#russophobia isn't real

[lucentluminary]

Russians know that russophobia isn't real. They also know that Russians' racism, on the other hand, is very real and has fatal consequences to its' victims. They just love playing the victim. I fucking hate Russians (and no, saying that you hate your oppressors isn't rUsSoPhObIa).

[ohsalome]

Again and again and again I see (mostly) westerners accusing Ukraine of "opressing russian-speaking minority" by our language law (without reading the language law itself, obviously). It really looks like people have some kind of pavlovian reflex to the word "minority", immediately jumping to the assumption that minority = opressed by the majority. But a minority by numbers does not automatically mean minority by power. Billionaires, too, make up a minority of population, does that mean that they are opressed by the majority class? Are gaelige speakers in Ireland priveleged in comparison to the English? Are Elon Musk's white emerald mine owning family opressed by the majority black African population?

For the 1000th time, the relationship between Ukraine and russia is that between colonised and coloniser. It is russian identity, russian language, russian culture, russian world that has been privileged on the territory of ukraine for at least last 400 years. It is ukrainian language, ukrainian culture, ukrainian identity that people have been repressed and killed for.

russian propaganda takes this assumption westerners have about how the world fuctions (minority=oppressed) and uses it to twist the reality. To make you believe that Ukrainians somehow "deserve" to be genocided. To make you believe that it's the best course of action for the West to abandon Ukraine to be raped and plundered by russia. But we can call it "peace", because russians won't allow western journalists to report on it, and we all know that if the west doesn't talk about something, it means it doesn't exist :))))

Here are statistics about the "opression of russian language" from 2012 - during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovich, russian puppet and a literal mafioso [source]:

More than 60% of the total circulation of newspapers, 83% of magazines, and about 87% of books (most of which are imported from Russia) are published in Russian in Ukraine.

In October 2012, only 28% of the prime time on the top 8 TV channels was devoted to Ukrainian-language programs, 44% to Russian-language programs and 28% to bilingual programs.

On the 6 top-rated radio stations, songs in Ukrainian account for only 3.4% of the total number of songs in prime time (last year - 4.6%). At the same time, songs in Russian account for 60% of the total number of songs.

Out of 290 restaurants in 29 cities, only 50% of them have signs in Ukrainian, 46% have menus in Ukrainian, and only 36% have employees who answer Ukrainian to Ukrainian-speaking customers (in another 11%, employees switched to Ukrainian during the conversation).

The "oppression of russian speakers in Ukraine" is nothing but the tyranny of russian chauvinism and imperialism losing its footing. Y'all had no trouble understanding how white ethnonationalists complaining about "the great replacement" is nothing but fear of losing the privilege. Y'all had no trouble understanding that "white cis male is the most opressed person" is a moral panic not grounded in the real power structure of the western society. But in this question, you've decided to ally with the opressor.

[transmascpetewentz]

Was talking abt this with my family and decided this needed to be a post on the webbed site:

A fundamental way that antisemitism operates that makes it so difficult to remove from leftist spaces is by taking the broad scope of problems in the world and finding a couple that can be vaguely tied or related to Judaism in some way, then taking "this is tangentially related to Jews" to mean "Jews are 100% responsible for this." It's particularly this sentiment that I see echoed in most of the antisemitic posts that I see on the dash.

It's one of the reasons, imo, why the west is so focused on Israel as opposed to the situation in the Congo, Sudan, or Ukraine. All four of these situations suck and are very clearly, to any person observing, bad. However, only one of these awful situations where war crimes are being committed is one that I hear about every day, that I am told if I so much as block some tags relating to it that I am a bad person. And that's the one where people can blame The Jews for it.

Despite Russia currently committing what I would call a genocide against Ukrainians, many westerners who preach anti-colonialism are completely silent or worse. I thought that silence meant you are directly complicit? Odd, huh? Does this principle of being against historical imperial powers committing genocide against colonized people not apply when the colonized nation has more than three times the relative Jewish population compared to the colonizer?

Yep. And many of the most prominent antisemitic antizionists are completely pro-Russia because Russia claims to be against quote-unquote "western degeneracy," which is literal Nazi shit. As a Russian who regularly speaks out against slavophobia/russophobia/anti-Russian people sentiment on the left and the right, I am horrified by westerners' complete disregard for human life and basic moral principles to defend my country's genocide.

And this idea of blaming all tangentially-related problems on Jews isn't just showcased in how much people focus on Israel, but also in who gentiles tend to call "zionists" and the attributes that they prescribe onto anyone who is labeled a zionist. Zionism is a political movement with historical basis in Judaism, but the actual definition of zionism is irrelevant to the critique I am about to make. My issue is with how some gentiles define, or don't define, zionism.

