Pussy Riot are only a rock band in the sense that Crass were a rock band, where the music is primarily a medium for the message. To suggest that this is a publicity stunt created to launch a career is way off the mark - any cursory examination of the band members' history shows that the political activism and art-stunts predate the formation of the band (in fact it could be argued that the band itself only exists as a political platform).

And anarchists have always polarised debate. It's not their job to seek the middle ground or the lower common denominator or any kind of stitched together consensus - we have liberals for that! Suggesting that protest should not stretch the boundaries of percieved good taste or go beyond the limit of what is permitted by the state, strikes me as an internalisation of the logic of state power and control and a form of self-censhorship. That sits very uneasily with notions of artistic freedom.

There's some suspect logic at work here, too. Six women were responsible for the church protest, but it doesn't automatically follow that every single other Russian supports the Orthodox Church's relationship with Putin's regime.

I remember a Polish anarchist saying many years ago, after the end of the Stalinist regime: "the transition from communism to catholicism will be easy for the Polish people - they won't even need to get up off their knees."

That quote can be extrapolated to many situations.