"Punk" band Purgen comes out as homophobic, sexist, right-wing and now coming to EU tour

Purgen (www.facebook.com/Purgenpunx/)  old punk band from Russia will start Euro tour soon. But not everybody know that 1 year ago their leader and founder Ruslan said many homophobic, sexist and nationalist shit from the stage of Dobrofest.  Big Russian rock festival for thousands people.   

These shame moments can be seen in this video (with English subtitles).

  https://youtu.be/COVGvV_orWw

After this many bands, promoters and people stop their connections to Purgen in Russia. But in Europe looks like not many know about this and allow Purgen to play in antifascist clubs and festivals. 

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Some of Purgen’s swearing was directed against gay people, women, other countires. 

Some was against other Russian punk bands Tarakany, Yorsh, Naiv, Elizium, Pornofilmy. These bands declined to play at Russian rock festival Nashestvie after it became known that Nashestvie is sponsored by Russian Ministry of Defense and is used by Russian government for propaganda of militarism to young people. Also has army sign-up booth at a festival. 

Ruslan Purgen several times called these bands “faggots”, “girls”, “pussies”.   Some quotes of Ruslan Purgen from his show at Dobrofest:

 “It’s about those fucking faggots…who work on our territory, live abroad and want to fuck you. And  I  don’t want these faggots to fuck you.  Fuck them, liberal faggots” 

“This is Dobrofest, this is normal punk festival , this is not pop-music, not that f*ggotry, and we will defend it“

  “We are recording a new album and  it is about that everything is great in our country, good atmosphere here,  despite what those sold out American faggots say” 

“Good bye girls, go for a walk. Guys, let’s start, let’s play punk rock, not this bullshit” 

“Song is about Medvedev and other faggots. Song is called Russia” 

“This song is dedicated to the girls from Naiv and Tarakany and other pop-punks” 

“That’s it : no more pop-music, no more faggots. ” 

 And so on, full set full of homophobic, sexist and chauvinistic epithets in front of big crowd. 

 After scandal on Dobrofest, many bands stop working with Purgen and some long-time members left the band in protest . So did  guitarist Oleg and drummer Egor. One of the oldest Purgen musicians – guitarist Oleg  said in interview for Russian webzine “Punks&Skins”: 

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Q: What is reason of your leave from Purgen? 

A:“I told many times: in latest time we had many differences between me and Ruslan, we have different ideologies. I can’t play in  band with  frontman whose views I don’t support”.   

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Q: Hi Oleg! Do you support conservative views of Ruslan? If not – what is your position? Sorry if I formulated the question wrong. About views of Ruslan I judge from his interviews and texts of songs.

A: “I don’t share Ruslan’s views, I have absolutely different views on everything, I’m not living in the past…” 

Purgen homophobic and nationalist aggressive sayings got criticized by punk-hardcore blogs and zines in Russia, for example this from No Mercy Radio: https://youtu.be/Xrr48cC0F8A 

People from Internet also comment that they stop support of Ruslan Purgen 

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"Thank you Ruslan. Now I can calmly throw away all your albums and even tapes. Even tapes, Ruslan” 

Is it normal that a band who believes that “girl” is  offensive word, who think it’s ok to call their rivals  “faggots”, openly attack gay people and spread nationalism and chauvinism from stage can be a part on Intenational punk communion and tour the world as  “punk” band. 

 Even the big official Russian mass-media Rosbalt posted article that Purgen fully changed his ideas and turned into right-wing after releaseing new album in 2018 in which album the band attacked Russian opposition. That not only Ruslan but other new members support right wing ideas. Article (in Russian) is here:

https://www.rosbalt.ru/like/2018/11/20/1747719.html

 The tour of Purgen is organized partly by Russian booking  No Borders Tourbooking. It is booking of Igor, leader of antifascist hardcore band What We Feel. He before was said to try to sabotage  Euro-Tour of  Ukrainian bands, like punk-hardcore band Zrada.  Maybe these bands weren’t “Antifascist” enough for him. But now his booking creates euro tour for Purgen who says nationalistic, sexist and homophobic words at a big festival. It is impossible to belive that Igor didn’t know about Purgen at Dobrofest, because one of members of his band What We Feel left Purgen because of what Ruslan said there. 

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  This situation bring many questions: 

 Why the band shouting homophobic, chauvinist, sexist slogans from stage pretend to be  “punk” band and get help from worldwide punk communion and will play with bands like Casualties , Total Chaos and others who don’t know about Purgen’s views.

Why is Purgen playing in Antifascist clubs, like Arena in Vienna, Kapu squat in Linz  in Austria, Basorka in Slovakia?

  Why What We Feel promotes Purgen on their own music video (screenshot below)? 

Why a good known Antifascist label Audiolith promotes Purgen on their YouTube video channel proudly showing photo of Ruslan Purgen himself. 

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   Everybody needs to decide if they want to work with homophobic, chauvinistic, sexist “punk” bands and those who make money with them.