I don't know any Jews, even the the ones who are the most hyper about thsi stuff, are afraid that the the pogromchiki are about to be unleashed in Russia or the Slavic countries. Likewise most blacks in America are not worried anymore about being lynched if they look the wrong way at a white woman. The concern is pervasive prejudice. The fact that pogroms and lynching and been almost entirely wiped out _is_ a major sign of progress in both our backward countries. But I wouldn't say that the end of lynching signifies the end of US racism, nor that the end of programs of Russian and Slavic in general antisemitism.
--- On Tue, 8/5/08, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Tuesday, August 5, 2008, 2:08 AM
> In fact, Solzhenitsyn was not representative of Russian,
> excuse me, rossiiskii, public opinion. Since his appraisal
> of the USSR is diametrically opposite to theirs, after
> all... He was seen as a Man of Consience with some far-out
> ideas.
>
> Anyway, I will make a few comments about Diaspora Disease,
> sometimes known as Plastic Paddy syndrome -- be it Irish,
> Ukrainian, White Russian, Jewish or what-have-you. It is
> very marked, and the reason why emigree
> Irish/Ukrainians/etc. are usually much more nationalistic
> than people who actually live in the country. What you have
> here is a case of people descended from people who left
> location X at some particularly personally traumatic point
> in time, raised on stories of their grandparents who lived
> through the trauma. This is usually coupled with little or
> no actual knowledge of the language in the original country,
> and few or no contacts there. Thus, the image fixed in the
> Diaspora's mind is a reified image of the place of
> origin as seen through the eyes of their grandparents. So,
> descendents of White Russian emigrees are still battling the
> Reds in their minds. Irish diaspora members think Ireland is
> covered with idyllic pastoral villages ruled over
> by cruel British oppressors, and oh the Famine was
> deliberately organized by Britain to kill the Irish, when
> everybody in Ireland knows it was blight. For Ukrainians,
> there is a Famine going on in Ukraine. For Jews, there are
> evil pogromshiki everywhere ready to be unleashed at any
> moment.
>
> --- On Mon, 8/4/08, James Heartfield
> <Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > I got the idea that Solzhenitsyn was not terribly
> > representative of much Russian opinion after he
> returned
> > from exile, and felt somewhat out of sorts with the
> new
> > Russia, so I am not so sure what his attitudes tell
> us. My
> > brief brush with the 'dissident' Russian
> diaspora
> > showed me that the their Western handlers were always
> > wincing at the default attitude of the epatriate
> > intelligentsia towards extreme reaction. Solzhenitsyn
> was a
> > bit of an old curmudgeon in the US, where he was out
> of
> > sorts with modern America, and seems to have been so
> on his
> > return.
> >
> > I think the question of east european attitudes
> towards
> > Jews and other ethnic minorities is easy to get wrong.
> I can
> > remember an excruciating holiday in (then)
> Czechoslvakia
> > with an Indian friend (who was often taken for a
> gypsy).
> > All of our party were astonished not at the prejudices
> -
> > coming from London you could hardly say that we had no
> > experience of race prejudice against Indians. But what
> was
> > unexpected was the bluntness with which the prejudices
> were
> > expressed. On the other side of the iron curtain,
> there
> > never was that politically correct veneer of apology
> > covering up the hostilities underneath (or if there
> was it
> > was discredited, being associated with authorities
> that were
> > without authority). I do hear Russians and Poles in
> London
> > express a kind of casual anti-Semitism that shows that
> they
> > do not understand the minefield of western race
> relations.
> > But whether it represents an endemic anti-Semitic
> movement
> > in those societies, I doubt.
> >
> > Also, you have to control for the ideological
> presentation
> > of East Europeans as anti-Semites in western accounts.
> There
> > is an expectation among west Europeans and Americans
> that
> > east Europeans are anti-Semitic and racist. It is in
> fact
> > itself a racial caricature, a western prejudice
> against
> > people from east Europe and Russia.
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>
>
>
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