Not safe here?
Saw an interview with Joe Biden that should raise a few eyebrows. He went on Seth Meyers’s show (mainly to dispel “rumors” that he’s senile and unfit to rule and scare liberals with Trump’s return) and then blurted out that he thinks “were there no Israel, no Jew in the world would be safe.”
This is a standard Jewish nationalist talking point. But coming from the President of the United States, this statement carries interesting implications. Is he saying to Jews like me that we’re not really safe here? That as president he believes only an outside power can guarantee the safe existence of my ethno-cultural-religious group within American borders? And that if Israel ceased to exist as a Jewish majority state pogroms and repression and mass murderers would break out against Jews here — violence that he as president would be powerless to stop? Imagine him saying this about any other group of Americans. That only a foreign power can guarantee your safety.
—Yasha
What? Please release me let me go from this ethnocrapism. If I wasn't told from birth I was Irish, I wouldn't have known it. Talk about Imagined Communities. For crying out loud we all eat, fuck and sing ...
Given the lack of direct communication, I offer this semi-tangential note:
from a recent interview w/ N. Khrushcheva:
Diana Arbenina and her rock band, the Night Snipers, [see her YT page] had their concerts canceled in some cities over their criticism of the war, Arbenina spoke out, telling an audience in Chelyabinsk that, though she had been warned to stay silent about the “lawless” bans, she would not obey – and her fans should not obey, either. The crowd cheered, and the show continued; the police did not dare intervene.
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A recent Proekt media investigation calculated that since 2018, when Putin’s current term began, almost 6,000 criminal cases against Russian citizens qualify as political repression. For comparison, in 1956-85 – from the post-Stalin years to the beginning of Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika – there were about 8,000 in total. The harder the Kremlin tries to stave off rebellion, the more likely rebellion becomes.
Unfortunately this interview is tollboothed. I asked for a 'gift' sub. We shall see if one appears.
https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/an-interview-with-nina-khrushcheva-navalny-putin-russian-elections-2024-03
Replies? Discussion of the Night Snipers? What a great name.