In Yoshkar-Ola, the court banned videos with atheistic demotivators

In February 2017, the Yoshkar-Ola city court banned the video "Photos, cartoons on the theme of atheism."

May 19, 2017 from update Federal List of Extremist Materials, we learned that on February 28 2017, the Yoshkar-Ola City Court of the Republic of Mari El recognized extremist footage "Photo, cartoons on the theme of atheism" containing the inscriptions "Down with the brain!", "Atheism or Insanity", "Are you going to church? Leave your brain at home!". It was included in the Federal List under the number 4101.

We got to know this video, which is a ten-minute slideshow of demotivators atheistic character. From our point of view, dozens of images with inscriptions, who made the video do not contain any aggressive appeals against believers, cannot be interpreted as inciting hatred, do not represent no public danger and thus deserved no ban. Exception is only an image with a statement by the Norwegian neo-pagan musician Varg Vikernes, which can be regarded as a call to set fire to churches, however banning entire series of demotivators due to a single inflammatory quote seems doubtful to us.

Sources

• Federal list of extremist materials // Website of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. May 22, 2017