in France these days? | ||
| Well, you said that it all started for you after Charles Hebdo. | ||
| I think that it became so visible in France as well after Charles Hebdo and recently also after Cologne attacks in Germany, which we can also discuss not only leftist but also feminist reaction or feminist non-reaction. | ||
| So I think that, yeah, after these events we could see this A fraction of leftists who would deny the essential problem, who would be scared to talk about the roots of the problem, who will be willing not to talk about Charlie Hebdo killers as people with guns. | ||
| And not discuss their ideas, and not discuss what they were screaming while shooting our friends, what they were, in the name of who they committed these atrocities, and what made them believe that they have to do that. | ||
| So I think that this is something, again, which of course brings Europe in a very big | ||
| danger, and especially the values of Europe in a very big danger. | ||
| And therefore I say that sometimes walking in Paris I read these three words, the slogan | ||
| of French Revolution, and I understand that this is very far from reality today, from | ||
| the society. | ||
| But of course you hear the leaders, the leftist leaders here who try to, you know, make speeches | ||
| to defend freedom of expression and make of Charles Hebdo heroes because they are, you | ||
| know, journalists who fell down. | ||
| But they do not want to discuss for which ideas they failed, for which ideas they were | ||
| So many of them, you know, of course, do it Out of fear, but very different fear. | ||
| There is a very big fear to have similar speech to right-wing, similar speech to xenophobes and racists. | ||
| Such as from National with Marine Le Pen here in France. | ||
| Therefore leftists decided to take this very ridiculous, again intellectually dishonest position, such as denying their roots and their, you know, the real, the essential problem in this situation. | ||
| And I think this way they betray also the ideas of Charlie Hebdo, obviously. | ||
| And of course, yeah, so at the end the result is that it's only extreme right wing, the racist, the xenophobes who are speaking out actually. | ||
| Yeah, and this is what I've said repeatedly here is that we on the left have to deal with this because if we don't, and this is exactly what your piece in the International Business Times was about, if we don't deal with the regressive left Then who do we hand it to? | ||
| The racist right. | ||
| That was your term. | ||
| And I couldn't agree more. | ||
| So would you say that France, in terms of free speech and people getting along, would you say France is in a worse position now? | ||
| Do you think that there was a net loss in free speech after Charlie Hebdo? | ||
| Because there were a couple weeks after where the whole world united and all those world leaders came to Paris and it sounded like something good was gonna happen. | ||
| But I sense you think it's probably the reverse now. | ||
| Well, again, there are so many aspects to discuss here. | ||
| This manifestation that happened after the 11th of January was ridiculous. | ||
| And the cartoonists who survived, Luz, for example, who made the next cover with Prophet crying, we were laughing with him. | ||
| It's true parody. | ||
| It's true parody. | ||
| We were laughing because in front of him, there was a line of all the enemies of ideas of Charlie Hebdo, and they were marching, you know, again, this event was so full of hypocrisy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because in fact, they were marching, at least this front line, were marching not for the right ideas. | ||
| You know, they were pretending, they were, yeah, it was fake. | ||
| I'm not talking about the million of people who came out, but I'm talking about this front line, which was totally ridiculous, and what happened after. | ||
| There were so many events dedicated to discussion of free speech, which were canceled by the | ||
| government, by police, in order to, you know, for security reasons. | ||
| Events in which me, myself, was supposed to participate, so many of them were canceled. | ||
| Again, the event that happened just one month after in Copenhagen, during which I was speaking, | ||
| was interrupted by another terrorist. | ||
| And again, one person have been killed, some injured. | ||
| So this wave, you know, again, I think that we failed after Charlie Hebdo. | ||
| We failed with all this ridiculous things such as inviting Actually, the representatives of those who are feeding the terrorists, those who feed these ideas that are, well, actually cannot coexist with ideas of freedom of speech, inviting them to Paris to march for ideas of Charles Hebdo is something that already showed that we will fail in this discussion. | ||
| And I don't want to make a conclusion that we did fail, but I feel we are failing. | ||
| Here in Europe, Europe is failing, European society is failing because they're not ready | ||
| to face very uncomfortable, very unpleasant, but truth. | ||
| They are not able to hear unpopular speech. | ||
| And if freedom of speech is really about something, if liberty is really something, it's definitely about unpopular speech. | ||
| It's about hearing, accepting this unpopular, uncomfortable speech. | ||
| And Europe is failing of doing that. | ||
| So we only have a couple of minutes left and I know we're just getting into the meat of this so we're gonna have to do this again where we can talk for much longer but I hear you on the Europe part and that's, I get so much email now from the same, people saying the same things in Denmark and in France and in Germany. | ||
| And Finland, all of these countries, people are saying the exact same things that you're talking about. | ||
| And they feel that there's no faith in the government, that the governments are going to do the right things and all of that. | ||
| So let's end on this. | ||
| So the Cologne event that happened in Germany with this, it sounds like a thousand men were running rampant throughout the city. | ||
| And it's unclear if they were all immigrants or migrants or whatever it was. | ||
| The reaction to that must have been particularly upsetting to you because it dealt with sort of the free speech stuff and bringing all these people in. | ||
| But it also directly this was a direct assault on women. | ||
| So it really went to everything that you care about. | ||
| Was the reaction to that, because I saw feminists that were not defending the women. | ||
| I suddenly saw feminists online, well-known feminists, that were saying, oh, this is just an excuse for the xenophobes, and white men do it too, and all of those things. | ||
| So that one must have been particularly upsetting, right? | ||
| Well, it was, yeah, of course it was not only upsetting. | ||
| You know, I think that today you look around and you see that those who were supposed to be your allies, those who were supposed to share with you the very fundamental values and stand for them, either keep silence or try to support, actually, your aggressors, the aggressors of women, | ||
| just because of the fact it was reported that among the aggressors were men who looked like | ||
| Arabic men or North African origin, feminist silence. | ||
| They didn't want to discuss what actually happened, just because of fear of, again, | ||
| being, you know, having the speech of extreme right wing. | ||
| And at the end, who appeared to be actual defenders of women, you know, who were raped | ||
| and aggressed after Cologne were extreme right wing. | ||
| Again, the platform was giving to them. | ||
| So I think that, um, to those people who write you emails, And to people who write me as well a lot and who support, who feel very, yeah, who feel betrayed, sad by the situation that is going on today in Europe by leftist reactions, by the reaction, some of the reaction of the feminists, I think that we have to understand that to be sad is not enough. | ||
| To be sad, you know, makes people cry and stay at home. | ||
| I feel, you know, alone. | ||
| But what we have to be, many people don't like to face it, but what we have to be today, we have to be angry. | ||
| I think that anger brings people to action. | ||
| Not hate, but anger. | ||
| Anger for the fact that your ideas are attacked, that's something very essential for your life and joy of life. | ||
| which people have today, here opportunity to enjoy life today here in Europe, | ||
| you have to defend it. | ||
| And for that, you have to feel anger. | ||
| Don't feel sad, feel angry, act and defend your ideas | ||
| and don't let extreme right wing write your own history. | ||
| Let's write it with our own beautiful liberal ideas. | ||
| That's my message. | ||
| Well, Ina, I don't even have to ask you a final question because you couldn't have ended this any better. | ||
| You absolutely have an ally in me, and I'm sure in much of my audience. | ||
| So everyone can find more of Ina's work at ina-shevchenko.com. | ||
| I thank you for joining me, and we absolutely will do this again, because I feel like we just touched the surface of all this. |
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