Posted on 02/08/2005 7:50:53 AM PST by jb6
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Vladimir Simonov.)
Skinheads are part of Russia's youth subculture, as sociologists believe about 55,000 young people in the country see themselves as neo-Nazis.
Crime reports after skinhead attacks are filled with references to foreigners. An Indian woman miscarried after being assaulted by skinheads on the central Moscow street of Arbat, while a nationalistic gang, Russkaya Tsel (Russian Goal), left William Jefferson, a black US embassy guard and former marine, in hospital. Something similar happened to Peter Taaffe, the general secretary of the British Socialist Party.
Russian sociologists are positive that this is Nazism and not banal youth crime.
The far-right press engages in the ideological brainwashing of Russia's young people. Magazines include the likes of "Pod Nol" (Shaved Head), "Beloye Soprotivleniye" (White Resistance), "Ya - Bely" (I Am White), "Stop" and the Streetfighter, a notorious international racist publication accurately translated into Russian. They promote xenophobia with elegant flexibility, disguising it as patriotism so that the law-enforcers do not shut them down.
A number of right-wing radical political parties exploit the ranks of the neo-Nazi movement. The Russian National Union, the National Power Party, the Party of Freedom and other nationalist organizations see the army of skinheads as their reserves. The latter, in their turn, stand up for their independence, uniting into larger groups like St. Petersburg's Russky Kulak (Russian Fist) with about 400 fighters or Nizhni Novgorod's Sever (North) with over 300.
Veterans of foreign neo-Nazi groups take persistent care of their Russian brothers. Instructors from the Ku Klux Klan and from banned organizations in Germany, such as Viking Youth and Steel Helmet, regularly come to Russia. According to the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights, Western tutors have managed to establish a channel to deliver neo-Nazi literature, audiotapes and outfits to Russia via ultra-right organizations in Latvia and Estonia. This powerful outburst of Russian skinhead activities has resulted in a gloomy paradox. In the run up to the 60th anniversary of Victory in World War II, Russia, which played a major part in securing this victory, has realized it has also caught the Nazi germ. Alongside a war veteran ornate with medals and orders, there is now a skinhead with a stripe on his jacket reading "WP" - "White Power".
This contrast astonished President Putin so much that, in a speech at recent ceremony to mark the liberation of Auschwitz, he confessed he felt ashamed for this part of the new Russia's history.
Yet in 1992 no one had such bitter feelings. Skinheads were then a rarity: there were about a dozen in Moscow, and five at most in St. Petersburg. But they have multiplied manifold over the last 13 years.
So what has changed? In short, a great deal. It is generally referred to as the process of market reforms. The immediate transition from a centralized economy to a market system, albeit a wild one at the beginning, led to a serious economic slump and left millions unemployed. Parents, overwhelmed by the need to survive, neglected their children's upbringing. Family problems left 4 million children and teenagers on the streets - the number of homeless adolescents was just a third less than in the Soviet Union after the 1918-1921 civil war.
Russian streets were filled with "children of reforms" - a bewildered, psychologically confused, uneducated young generation, receptive to any primitive call for violence. Gangs appeared everywhere, and teenagers were held together by one primitive idea - dislike for "foreigners", even if they were from the next building, particularly if these people were of different color.
These sentiments were bolstered by the attempts of new liberal enlighteners to all but rehabilitate Nazism. The great victory of the Red Army in WW II was excluded from school textbooks, because this victory allegedly led to "the enslavement of East Europe by the Soviet Union" and "slowed down Russia's economic progress." If the Red Army had been defeated, Russians would have begun drinking wonderful Bavarian beer decades earlier, the theory's advocates told schoolchildren. Newsstands offered cheap editions of Hitler's Mein Kampf and Mussolini's Doctrines of Fascism, while it was impossible to find any anti-Nazi literature as it seemed too far to the left. Alexander Tarasov, a prominent sociologist specializing in youth problems and the Russian skinhead movement, points out, "As textbooks are one of the main sources of information for schoolchildren... some teenagers have concluded that 'Hitler is better than Stalin' and that 'Hitler was right'."
So the skinhead phenomenon appeared, accumulated energy and grew to an alarming scale. To a large extent it was fed by anti-Caucasian sentiments caused by a decade of Chechen crime in Russian cities and the war in Chechnya.
Meanwhile, the authorities became aware of the new and, it would seem, unthinkable threat for Russia. They understood that inter-ethnic hatred and the ideology of white supremacy could seriously hinder the creation of a civil society in Russia to protect human rights. They declared war on skinheads.
In summer 2002, the State Duma adopted a law on counteracting extremism. The police and prosecutors received a tool to prosecute skinheads if they took to knives and metal rods. In 2004, 60 criminal cases were opened against all kinds of xenophobes, including skinheads, and at least ten fighters were convicted. The national police database includes 457 leaders and activists of skinhead groups that are under surveillance. The Press Ministry closed 12 racist newspapers; unfortunately, most of them immediately reappeared under new names.
