For those of you that don’t know, there’s this weird trend going around on Twitter where someone says “I’m [nationality] and I hated Russians before it was cool.” I don’t know how it started or who started it, but unfortunately it’s been making the rounds.
While terrible, it is also a bit funny that the people doing this are the nationalities that had associations with Nazis (Germany, Japan, Finland, etc.); like, yeah you would hate Russians considering they dog walked your grandpa. But then again, it wasn’t just Russian people, the USSR was more than just them that defeated the Nazis.
Anyway, it’s just awful Russophobia being completely normalized.
Indeed, it was very revealing to see what people in the west actually think once the taboo on hate was lifted. I do think that this kind of behavior stems from the feeling of superiority. Liberal democracy’s portrayal as the sole legitimate form of governance as a way to sell modern-day colonialism. It serves to justify might is right approach that the west takes geopolitically with western invasions and global atrocities being masqueraded as benevolent civilizing missions. A natural extension of such propaganda is that any culture that resists western domination is painted as inherently evil. We see this applied to Russia, China, and anybody else who dares to stand up to the west.
I’m hoping that the crumbling of the liberal hegemony will force people in the west to do a bit of introspection. It’s going to have to be a similar moment to the one Germans experienced at the end of WW2.