I’ve written on numerous occasions about how the instinct to boil every problem in the world down to white supremacy or transphobia or some other all-encompassing evil, makes problems harder to solve. But I don’t think I’d realised how deep this habit runs until Russia started a war in Ukraine.
1. The racist treatment of black people fleeing Ukraine is bad
2. A war waged for no purpose other than territorial aggrandizememt is much worse, especially:
3. When civilians are targeted by the aggressor.
This is like a weird funhouse mirror version of the far right claiming that Ukraine is suffering because of "wokeness". Basically American Exceptionalism taken to a stupid place. Every foreign issue can only be seen through the lens of domestic American politics.
I don't know Edmund's age/ability status, but from the first name I'd guess Edmund is a man, so there's a good chance they wouldn't let him board the trains either--all fighting-age, able-bodied men are legally required to stay and fight. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/world/europe/ukraine-poland-families-separation.html A total aside from the suggestion I assume he was trying to make, that Ukrainians are bad, racist people who deserve no support, but just goes to show how asinine the comment was.
In this case, the black/white racism exhibiting itself does speak absolutely to the larger problem. The war exists because in the last decade brown shirts spouting hate talk about Untermenschen (inferior people) became increasingly influential in Ukraine. The Untermenschen, inferiors they are by far mainly despising are people resisting becoming Western European, who identify as Eastern European, in other words, the majority of Ukrainians. The Schism between Western and Eastern Europe is 1,000 years old and as virulent, violent and bloody as you can get.
There is a documentary on Netflix about the Maidan eight years ago. The documentary is being presented as proof of how righteous the current claims of the country are to join EU and NATO. I saw a clip of young Ukrainians in a huge demonstration chanting that they must be allowed to become Europeans. They ARE Europeans. They are indigenous to the heart of Europe. Who has programmed them to think they aren't European unless they become Western European? They are biologically, culturally far more attached to Eastern Europe than the West.
The US supports the Neo-Fascist brown shirts (think banana republics). Nasty right-wing thugs were terrorizing, including murdering, Ukrainian pacifists who opposed them, who had anti-right-wing demonstrations just as huge as the one mentioned above. I'm not sure how complicit the current president is with the brown shirts, but it was some inferior-Untermenschen-hating petty officials who denied foreigners-of-color passage on the refugee trains. (We do need more reporting to know if this was the action of a few, or a widespread governmental policy ordered by the President.) Ukraine is also chock full of people who still remember BEING inferiors exterminated by western fascists. They and Russians are certainly still very much traumatized by that experience.
The situation is a powder keg of complex/conflicting racism that will fly right over American heads, because they need color coding to recognize it. They're unused to how readily the players can switch places when it isn't about color coding. (How convenient this is for US State Department types who want to keep the American public docile about the issues.) But those ARE the players involved here. So, is Putin a champion of anti-racists (he's against the western Ubermenschen out to rid themselves of the inferior Eastern Untermenschen)? That's what he claims to be. Or is he a supremacist abusing his power? Or is he both? And how snarled up will that make things?
"Part of the segregation at the border might be the result of India and specific African countries NOT denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine"
Hmm, I don't think this explains it. The trouble at the border took place before the UN vote to condemn Russia. And I'd be surprised if the people I saw assaulting black people were aware of the way their countries voted in the UN emergency session
There's undeniably a racism problem in some Eastern European countries (quite possible an Islamophobia problem too). And in times of such stress and fear, it's saddening, but not entirely surprising, that these worst instincts come to the surface. But the idea that a country has to free itself from bigotry before we should care that its citizens are dying is absolutely unbelievable.
What these types don't get is:
1. The racist treatment of black people fleeing Ukraine is bad
2. A war waged for no purpose other than territorial aggrandizememt is much worse, especially:
3. When civilians are targeted by the aggressor.
This is like a weird funhouse mirror version of the far right claiming that Ukraine is suffering because of "wokeness". Basically American Exceptionalism taken to a stupid place. Every foreign issue can only be seen through the lens of domestic American politics.
"Every foreign issue can only be seen through the lens of domestic American politics."
That's an absolutely excellent way to explain the issue.
Y'all might like Bill Maher's latest New Rule 'World War Me', in which he argues, "Don't make World War III all about *you*!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXdzAZvid0E
Haha! That was absolutely amazing! I'm writing a piece which touches on that same point.
Plagiarist 😁
I don't know Edmund's age/ability status, but from the first name I'd guess Edmund is a man, so there's a good chance they wouldn't let him board the trains either--all fighting-age, able-bodied men are legally required to stay and fight. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/world/europe/ukraine-poland-families-separation.html A total aside from the suggestion I assume he was trying to make, that Ukrainians are bad, racist people who deserve no support, but just goes to show how asinine the comment was.
In this case, the black/white racism exhibiting itself does speak absolutely to the larger problem. The war exists because in the last decade brown shirts spouting hate talk about Untermenschen (inferior people) became increasingly influential in Ukraine. The Untermenschen, inferiors they are by far mainly despising are people resisting becoming Western European, who identify as Eastern European, in other words, the majority of Ukrainians. The Schism between Western and Eastern Europe is 1,000 years old and as virulent, violent and bloody as you can get.
There is a documentary on Netflix about the Maidan eight years ago. The documentary is being presented as proof of how righteous the current claims of the country are to join EU and NATO. I saw a clip of young Ukrainians in a huge demonstration chanting that they must be allowed to become Europeans. They ARE Europeans. They are indigenous to the heart of Europe. Who has programmed them to think they aren't European unless they become Western European? They are biologically, culturally far more attached to Eastern Europe than the West.
The US supports the Neo-Fascist brown shirts (think banana republics). Nasty right-wing thugs were terrorizing, including murdering, Ukrainian pacifists who opposed them, who had anti-right-wing demonstrations just as huge as the one mentioned above. I'm not sure how complicit the current president is with the brown shirts, but it was some inferior-Untermenschen-hating petty officials who denied foreigners-of-color passage on the refugee trains. (We do need more reporting to know if this was the action of a few, or a widespread governmental policy ordered by the President.) Ukraine is also chock full of people who still remember BEING inferiors exterminated by western fascists. They and Russians are certainly still very much traumatized by that experience.
The situation is a powder keg of complex/conflicting racism that will fly right over American heads, because they need color coding to recognize it. They're unused to how readily the players can switch places when it isn't about color coding. (How convenient this is for US State Department types who want to keep the American public docile about the issues.) But those ARE the players involved here. So, is Putin a champion of anti-racists (he's against the western Ubermenschen out to rid themselves of the inferior Eastern Untermenschen)? That's what he claims to be. Or is he a supremacist abusing his power? Or is he both? And how snarled up will that make things?
"Part of the segregation at the border might be the result of India and specific African countries NOT denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine"
Hmm, I don't think this explains it. The trouble at the border took place before the UN vote to condemn Russia. And I'd be surprised if the people I saw assaulting black people were aware of the way their countries voted in the UN emergency session
There's undeniably a racism problem in some Eastern European countries (quite possible an Islamophobia problem too). And in times of such stress and fear, it's saddening, but not entirely surprising, that these worst instincts come to the surface. But the idea that a country has to free itself from bigotry before we should care that its citizens are dying is absolutely unbelievable.