However, the guys in black with bars have reached the provinces as well. Sociologists predict a second skinhead wave. Human rights advocates are urging the authorities at all levels and all of society to repulse this threat. There is a hope that the forthcoming celebrations of the victory over Hitler will help vaccinate young Russians against the skinhead epidemic.
Invite them to the USA, along with all the other terrorists we allow into the country in the name of diversity. Senator Byrd could invite them to join the Democrat party.
Haha that's just classic.
"But they have multiplied manifold over the last 13 years."
Sen. Byrd is probably the most famous sheethead of all..
Someone should tell them that they are not Aryan.
Russia was never considered part of Europe, their history has been one big identity crisis.
You have not expressed your own opinion about this article. I'd be interested in it.
My opinion? There's an airlock on the space station, they should be able to fit into it.
First off, the Germans aren't Aryan either. Aryans are northern Indians and their estranged Roma relations.
As for Russia, got news for you, Europes borders are the Urals and the Caucus mountains. Kieven Russ and its successor states were all within Europe, as the Slavic people originated in Bohemia and moved out in all directions. Slavs used to rule upto central Germany. Siberia is colonized and annex territory and all the core states are well within Europe.
Geography and history, they're not just for breakfast anymore.
Well, not being Aryan has not stopped anyone before. The Germans were not Aryans. The Supremacist groups that claim Aryan heritage are also wrong about that.
Aryan refers to people of the Indo-Iranian language family, which in particular oscillates around certain Northern Indian tribes, certain Iranian groups, and Zoroastrians who were expelled from Persia to India some centuries in the past.
Let me put it this way. ALL groups that call themselves Aryans (and shave their heads bald, wear bed sheets, or submit to Feuhrers) would probably lynch a TRUE Aryan if they ever met one. And if you want to find real Aryans you would need to travel to certain parts of India, and a small section of Iran.
The reason the kook groups use the term Aryan is because in Vedic Sanskrit (a language found in and around the Indian sub-continent, and considered over there as holy) it means 'noble.' This meaning was mixed with a falsey construed 'origin story, ' and suddenly Nazis were Aryans, Jews were a slave race, and ovens and Zykon-B were turned on.
Stupidity knows no bounds. And it also tends to be extremely ignorant since most of these groups (be they in Russia, Germany, or the USA) do not even know the meaning of what they claim.
What would make me laugh is if a true Aryan group in India tried sued the Aryan Nation for defamation. The suit would probably not get far, but it would be a hoot (and one case where i would find it ok for lawyers to try and make a quick dime). LOL.
All pan movements like to view themselves as the master race. Today's most scary pan movements are, in no particular order, the pan Sinic, pan Slavic, pan Islamic and pan Nordic movements. Increasingly, these movements coordinate under the umbrella of National Bolshevism. It is only a matter of time, IMHO, before the pan Sinic movement joins them. The direction of the pan Islamics is difficult to assess. The pan Sinics, while bemoaning "separatists" never really distance themselves from the Islamics. The pan Nordics (inclusive of most Western neo Nazis) are in bed with them. The pan Slavics profess anti Islamism based on hatred of Chechens and Balkan Muslims, but share a hatred of Jews with them. Also in their sights are Blacks, Whiggish Anglos, traditional (e.g. believing in both Testaments and the special role of Israel) Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. In order to grasp just how dangerous all of this is, I point Freepers to consider one Thomas R. Pochari, Jr. Go and see what you find.
By the way i'd appreciate any and all links to this. Seems interesting.
If I can find some time I can look for the links. Google on National Bolshevis and you'll find lots of stuff, some of it will be pretty sick s#&@.
Make that National Bolshevik - fingers slowing down late in the day!
dumb, dumb, dumb
Russians ARE Aryan. They belong to the Slavic branch of the Indo-European/Aryan family. The other branches are the Nordic (Germanic-Scandanavian), the Italic, the Greek, the Indic, the Irani, the Hittite, the Tokharian etc. In fact the "purest" Aryans would be from Iran, the land of Aryans
Well, the Germans, etc. are all bastardized Aryans, mixed with other races/groups. Does that imply superiority/inferiority? not really. However, Hitler took the Aryan philosophy to try and give Germans a past beyond the time they were civilised by the Holy Roman Empire. Germans were barbarian cevemen at the time of the heights of Aryan culture (in the Harappan valley, Persian mountains and Hittite empire around 2000 B.C.)
Russia is a mix of Asian and European influence.
"influence" -- cultural to some extent, yes, but racial, no. The Mongols, Tartars etc. kept mostly to themselves but there is some intermixing. In any case, Russians, to a large extent ARE Aryanic -- about as much as Germans.
In some respects yes,
Russia is more Slavic Asian. The Germanic tribes were different.
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