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The Unending Hatred for Russians
I want Putin to lose. I want him to learn that if a country wants freedom, he cannot take it away. I’m cheering for Ukraine. But the insane escalation of anti-Russian measures is disturbing.
Banking sanctions are one thing, but some of the petty elements are just insane. People who live in Russia cannot receive money via Patreon or other donation services. One guy I support was developing a video game trading market, and got completely cut off. He can’t even use online development tools. Speaking of games, several games have cut off Russians from the ability to buy any items in the game using actual money (For a lot of free games, that’s the game company’s revenue stream).
Some of the attacks on Russians are just bizarre, like going after vodkas made in Latvia (Stoli) and the US (Smirnoff). We even have places refusing to allow Tchaikovsky music to be played. Does anyone think Putin gives a damn about these ridiculous measures? The point of sanctions and such is get Russia to leave the Ukrainians and other former satellites alone.
Putin probably appreciates when crazy people do things like argue for deporting Russians and having Russian citizens lose their jobs. There’s nothing like insane criticism to get people to sympathize with a side. I remember reading the Philadelphia Trumpet‘s anti-Catholic propaganda and thinking that it made the Roman Church sound awesome. They had a guy dressed as a cardinal drawing a sword, and the issue was called Crusade. They wanted to blame Catholics for Islamic terrorism, I wanted to yell Deus Vult!
One last note: I have the sneaking suspicion everyone enacting these anti-Putin measures would really like to use them on all of us here. Maximum Trudeau, in other words. Doesn’t change the Ukraine situation, but it does make me worried.
Published in Foreign Policy
If this isn’t racism, I don’t know what is.
I’m afraid what you’ve described (which I find disgusting and disturbing) along with the behavior of so many in the past two years, has led me to the conclusion that “never again” could “happen any day now”
People will discriminate against and treat horribly those they feel morally superior to when provoked or manipulated. And that manipulation seems surprisingly simple and effective.
It’s consent being manufactured. For what purpose? Abby Martin (trigger warning: total Pinko) discusses it on Real News.
I suspect some of these corporate business decisions are for the purpose of appearing to oppose Russian aggression while avoiding the need to do something to really hinder Russian aggression. At least that was my view about social media deciding to demonetize Russian social media.
Can whites be racist against whites?
If you can be racist about Muslims you can be racist about Russians. Bigoted is probably a more accurate word, but racism is just another variation of bigotry. The difference is not fundamental.
Yes, its about half of the Woke mindset.
IRISH NEED NOT APPLY
It was not that long ago that Irish, Italians, Jews, and Poles were not viewed as white.
Yeah, I was going to say Muslims are all races.
Wokism has four races, doesn’t it? White Supremacist, Black, Indigenous, and “People of Color” often called simply Brown. I feel sorry for the Orientals, they have no woke racial designation.
In practice, they’re grouped with the ‘black white supremacists’.
I’m not sure people realize how narrow the actual government sanctions are: a handful of people and institutions and a handful of activities (banking, shipping, arms dealing).
Pouring out the Smirnoff and nixing Peter Illiych is stupid.
Russia is not owed participation in Western systems. As a man once said, they didn’t build that. Their access to all the perks is conditional – unless one thinks that they could invade Finland or the Baltics and still demand that their Visa cards work in the newly occupied capitals.
I feel bad for the people who had nothing to do with this and oppose it. I feel worse for the people being shelled.
We’ve discussed the need to economically decouple from China, and stop supporting Disney for going along with the regime – is that part of the unending hatred of the Chinese?
Do you? Which ones?
Here’s a view from the 1850s, similar subject:
And of course there’s Facebook which has issued new diktats where it’s ok to hate Russians online. 230 anyone?
Russians are no more, or less, white than Ukrainians, Germans, Poles or Scandinavians. People don’t hate Russia because of their race. If they’re hated because of their nationality, that’s not racism. Most Europeans hated the Germans after WWII. That wasn’t racism either; it was based on what that country did.
