It Must be PMS
It's easy to laugh at Russia and the Russians when it comes to history. What other than a giggle can a country expect when it acknowledges only the sweeter bits from the cupboard of the past? How is an educated foreigner expected to swallow amusement when a state prefers legend to fact?
- - Josefina Lundblad, a poet and writer from Gothenburg, Sweden, and a student at the Omsk State Pedagogical University, in her Moscow Times column today
I am Jewish and gay. I am also the mother of one (light-haired, fair-skinned) child who attends a Jewish preschool and one child who has very dark hair and eyes and swarthy skin. I have four reasons to be scared. How scared are you? Go ahead and count the ways. That's silly. All of us have exactly one reason to be scared, and we all have it in common. We live in a city and in a country where people who claim authority -- including God-given authority -- actually say that some human beings do not have the right to exist. To my mind, that is key to any definition of fascism.
- - Masha Gessen, a Russian Moscow journalist, in her Moscow Times column today
Yes, of course, America represents the end of "Christian civilization" as we know it, despite having the world's oldest Constitution and having changed power between rival parties dozens of times without bloodshed while Russia has never done this once in its whole existence.
- - La Russophobe
4 comments:
It's not only the Russian Government that has lost the plot on racism in Russia. This is what a recent British Home Office Immigration Department report says on the subject. It is being used to justify the return of dark-skinned Russians who have fled to the UK because of racial persecution and are seeking asylum here.
“In March 2005 President Putin publicly stated that the government would focus on the fight against xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of extremism…” (Paragraph 3.7.7 of the Home Office "Russia Operational Guidance Note" October 2005)
Quoting this in a recent letter to a coloured Russian who they refused asylum to in the UK, the British Home Office continued...
“It is considered that the authorities are focussed on stopping discrimination and extremism in Russia. It is considered that you could seek the protection of the authorities in Russia if you had any problems”.
Ha Ha!
If it weren't such stupid advice it would be almost funny.
... which is why La Russophobe and others need to keep blogging.
Wow that is great stuff (i.e. horrible, shocking). Any chance of getting some sort of link to this on the web somewhere? Is America doing anything similar?
Thanks for the comment!
BROWLER: thanks for your comments. you're post raises three very interesting and important issues.
First, something that doesn't get nearly enough attention, namely the Russian talent for propaganda, the one true achievement of the USSR, however dubious. Granted, they have a population unusually ripe for propaganda, and granted that it's all very transparent and crude from the outside persepctive, but still the fact that a KGB agent could win an "election" even after the USSR had collapsed shows how mighty the propaganda establishment was.
And another really interesting issue you raise is the concept of "innocent people." One has to ask whether Russia recognizes this concept, especially after so much propaganda that said invididual life was meaningless.
Finally, there's the question of just how much "nasty, cynical" stuff will have to happen before the world will get fully wise to the situation, and what if anything can be done about it when they do.
Thanks for the link Winston, I'm putting something together on this. Do you have a link for the Home Office letter? Was this in the papers in Britain?
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