Pro-Kremlin lawmaker sparks furore with 'anti-semitic' rant

[Behind the Aegis]

A pro-Kremlin lawmaker drew stinging criticism Thursday for an allegedly anti-semitic diatribe in which he attacked his opponents as "Jews" responsible for the 1917 Communist revolution and for demolishing the Soviet Union.

Oleg Bolychev, a legislator from the ruling United Russia party at the regional parliament in Kaliningrad, branded opponents "Jews, mired in opposition" during a debate.

"At the start of the 1990s foreign spies were infiltrated into our government who oversaw the destruction of our state," Bolychev said.

"You destroyed our country in 1917 and you destroyed our country in 1991," he went on to say during the session of a regional parliament on February 6.

More: http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/afp/140213/pro-kremlin-lawmaker-sparks-furore-anti-semitic-rant

[blkmusclmachine]

1. ,

,

[bemildred]

2. Ah, the old stabbed in the back by (ethnic or religious group of your choice) argument.

Well known to all jingo xenophobes. So much easier than examining your own failings.

[Igel]

3. Close, not quite.

It's not a rant against Jews. It's a smear against their opponents. It's just name calling, and the name they chose to use was an ethnic slur.

You see exactly the same kind of name-calling in Ukraine, and similarly the point is missed--no real Jews need to be involved in the entire discussion, no real Jews need to be under consideration at the present. Jews are actually beside the point. But the stereotypes work to disparage opponents. Even if they're not quite the same as in the US--I dpn't know about differences with other Anglophone countries--they're still a handy a rhetorical device to score cheap points.

It's sort of background anti-Semitism.

[bemildred]

4. Yeah, I remember that when I was a kid in LA, the name used as a simple pejorative.

Generally with the implication you were cheap (and should be more forthcoming with whatever it was they wanted).

I do wonder how many actual Jews they have in those parts today too. Not too many, I would think, though I have read some have moved back.

Which leads me to wonder then, what stereotypes this fellow attaches to the name? I can't really see it from the way he uses it. The only thing I see is "mired in opposition". On consideration, I think he's another anti-semite who is convinced he is just stating facts.

And he definitely does get pretty close to the "stabbed in the back" idea. A notion that always gets my attention, it suggests trouble.

The comparison of 1917 with 1991 is odd too. It's like he's just ranting.

[Igel]

5. American stereotypes focus on greed and money-grubbing.

The Russian stereotype has always been that Jews are as much anti-Russia as they are pro-Jew. Some of this is the "Jews = Christ killers" theme layered onto the idea of Russia as Messiah, the whole 3rd Rome idea or Russian Orthodoxy as the true heir to Peter's legacy.

There's a strain of "Jews are greedy" in Russian anti-Semitism, but mostly they're just shiftless, traitorous, untrustworthy. Some of the "Jews are greedy" really shows up in Bolshevik portrayals of Jewish "fat-cats". Mostly it's that American attitudes can't be read into Russian without this feeling that things just don't sit right. (Which is a signal to a translator that he's got something wrong and needs to put his finger on it.)

Under the Bolsheviks Jews were still hated. Even poor, ghettoized Jews were internationalists, bent on undermining not Russia but the USSR and "socialism in one country." (That nice Communist/Stalinist merging of Marxist ideology with nationalism.) They were simply always shiftless and untrustworthy, pursuing their own ends, not necessarily just money or power for the sake of money. So the doctors plot late in Stalin's life was just more of the same Bolshevik anti-Jewish fervor. Often their goals were indistinct--all that really mattered was that they were traitors and untrustworthy. Inscrutable, so to speak.


Where I grew up "Jew" was an insult and meant you were greedy and would sell out somebody for $. Most Russian I've heard has "Jew" as an insult that just meant you were a dirty, no-good traitor. Perhaps you'd sell out your mother for rubles, so money's not ruled out. But just as often you'd readily sell out any Russian for cheap just because it would hurt him. The ultimate in ill will: They're bad because they're innately corrupt and evil. It makes for the ultimate insult, esp. among nationalists for whom "Xian" is a compliment.

[bemildred]

6. Thank you, that's informative.

Such a useful word! You are right, sort of fits, but just not right, I can't think of any current English equivalent, though I can think of plenty that are used similarly, or have been, e.g. "hippie", "commie", "thug", "stranger", the list is long.

I still remember many ethnic and racial slurs from my youth that one sees infreguently now, but nothing that quite fits that. That feels European. Like the Dreyfus case, or the old jew-baiting propaganda from Europe. When reading about the Dreyfus case, i get this "Why are they doing this?" feeling, it feels crazy.

I suppose given our fondness for money here, it's no surprise we would give our bigotries a monetary cast. Bad people here "waste money", e.g. people on welfare, unlike someone of the order of Donald Trump or Jamie Dimon, who are assumed to be prudent and deliberative in all they do.

[MicaelS]

7. Wait a minute....

So in 1917 the Jews were responsible for the Communist Revolution and in 1991 they "destroyed" that same "glorious revolution"?

Wow. Just wow.

Reminds me of the Goulston Street graffito during the hunt for Jack the Ripper: "The Juwes are (not) the men that will be blamed for nothing."

That one has always had me scratching my head, too.

[Behind the Aegis]

8. And just a stone's throw away in Hungary...

Hungary's anti-Semitic Jobbik party holds rally in ex-synagogue


Hungary's far-right Jobbik party has sparked criticism after holding a political rally inside a former synagogue in the town of Esztergom.

Jewish groups called Friday's event "disgusting", saying it was "insulting to the memories" of Holocaust victims.

Jobbik leader Gabor Vona insisted his party did not want to "provoke anyone, including the Jewish community".

The party, which purports to protect Hungarian values and interests, is the third largest in parliament....

MORE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26201010

theHandpuppet : http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024503941

Some things never go out of vogue, and they simply pick up new followers.

[Loaded Liberal Dem]

9. So.....what exactly is his complaint?

The Jews introduced Communism? Or the Jews destroyed Communism?

[Behind the Aegis]

10. Yes.

Welcome to the world of anti-Semitism.