@Timmethy2.0 about Russians. Without these stereotypes, the rabid anti-Russian, anti-Putin propaganda being force fed 24/7 to Americans by 90% of the MSM wouldn't have legs.

Western racism and the stereotyping of Russians
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As might be expected of such people Russians in the Western imagination spend their ill-gotten gains in the most dreadfully hedonistic way: on yachts, luxuries, partying and promiscuous sex. If Moscow today unlike during the Cold War is famous for its nightlife this is not something to be celebrated – as it is for example in the case of Berlin – but is all of a piece with the supposedly gross appetites of Russians, making it somehow sinister.

Russia itself is of course all that might be expected of a country which produces such terrible people.

It is violent, corrupt and brutal, ruled over by a government as violent, corrupt and brutal as the people over whom it rules. Like the people it is scarily aggressive, diabolically cunning but also somehow stupid and inefficient. As a result, though it is threatening and dangerous, it is also overweening and in the end somehow absurd.

Needless to say the leader of such a country must be a macho thug, who typically poses topless on a horse. “Ruthless” is perhaps the most common word used to describe him. He is a gangster – violent, amoral, corrupt, cunning and ruthless – like the people he leads.

That this Western stereotype of Russia and Russians is so far detached from reality that I find it impossible to relate any part of it to the truth should not need to be said.
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Negative stereotyping of Russia and of Russians has not only not disappeared; it has grown far more common and become much worse. Indeed it is now pervasive, repeated endlessly in Western films, on television, in the media, and in endless numbers of thrillers, graphic novels and pulp fiction stories. It is so pervasive that no Westerner can avoid it, and very few can resist its influence.

What makes it much worse is that there is no objection to it. Where at a time of Jihadist terrorism and violence negative stereotyping of Arabs and Muslims in the West is rightly and strongly condemned as Islamophobia, negative stereotyping of Russians goes by entirely unremarked.
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It is in the West’s own interests therefore to bring this ugly habit of stereotyping Russians to a stop. This is one example – by no means the only one but certainly one of the more pressing – where the principles the West likes to proclaim – in this case of anti-racism – and its own interests fully coincide.

For that to happen however the stereotyping of Russians – like the stereotyping of all other cultures and ethnicities – must be condemned and identified as the straightforward racism that it of course is.

Some people, mainly the young who never experienced the pillaging of Russia by Americans during the 1990's, are protesting the increase of the pension age from 60 to 65 for men and 55 to 60 for women. They don't remember that their pensions under the USSR had been completely destroyed by the Americans and their lifespan had decreased 10 years due to mass unemployment which brought about alcoholism, suicides and poor health care.

Putin managed to rebuild the country despite massive sanctions by the US designed to destroy the Russian economy and make the Russian people's lives miserable. BTW, I can see the US Deep State's hand in fomenting protests.

Here's a taste of the real Russia.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJqDkc7MciQ]

@Timmethy2.0

#5 #5
"Substitute 'Japs' or 'Jews' for Russians" is a ridiculous comparison. Rightly or wrongly, and the evidence keeps saying rightly, this is about Putin and the Russian government, not the Russian people or their great culture and history. There were protests throughout Russia yesterday, many people there don't like Putin or their government either.