“It all started with Trotsky inventing racism”

I think liberalism has a strong race-essentialist component where certain races – specifically the Russians and the Chinese – are racially communistic, and therefore bad. But also it has definitely ramped up. There was a period between the dissolution of the USSR and the early-2010s where liberal opinion of Russians seemed to be “improving” (they were characterized as drunken stupid untermensch, rather than evil communists).

“Generalplan Ost”

Racism against most groups fluctuates based on the needs of nationalism. Anti-black racism and antisemitism are the only really constant ones.

Certainly ramped up recently. I wasn’t around for cold war hysteria but obviously they were seen as both nefarious or oppressed by their government then. Then the 90s happened, Terminator 2 has Arnold tell lil John Connor that skynet will trick the Russians into launching nukes to which the kid says “I thought the were our friends now?”

That’s the perception I grew up with, Russians were trying to be like us, but bumbling and drunk, often with a nearly redneck-like knowhow to problem-solving but without the cheer, just a monotone and heavily accented “it works now” kinda vibe, if that makes any sense. Never really played TF2 but the big guy feels like what Russians were must often depicted as: huge, strong, and dumb but capable. Always with those white and blue striped naval shirts.

After Putin came back to power, and especially 2014 and Crimea, it turned back to them being just evil. Never mind what the people there wanted, that’s propaganda!

BTW, Libs wanting Crimea’s return is like them being outspoken that native American territory should be returned… to Canada. Similar vibes now post-2022 with the Donbass.

What goodwill may have been left had been tossed and forgotten since the war in Ukraine. Russians are uniquely evil. I met a native woman recently who is doing documentary work for a few tribes, had Luigi as her phone background, talked about being annoyed by liberals, but when I recommended a movie she looked it up and said “oh, it’s russian…” and her ig stories are frequently about some volunteer dying in Ukraine with a shit ton of tattoos. And it’s in honor of them, mind you. I really didn’t expect that kind of singular view from someone who is strongly leftist, doing the work, and not from a nato country.

I haven’t been able to have any real conversations about Russia since 2022 that haven’t devolved into the fact that it is somehow an evil place filled with evil people doing evil things. It’s totalizing. Even 3 years into a war that has seemingly ground to a halt in the popular mind it’s seems to not only still be present but gotten worse.

But all that is to say is that it wasn’t always this bad, but even at it’s best it was still patronizing and distrustful.

herzl and grun are common russian names, wdym

When the fuck was this? The Soviets backed out of the Israeli settler project

maybe they’re talking about Jews of Russian ancestry

So uh I sort of have an idea what they’re talking about, it’s still being worked on and a lot of its still being worked on in terms of historical research that needs to be done to further pull back the curtains on the whole events surrounding the lead-up to the creation of israel during the late 40s.

It more or less boiled down to the Soviets knew the creation of Israel was inevitable in the post-war aftermath and made a gamble in trying to create either a neutral or socialist aligned Israeli state in order to combat british-american influence to the region during the early stages of the British empire “decolonization” process. It’s such a fucking messy event that I’d blanch at the very thought of sitting in on the Soviet meetings on the very issue.

The whole creation of israel debacle actually really aligns with all the allegations of antisemitism against Stalin during his late life as well alongside the actual perpetuation of antisemitism within the Soviet Union. I suppose one could even call it blowback.