As many as 1,500 “ideological immigrants,” including 127 Americans, have applied for temporary residence in Russia in the last year.
Two years ago, Derek and DeAnna Huffman were desperate to leave Humble, a suburb of Houston. Their three daughters, they believed, were being brainwashed by public school and mainstream media to support LGBTQ rights. American culture in general no longer offered white people the same opportunities as other races, they said.
The couple yearned to live in a place that shared their “Christian values” and where they “weren’t going to be discriminated against” as white, politically-conservative Christians.
So in March, the Huffmans became the first family to move to a community planned for fellow English-speakers some 30 miles west of Moscow, a project they had been following online run by long-term American expat and former Kremlin-sponsored RT host Tim Kirby. The family is among a small but growing number of Americans who have moved to Russia because the United States, in their opinion, has become too “woke."
Leo Hare thought their troubles were over when their landlord’s son offered a generous interest rate for investing their $50,000 nest egg in what he described as a car import business. But they only saw one payment before he stopped sending them money and refused to return their money, Leo Hare said.
Wow, trained to believe every dumb shit presented to them, huh
The Hares’ sons, 17, 15, and 12, have had difficulty adapting to life in Russia, and the two older boys want to return to America, according to their father. They feel isolated and are disappointed that school is not an option since Russia requires students to pass a language test to study in public schools.
[…] Leo Hare said it probably “would have been a dealbreaker” if they knew about the school restrictions.
Go to Russia because you can’t stand gay people.
Don’t learn the language.
Apparently don’t inform yourself at all about the country.
I can’t make fun of this whole thing. I can’t even wrap my head around what they were thinking.
Thinking wasn’t part of this.
Vote for trump to get rid of immigrants cause "“They don’t talk no English, and dey terk err jerbs!” and then immigrate to Russia and complain that they want you to speak Russian. Also don’t research any of these before you make a completely life changing decision for your kids. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ They clearly look capable of self education so no probs.
Atleast maybe this dramatic idiocy is a wake-up call for their kids who otherwise might have turned into your run of the mill red necks.
They weren’t thinking. They were gulping down the propaganda and gorging themselves on the fear-mongering. And now their kids are fucked over because of it.
I wish all of the Christians would go to russia
I wish they would all leave. Make Russia Atheist Again.
Some of em are cool, but a lot yeah
is liberal culture really a threat to anybody? like seriously how
It’s the reason my son won’t talk to me.
- Elon
sons
I’m in the socialist hellhole Canada and my day is spent chasing away genderfluid canvassers trying to convert me and my kids to they/them and then when my kids get to school they’re forced to have group sex led by cross dressers!
/s and really sad the state of the world I have to put that
Fellow Canadian, got my mandatory estrogen injection yesterday.
Also /s just in case.
You got mandatory estrogen? Why for me the government (yes the entire government) came to castrate me because of forced genital mutilation! Wokeism strikes again
I saw a trans woman walking on the street the other day and it traumatized me. I have nightmares to this day and my psychiatrist says no drugs will ever help me get over it.
Wokism ruined my life
I have felt the same way since I saw first Trans Am
MAH KRISSHAN VALUWS!!!
As many as 1,500 “ideological immigrants,” … have applied for temporary residence in Russia in the last year.
This is a hilariously small number for a big country, why are they even touting this?
We’re getting the same reporting on South African refugees to the states. A lot of it is local propaganda, playing up how horrible it is in foreign countries by comparison
Unless they are a closet homosexual who struggles with their sexuality then LGBTQ shouldn’t really impact them at all.
Oh, they are …
Imagine leaving Texas because you think it’s too liberal.
Humble is about 45 minutes from the center of Houston. It’s definitely becoming a victim of urban sprawl.
Texas in general is a shithole though that only cares about personal freedom when it’s convenient for business owners.
So funny Christians feel persecuted and like they don’t have personal freedom. They want the Bible in the classroom, 10 commandments on the wall, drag queens to stop performances, and folks with brown skin deported but heaven forbid someone teaches their children they are free to love whomever they want or be whoever they want.
