Point taken.
Atamasama has given one good answer to your question, but if you wanted, you could argue that the very use of the A-bomb by the USA against Hiroshima and Nagasaki was genocide. I reckon you disagree on that, and victors write history, so let’s leave it at Chechnya and Xingjiang as a matter of opinion supported by some evidence and several governments.
ETA: This is getting messy, I wrote my answer before Typo_Negative answered “point taken”, sorry. Shall we get back to why Russians are hated?
I think that this is a very important distinction. And in addition to this, they’re in the neighbourhood and Putin is also trying to destroy the entire country and, in so doing, is doing something that “just isn’t done anymore” in the post-1945 “polite society” of our neighbourhood.
All of the various slaughters and genocides that happen elsewhere in the world are equally atrocious and awful - I get that. However, and wrong as this is, evil-doing in other hemispheres seem to me as less imaginable, more foreign and distant, plus a host of other things.
There is a term for what you’re getting at here, and it’s “cultural narcissism”. That is, a narcissism of the whole culture, not of an individual, or a bunch of narcissistic individuals.
I’ve most commonly seen it used to explain why certain American cultures have this desperate craving to be dominant. But it can apply to big cultures and small cultures, dominant and non-dominant.
I can’t pull up a concise link right now describing cultural narcissism, but you pretty much nailed it in the OP. Since Russia invaded Ukraine I have been boning up more on Russian history and culture, and watching Russian state media. Now that I’m caught up on it, I share your opinion that Russia likely has the severest and most dangerous affliction of cultural narcissism the world has ever seen.
I feel like white American conservatives are the runner-up for this trophy. In hindsight it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that Republicans and Russians, the world’s two biggest narcissistic cultures, should align with each other in an attempt to dominate all the others.
It’s fucked up but it’s human nature. It’s kind of an international NIMBY situation.
Then why the hell write a racist thread title, and make a racist thread? Why not say what you mean? The only people who generally don’t care if they are perceived as a bigot are, well, bigots. So it’s a rather shitty move.
Also, if you’re trying to reduce your animosity toward Russians, why would you embrace that animosity towards them? The way you get rid of animosity is to stop acting in animosity.
You had every possibility to write your OP without racist statements or attempts to justify those statements, but you chose not to.
I actually very much expected you to get a thorough thrashing for this, which is why I am late to the thread. I am quite disappointed that so many seem to just be treating this like normal conversation. There are a few polite attempts to get you to realize that hating Russians is bigoted, and I do support that as a first attempt. But there are a lot of posters who just seem to be ignoring it.
You come off as bigoted. I would call it racist, though some reserve that for actual races, while I use it for any time someone has a blanket hatred toward a nationality or ethnicity. That animosity you have is racism, and you need to work on fixing it, not coming here and writing a post trying to justify it.
That’s not an insult. It’s a necessary step in overcoming it. Once you know you have this animosity, the way to fix it is to stop behaving with that animosity. Catch yourself when you think those thoughts, and be more circumspect with your actions.
It won’t go away because you will it to. You need practice. But it can be done. I know several people, including my own (noiw dead) grandpa, who got over his animosity. Focus on the huge number of decent people. And then separate them from the actual bad people.
And if you want to discuss Russian culture, make a thread that’s about Russian culture. You can talk about how it seems more accepted to cheat in that culture. You can even possibly try to figure out why—perhaps it is in part due to how brazen and naked the corruption is in their government. All without hating people for their nationality or ethnicity.
Feeling may not respond right away, but they do eventually change. The animosity you feel is a habit. And you can only break a habit by not engaging in it.
On the topic of racism against Russians, remember when James Clapper - former Director of National Intelligence - described Russians as “almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever”? “It’s in their genes” I think he said.
~Max
I don’t remember that. Was he talking about Russian people, or Russian politicians? A link would kick ass.
Almost genetically driven, 3:25 on NBC’s Meet the Press
The in their genes comment was reported as remarks to the National Press Club in Canberra,
He told the Canberra press club the two countries could not be allies because they had irreconcilable differences. It was in Russia’s “genes to be opposed, diametrically opposed, to the United States and western democracies”.
~Max
I watched the link from the beginning, and he was clearly talking about Russian intel people. Not “racially” generalizing about Russian people. Outrage lacking.
This is stupid and unnuanced beyond any need to respond to it. I will say that my title, all five simple words, sought to reduce my complex question down to its essence. If all you can do is riff on my title, and try to give me grief over “racism” and “bigotry” when I am taking the essential first step in combating racism and bigotry by calling into question the roots of my own prejudices and biases, well, I can’t help you. And I don’t much want to. You’re an idiot.
The Serbs, mentioned above, live in a part of the world where “let’s kill all of them and then everything will be fine at last.” Back and forth for centuries.
My aunt Margaret always sent us books as Christmas presents, and in a letter once listed the crimes of the English, including enforced illiteracy. The letter had the line “and that’s why the Irish hate the English, and we always will!” There were only a few thousand Black and Tans, but nobody stopped them from acting in the name of 40 million Britons.
As my Korean MIL lay on her deathbed in a hospital in Honolulu, her mind went back to the 1930’s and she relived the time she saw a group of Japanese solders cut of a little Korean boy’s genitals. Later an elderly Japanese-American woman was moved into the room with her, but shortly after my MIL returned to lucidity and saw her things got ugly and she had to be moved back out.
You’ve probably known people similar to this. You won’t appeal to reason or their better natures in their cases because nations, dictatorships and democracies, can unleash horrific impulses that take generations to forgive. In the not-unique example of the Serbs in the 1990s, it can even lie dormant for generations but then come back as if out of nowhere. That line is always there and we need to do whatever we can to keep ourselves from crossing it.
Do there happen to be any parts of the world where that attitude doesn’t prevail? I’d kinda like to live there.
Austin.
(I don’t know for sure, just a guess.)
Switzerland?
Switzerland’s motto is: let’s have peace with you all and give us your money, but if you invade, we’ll kill you all.
Canada?
Music? Mussorgsky? Tchaikovsky? Rimsky-Korsakov? Stravinsky? Prokofiev? Khatchaturian? All of that leaves you cold?
And Rachmaninov…
It shakes me, it quakes me. It makes me feel goose-pimply all over!
Yes, much of it is artistically impressive. Much of it is also reflective of the culture: drab, gray, pessimistic hopelessness. As a child, one of my favourite classical music pieces was Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, the Pathétique. It has haunting melodies that were both beautiful and very, very sad. Tchaikovsky was dead nine days after he conducted its first performance in Saint Petersburg in 1893, probably of suicide, though it was never definitively established.