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."
High-larious.
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
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
Funny given that liberal is not a culture.
Imagine leaving Texas because you think it’s too liberal.
They could try Syria next!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Good. Fuck them hope he dies in the meat grinder with the rest of the Russian military dipshits. Christian fascists dont deserve a peaceful life; they bring such persistent suffering to LGBTQ people for the past 2000 years, that I hope no religious group including these types of Christians never sees peace.
I agree, but the kids didn’t deserve this, they will forever have their lives ruined thanks to their piece of shit parents. Even more if they turn out to be LGBTQ themselves.
Yeah can’t imagine a bunch of girls having a great time there, especially once he ends up dying for his ideals (if not now then later). Leaving a mother and daughters. Pretty sure this is the guy who didn’t even know the language while getting training before he was pushed up to the front. Can’t imagine thinking any probable outcome is better for anyone involved, but the kids definitely don’t deserve whatever happens.
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.
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/e6f791bf-9311-421e-b2c4-6856c7922b77.webp
Religion very important to them
US: 53%
Russia: 16%
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/5914b607-bdf5-4238-883e-46fd51f4c52a.webp
Weekly worship attendance
US: 36%
Russia: 7%
Aside from Poland, where 42% of respondents attend weekly, every other European country in this analysis has rates of attendance at or below 25%.
Clearly Poland needs to start advertising, because Russia probably isn’t where you want to go if you’re on the hunt for a particularly religious environment, especially if your starting point is the US. Now, Poland’s gonna have a more-specifically-Catholic environment, which I bet isn’t what they are, but I bet that they aren’t Russian Orthodox either, so…
They could have moved to Ethiopia and been rocking that 82%, if it werent for that pesky racism point theyre standing on
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_appearance_of_Jesus
The race and appearance of Jesus, widely accepted by researchers to be a Jew from Galilee,[1] has been a topic of discussion since the days of early Christianity.
Thus, in terms of physical appearance, the average Judean of the time would have likely had brown or black hair, honey/olive-brown skin, and brown eyes.
Unfortunately, Christ was the “wrong sort” of Christian.
It annoys me that the title in the first graphic is expressed the opposite way to what the legends mean and you have the actual meaning just below. Seems like a very bad choice of wording.
So, I agree that it’s not the best presentation, but they’re trying to put the summary of findings up top. The actual “title” of the chart is the subtitle beneath.
You might want to recheck Poland. The article’s from 2018, and from what I’ve heard, thanks to the aura of Catholic child abuse scandals, they’re speedrunning Ireland’s post-independence history.
Could they please not? We have enough issues with local idiots and bigots without importing additional ones.
Also a massive part of supposed Polish religiousness is absolutly bullshit performative stunt for the older part of the family or the neighbors is a small town. Most religious indicators are (finally) rapidly declining.
reactionaries like the two families in the article do not read.
I find it interesting that a surprisingly large number if my fellow countrymen (Norwegians) say that religion is very important to them, yet our turnout numbers for weekly organized worship is among the lowest.
I obviously can’t say with any degree of certainty, but I wonder if where you’re at, it’s more common to hold personal faith without necessarily belonging to an organization.
As a Christian Anarchist in the USA, this is where I’m at. I struggle to find a church that is just about Jesus, community, study, and worship, without the “evangelical” right-wing sociopolitical under/overtones the US has been infected with. (Or more rarely the opposite reaction: A hyper-left political organization that happens to be church flavored.)
But my faith is still very important to me.
Possibly. I’m agnostic myself, and I don’t know enough religious people for that stat to match my impression.
However, it’s worth noting that there’s a lot of immigrants here, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they affect the stats. We do have mosques, synagogues, and buddhists temples, but you pretty much only find those in the major cities. Immigrants are found all over the country, so I find it plausible that lack of a nearby relevant house of worship could be the cause. In rural norway it’s mostly churches of the Lutheran kind.
UU might be what you are looking for? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarian_Universalism?wprov=sfla1
19 % and 7 % seem to fit?
Derek Huffman said he joined the Russian army to expedite the family’s applications for Russian citizenship, as well as to show support for their new homeland.
Service guarantees citizenship!
He is doing his part!
He’s losing his parts!
This all sounds like Starship Troopers propaganda lol
Other way around, actually.
to ukraines sunflower fields.
Sorry Ukraine - didn’t mean to let our trash blow into your yard.
Please kill him swiftly before he has the chance to do any tangible damage to your nation. May his corpse nourish a few sunflowers.
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.
So they moved to a redneck colony run by a notorious professional Russian propagandist in an autocratic nation. Yikes.
Poor, poor white conservative Christians. Really sucks how every once in a while, they don’t get to have their balls sucked by everyone. Once in a while.
I feel bad for their kids.
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