Yes, that’s denying them the freedom to be ignorant, superstitious, greedy, sociopathic idiots and be rewarded for it.
Texas in general is a shithole though that only cares about personal freedom when it’s convenient for business owners.
Is there another version of IRL conservatism?
Yeah, the one where your forced to move to Russia because you don’t have the capital be be an individualist where you spawned
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/09/16/how-religious-is-your-state/
Religious profile of Mississippi
1st most religious state overall
61% (1st) say religion is very important in their lives
54% (1st) say they attend religious services at least monthly
62% (1st) say they pray daily
74% (1st) say they believe in God or a universal spirit with absolute certainty
50% in Mississippi are highly religious, based on an overall scale of religiousness
There was a much easier and better choice than Russia if they wanted to up their “more Christian environment” game.
Meanwhile, only 13% of Russians go to church, mosque, etc. regularly. Religion is not their reason to go there.
Yeah, but the people in the article said the real reason explicitly: LGBT is illegal there.
In the US we still have a lot of first amendment rights and we (all) still have the protection of Lawrence v Texas.
Too many black people in Mississippi. Even if they are religious. Highest amount of African Americans percentage wise in the US.
But that’s the wrong kind of religious.
But Orthodox Christian is fine??
It doesn’t matter to my perspective. The history of religion is for sub groups to spilt off over inconsequential differences, make up different doctrines and eventually go to war over them. It’s an expression of Authoritarians and cult behavior, and what leads to some of the greatest suffering that mankind has ever inflicted upon itself.
These families wanted to filter themselves to a sub group that’s a distinction without a difference.
If someone’s opinions are entirely formed by Russian propaganda memes then yeah. This guy didn’t pick Russia at random he chose it because he was influenced.
Gather ye by the cursed lake and wasteland.
Plus with Romney, I’m not positive on the whiteness of Mormons.
They also are the poorest state, they have the worst education, and last I checked the highest murder rate in the country, they also have probably the highest ratio of black to white because they brought in so many slaves.
They seem to be the nicest Americans though. At least at face value. America has this traditional image of being a very friendly people, and Mississippi might be at the top of the states for that.
The roads suck ass. People joke that if a woman in Mississippi has all of her teeth she is considered a princess.
Seeing groups hated by everyone else is always interesting to my morbid curious mind. Mississippi is the perfect example of an extremely poor state in the wealthiest nation in history. For the past 100 years pretty much every politician has hated Mississippians like most Americans and the neglect of the people there is astonishing. The ones who still have a little class are pure survivors.
It was named after a native American tribe or word like many places down here, it was one that one of my ancestors was part of or that same general group. She was actually royalty in the tribe. The tribes from that area were pretty cool. One of the few examples of a truly matriarchal, and somewhat polyamorous and very peaceful societies in history. You can still see those genes floating around in the friendliness and general respect for women in the south, and also the often suppressed somewhat gender fluidity of many in the south.
One of the great ironies of history is in the past, these parts of the world where there was fertile farmland used to be the most desirable and best spots. Now they are some of the worst because of industrialization and high global temperatures making the south nearly unbearable to live in.
Well anyways I’m done with my little bit of history you didn’t ask for.
Does this include experiences from living there? Not that you can’t be trusted if it’s just from history books. I just find all this to be so interesting, and would be nice to hear it’s from both.
I’ve never lived there but a few miles away and my mother is from there with her family. I knew a few people who lived in the state.
Illinois being more religious than ohio kinda surprises me
I feel like that’s because Chicago is all people hear of. The rest of Illinois is most definitely not that.
Meanwhile Ohio has the 3CS (Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus) and smaller cities like Akron, Toledo, Dayton, Youngstown, Athens, etc.
