Former British Colony in Downward Spiral of Ethnic Violence, State Security Impunity

[Gilrandir]

To hide behind 'all lives matter' is simply a smokescreen to hide your lack of understanding of what BLM really means. Of course all lives matter, but seemingly some matter less to you.

That's your arbitrary opinion. Just like I might read BLM as other lives don't.

Why is such a nuanced treatment reserved to your countryman, who was definitely a pretty ruthless mass killer on par with Che Guevara. It has to be objectively certain he threatened more people with guns than Floyd did, if that's what it takes.

BLM: The murder of George Floyd is another sorry episode in our deeply unjust system of policing and governance.
Gilrandir: But he was no angel.

Anyone: Wasn't Bandera a war criminal?
Gilrandir: We have to take the good with the bad.

Aren't you tired of this Bandera squabble?

He was no angel, you are right. BUT: he spent most of his life before WWII in the Polish prison ans during WWII in the concentration camp. Mass killer from prison?

Then, to call someone a war criminal you should have a court's decision. The trial that could have done it was the Nuremberg trial. Neither UPA nor Bandera were found guilty of war crimes there.

Well then, that's an interesting worldview. I don't understand how to make it consistent with your earlier criticism of Floyd or the likes of Zelensky or Putin though, if all those individuals are no better or worse than you.

Evaluation is always subjective. For some people Putin is a god, for others a devil.

The famously egalitarian Soviet Union in which non-Russians could count on the good will and protection of the Russian state. It would be truer to say everyone in the Soviet Union had free housing than that there was no racism. There was no racism in the Soviet Union the way the Western (white) working class were living in desperate poverty, waiting for their moment to rise up against the capitalist class, which is to say it was just legitimating propaganda.
The documentation of formal and cultural racism in the Soviet Union is so overwhelming I have to believe you're trolling me.

People of other races than white in the USSR could be counted on the fingers of a hand. How can you find racist practices in a country with virtually monorace? It is like to try to calculate the number of car accidents in a village where there are no car owners.

We were 150 years ahead of you in the Declaration of Independence, but it didn't solve that problem for posterity.

See above.

All the minorities Stalin massacred, deported to Siberia/Central Asia, or merely imposed legal discrimination against, are erased in this telling. And Stalin himself had a particular animosity toward Polish people.

The latter needs a proof. But even if he did I don't see how it bears on racism. Xenophobia - perhaps, but racism?

You present a scenario in which the author innocuously wanted to generate a poem about wild animals and cannibals in a dangerous land, and had such a specific meter in mind that he had no choice but to go with Africa.

That's insultingly stupid.

You identify no evidence for such a process, and it is made preposterous by the inclusion of references to gorillas, sharks, and crocodiles - to fit all these words into a bare meter requires premeditation on the text. So the author almost certainly set out to write about Africa, relying on assumptions and tropes about Africa that were widespread around Europe at the time, which tropes you must acknowledge as racist. You also suggest he could also have considered writing about the Amazon, Indochina, or Australia instead, somehow not realizing that this reinforces the racism, since in all cases these were perceived as wild lands full of wild animals and similarly-wild people. How did this escape your notice?

But in the first analysis, the poem is itself racist in its actual content, and the content cannot become non-racist by appeal to convenience. Prioritizing the metrics - as if that could even possibly have been the primary consideration - to justify that content is itself racist. The author could at least have averted the overt racism by writing about a fictional place, though the very concept would have been inescapably informed by his context.

I offered a possible usage of Africa, you gave your take on the issue. I don't see why yours is better than mine. Even if we accept your view that Chukovsky was painting Africa as a dangerous place, why is it racist? Is saying that Queens/Harlem a dangerous place racist? I am more inclined to think that calling Africa a dangerous place is more like "everywhere outside our Soviet Motherland is dangerous".

I repeat: as long as can remember myself a Soviet kid teachers and TV were talking my ears off with stories of poor Africans who were oppressed by capitalists from Europe and poor black Americans who were tortured by KKK. And the mission of Soviet country and all its citizens is to help them in all possible ways. So talking of racism in the USSR as a part of ideology is ridiculous.

Of course, we know that's not what's going on here, but let's say it were and Black Lives Matter were all about the valorous martyr George Floyd and his slaying at the hands of the dastardly lawmen. That would still be more salutary than whining about it in light of the "other extremity" of state violence and impunity.

As I was told by Sarmatian once, you can never form an objective opinion of events which are going on in the street outside your house. You have to be geographically and emotionally removed form the epicenter to do that. While geography can be debated, emotions are often crucial. Being emotionally invested forbids you from being objective.

In a racially-unequal society, to treat people equally the inequality must be corrected. This should strike you as trivially correct, yet you implicitly accept the maintenance of racial hierarchy when you say "their race shouldn't be an issue."

As long as crimes and brutality are concerned it shouldn't. A murderer should always be a murderer. If you implicate race OJ Simpson isn't found to be one.

But do black lives matter? If you can't say black lives matter, then saying all lives matter is just a lie and a red herring to diminish the cause of justice.

I can use "black lives matter" only if after this sentence comes a continuation like "as well as other lives do".

You've definitely presented as being biased in one direction, so if that is something you prefer not to be you should re-assess your worldview.

Can I apply this conclusion and advice to yourself?

You remind me of the Russian-language radio host who vehemently objected to the sight of "white boys and girls kneeling for a black."

I support it when a black deserves it. Not just because he is black. Otherwise it is like on March 8 people of the USSR congratulated women on being women.

That is similar to the stated intent of the Minneapolis city council. Police departments have been disbanded before, and there have been many advocates of doing so in particular cases today as falling short of outright abolition.

Doesn't it reek of collective responsibility? If some policemen (especially black ones) had nothing to do with the crime and moreover condemned it why should they be fired? And can they sue the city and be reinstalled in their jobs?

I wish you had read a little about the debates in this country over the past month-and-a-half, since if you had you would have more perspective on both the extant problems and the possible solutions. They're far from parochial debates, and can give insight to civil-police relations and strategies anywhere, so you won't be bored.

I can respond with your lines:

It's America-centrism and a lack of global awareness, which you can and should criticize.

I have my own joys and sorrows to pay events in the USA more than a cursory attention. As probably you do about events in Ukraine or anywhere else outside the US.

And another sidenote:
if you pick up a week old debate don't expect me to react to 29 (!!!) comments of yours.