I have said this before, but when some leftist gentiles are asked to name a few qualities that all zionists share, they might give a list that's something like this: they are pro-Israel, they support Israel's genocide of Palestinians, they are completely anti-Palestine, and they do not have nuanced takes on I/P. Of course, this is a batshit insane and very ahistorical take on zionism, but I would have less of an issue if these gentiles would stick to that definition and only call people zionists if they shared all of those qualities.

Instead, these same gentiles who claim that all zionists share these opinions will claim that any Jew, convert-in-progress, or ally that doesn't hate Jews is a zionist. This circles back to my first point about how antisemitism takes anything where Jews are involved and turns it into "Jews are The masterminds behind this." And that's exactly what this is. The label of zionist being applied to a non-zionist turns their views from nuanced and neutral to racist and genocidal in the eyes of antisemites.

The idea that all Jews one doesn't like must be behind some child-murdering conspiracy is an antisemitic one, no matter how real the child murder happening in Palestine is. Random Jews, even Israeli Jews, are not responsible for the actions of their government (which is being backed mostly by gentiles overseas, btw). Stop fucking taking any instance of a bad thing being tied to Jews or Judaism and blowing it up into calling Jews the masterminds behind it. There is no global conspiracy, no matter how much you wish there was for your daily dose of emotional support antisemitism.

Reading Comprehension Questions:

What do you think that OP means when they say "The Jews" with both the "t" and "j" capitalized? Is he using that language seriously, or is he trying to get another message across?

Is this a post about Israel and Palestine, or is this a post specifically addressing antisemitism within the pro-Palestine movement on the left? Additionally, does OP give any meaningful indication of his views on I/P within the post?

Why does OP talk for two paragraphs about the situation in Russia and Ukraine? How is OP more qualified than the average Tumblr user to have an opinion on Russia?

Why is OP, despite not being Jewish, making a post about this subject? How might OP be more qualified than the average gentile to make a post about antisemitism?

Does OP blame Palestinians for antisemitism on the left in this post? Does OP single out any specific ethnic or racial group as opposed to just gentiles?

Have I sat with and mentally answered to myself the above questions before I clicked on OP's page to send him an anon telling him to kill himself?

[hirkyy]

americans supporting ukraine are specifically targeting russians and not any other eastern european people, how is this not an example of russophobia? "russia bad therefore russophobia not real" is not the progressive take you think it is

"americans supporting ukraine" that are just regurgitating braindead broadly anti eastern european sentiment and playing into this image of the degenerate, primitive east but with "russia" being the stand-in for "eastern europe" are proving my point exactly, these are synonymous to them, they would not be able to point out a russian from a crowd of moldovans, belarusians, lithuanians, etc. and the only reason ukraine isn't degenerate to them is because in their mind they've grouped us in with the civilized west or whatever. which is why i don't like americans being excessively vitriolic towards russians; they mostly don't actually give a shit about eurasian geopolitics and the devastation russian imperialism has caused for us throughout centuries, it's just conventional, regular westernism of the brain jumping out and they use talking points and stereotypes that are being weaponized against all eastern europeans.

if any americans or western europeans are reading this im just being silly lol i lovee the west yayy european union whoopee finally we too can be part of the civilized western world, now go lobby for your country to send more weapons to ukraine.

[hjhb-the-hdgp]

A thread of a EU politician, deputy director of EU institute for security, exposing once again that Western politicians don't see Eastern Europeans as "real Europeans". Many times seen blatantly xenophobic (assuming the reason isn't complete lack of professionalisn) arguements usually used against Eastern Europeans by xenophobes now posted on twitter and expressed on German TV as russophobia becomes more socially acceptable

[hirkyy]

unsuprisingly, americans are too daft to understand that your republican uncles who grew up with cold war propaganda aren't being "russophobic" when they say russians are degenerate alcoholics, they can not even conceptualize and differentiate between eastern european cultures, eastern europe to them is a monolith fully synonymous to russia (which only speaks to russian imperialism) and they would say the same shit about serbs, belarusians, romanians, slovenians, etc. because it's all the same shit to them. they can't target russians specifically, they can barely fucking discern them.

russophobia isn't real but westcentrism and hate towards eastern europeans from westerners is very real. the "ok but what about americans" argument is the stupidest shit you could come up with in response to me stating russophobia isn't real because russians don't face systemic oppression (it's in fact exactly the opposite). but eastern europeans apparently need permission from westerners to hate their oppressors.

[hirkyy]

yeah. russophobia isn't actually real.

but if you trust me, take my hand... and we will change that... together. <3

[hirkyy]

russophobia isn't real but together we can make it so. take my hand.