From the Twitter feed of Kyiv Pride, the LGBT+ organization in Ukraine’s capital:

The full image at the top of this post follows in the tweet. And then:

The Donbass region is in far eastern Ukraine, next to Russia. It has been infiltrated by Russian troops, and is torn by war. The US Agency For International Development is using taxpayer dollars to queer Donbass, and handing pro-Russian forces a propaganda coup. Kyiv Pride is also sponsored by the US Embassy in Kiev. 

This is cultural imperialism, straight up. The American academic left loves to talk about how it’s going to “decolonize the curriculum” at universities, but of course it is completely about imposing Western cultural norms onto the unwilling people’s of “backwards” places. I wonder why the US Government gets involved actively supporting Pride in Eastern European countries, but doesn’t have much to say about, for example, Riyadh Pride? Why do they respect Arab cultural norms, but trample on Central and Eastern European ones?

And, what kind of blowback could funding culture warriors to invade Donbass and “queer” it have? It seems like a trolling move, but it’s hard to figure out what the end goal is. Does Washington really believe that the people of Donbass are eager to be queered by US-funded culture warriors? How do they think the Donbassers are likely to respond to this? These strategists are the same ideological geniuses who got us into the Iraq War, certain that inside the hearts of each Iraqi there was a liberal democrat waiting to be set free. These are the same ideological geniuses who turned Libya from a corrupt but stable and rehabilitated autocracy into a Hobbesian collection of warring city states and sanctuary for jihadists.

I am sure there are many liberals in Ukraine and in other Eastern and Central European countries who appreciate the US taxpayers’ support for queering their countries. I talk to conservatives here in Hungary and in Poland who resent the hell out of it. But let’s call it what it is: Western cultural imperialism.