Illinois is funky because about a quarter of the state (by land area) is heavily influenced by Chicago but the rest of the state is just generic rural Midwest dotted with small railroad towns and farming communities
The trash takes out itself, a self cleaning oven, survival of the fittest brains :D Fantastic to see it live in action
I wish I could believe this but the reality is fascism drives away competence so we have an executive regime that can’t figure out how to have a top secret meeting on discord without accidentally inviting random journalists
Aren’t these the kind of people who’d get mad at immigrants in the US if they don’t speak English? Why don’t they learn proper Russian and integrate?
Because it wasn’t ever actually about that, of course.
Cause Jesus spoke English, duh.
/s
The leopards have a feast tonight.
Oh boy everybody, he used AI, lets all get irrationally angry over a meme!
It’s pretty clear, that collectively, we don’t like AI. Getting down voted for violating a well established social norm seems pretty tame as far as consequences go.
I only post my AI from Russian lemmy instances
I didn’t actually generate it with AI myself. I stole it from someone else’s reply on IMGUR forever ago.
Yeah I think this is an OK usage for AI. Just illustrates a meme that normally exists in verbal form. This isn’t replacing an artist or anything. It’s good for a quick chuckle.
Nah. Shitty memes are great. If all you can do is some shitty mspaint, that’s better than any llm art just by virtue of it having thought behind it
Oh I agree. But if you’re on your phone and think of something, even shitty memes are hard to make. On the computer it’s different.
But… but…but…AI took our jerbs!
lmfao what is this. i want to know what harm LGBTQ people cause day to day that they were scared and had to leave.
It caused so much trauma that they had to flee their country!
You, maybe or maybe not doing something that you may not talk about, hurt them so badly they gave up their family, life, work, friends, everything to get away from what you might do even if you don’t talk about it.
Welcome to fascism, the next stages get bumpy.
the man who did this, and for his wife to just be ok with it, means they both have batshit insane views of the LGBTQ community. its like when i see the people complain about drag storytime and think they are pedophiles. im sorry but i don’t see the connection. a man, dressed up as a women becuase he feels more comfortable dressing as a women, is somehow a pedophile. i think i missed the nexus event where pedophilia and drag became the same thing, but you know, i dont watch enough fox news or turning point media to get the “truth”
Projection. The answer is always projection.
you know, i was reading about the stonewall riots, and its interesting that there’s a repeat of what’s going on back then with gay/lesbian/trans views and now.
Interesting. I have heard of them in passing but I admit I know nothing of them. I’ll have to check it out!
The amount of idiocy demonstrated by the adults in that article is fucking mind-boggling.
One family moved to Russia with only $50K to their name, for their family of 5, and didn’t research the public education requirements for their sons ahead of time.
It tracks that people this fucking stupid would have this level of hate for “non-traditional” relationships.
No way Russia is so uncivilized they don’t speak English, right?
I guess that was their thought process, if there was any at all
For people who didn’t read the whole article, you really should. It touches on the fact that Derek Huffman ended up sent to the front lines in the war against Ukraine, and for a while there were rumors he’d died there.
It also talks about another family that did the same thing and immediately got swindled out of everything, with Russia’s famously corrupt law enforcement doing nothing to help them against the swindler.
I feel horrible for the kids, they get forced to follow their parents mind-boggling stupidity.
Derek and DeAnna on the other hand are adults who thought out, planned, and followed through with their idiocy.
Politics aside; how could you possibly think moving your family to a country that’s actively at war with its immediate neighbor, and struggling to find bodies to throw on the front lines, is even remotely a good idea.
It touches on the fact that Derek Huffman ended up sent to the front lines in the war against Ukraine, and for a while there were rumors he’d died there.
I would genuinely be more surprised to hear they were left to live peacefully.
Also what that he gets his news from Xitter and Alex Jones.
Hey, straight up: good fucking riddance. We’ve got enough problems with malignantly idiotic conservatives and racists and fascists. I won’t shed a single tear if they want to move to a (more) authoritarian country.
I feel sorry for the children.
They will either be brainwashed into being good little Russian breeders, or end up on pornhub.
Both is possible.
Or dead in a ditch in Donetsk.