So it is today. Russia’s a big part of humanity, with many proud moments in their history. They’ve gotten a raw deal a number of times in the 20th century. I hope I’ll be able to visit it again someday. But tomorrow is not that day. In time, let them live this down, and we’ll see then.
Next they’ll be stoning
dachshundsRussian wolfhounds in the streets.I hate all the silly symbolism. I suspect the purpose of all the silly symbolic stuff is to avoid having to do anything real or painful.
Nothing like a stoned dog — they lose all their coordination. Do not let them eat your edibles– marijuana is very toxic to dogs. If they do eat your edibles, rush them to an emergency vet.
Failure to recognize the power of symbols has been an important factor in our long string of losses in the Culture Wars. Hate the silly symbolism? Sure do. But it undeniably works.
There was a Russian kids fairy tale about a large iron cooking pot left in the woods. A series of animals came to live in the pot. The residents objected each time but each new visitor was a little bigger so they could not keep them out. Then a bear arrived and thought it would be nice to also live in the pot. The other animals (loosely symbolic of European nations) said the bear could not fit even if they left. The bear angrily flattened the pot and its residents and walked away.
Russians have some identity issues and historically tend to try to resolve them with conquest and expansion. They want much of western culture but fear the will be the exploited hillbillies of Europe if they were to disarm, comply and try to conform.
Europe is the result of stubborn tribal Germanic personas mixed with the depth of Graeco-Roman philosophical traditions all under the benevolent guidance of Christian principles. That long incubation fostered a reverence for individual personhood and a belief in progress.
Russia evolved more as resistance to Vikings, Teutonics and Mongols, resistance only possible under absolute rulers. If for centuries, the choice was being ruled by someone like Ivan the Terrible or the Golden Horde, then the czars or Lenin and Stalin, human rights and habits of optimism were always unlikely to flourish.
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Is anybody else bothered by the fact that Ukraine partnered with the Obama White House to actively attack candidate Trump? From the Ukrainian ambassador writing op-eds against Trump to the White House and CIA personal collaborating for months to manufacture dirt on Trump, it is really troubling. To me that makes the Ukrainian government an enemy of the USA. No better than China, just smaller in scale. Was there a “good guy” in the Iran-Iraq war?
As David P Goldman has said … there is no ‘Ivan the Reasonable’ remembered in Russian history.
My mom (born 1927) said she remembered newspaper ads that said “Catholics need not apply” in her small town in Scotland.
Bigotry is part of our dark hearts and we’ve been going about getting rid of it the wrong way. Instead of teaching it’s never okay, we focus on specific instances (Japanese Internment, for instance) and say: man, that was awful. We’re pieces of sh##. Never going to do THAT again.
We probably never will inter Japanese Americans. But the fear and anger that inspired such an action can just as easily be turned against another group.
Perhaps not the ones you have in mind, I suspect.
Certainly, it happens every day.
Back in the 50s and 60s there were people in the entertainment world and elsewhere who tried to morph hatred of Soviet communism with hatred of Russians. I didn’t think then and don’t think now that it was all due to innocent carelessness, at least not in its origins. Thus you had a movie, “The Russians are Coming!” which showed that the Russians are nice people who mean us no real harm; therefore, you bigotted anti-commies are wrong and should be shunned.
I am concerned that some of the corporate symbolic actions are morphing Russians with Putin and his oligarchs. It isn’t necessarily done to stir up hatred of Russians, but it may have that effect. Even here on Ricochet, one person gave as evidence that anti-Russian sentiment is growing, the fact that “Putin evil” turns up a lot of results on a search engine.
I’m just going to hold on to my bottles of Soviet Stoli and Pepsi Cola along with my LPs and CDs of Russian ballet music until I can make a bundle off them on Ebay.
But you’ll have to pry the videos of Mikhail Baryshnikov out of my cold dead fingers.