Recently, I was watching the interview of Vladimir Pozner with Mikhail Leontiev, which was broadcast on February 2012. Leontiev, of course, does not stir up a sympathy for me, though we must admit that his explanations of why Russia should remain the same as it is now are within the framework of formal logic. But, the comments under the youtube page were more interesting than the interlocutors. 90% of comments were not about the content of the conversation but Pozner’s nationality, which was spiced with anti-Semitic and racist terminology.
Similar situation is found not only on the Internet. Actually, there is an outbreak of nationalism and xenophobia observed in Russia, which, probably, to some extent, is guided by the Kremlin. Otherwise, if Russian authorities were against such demonstrations of intolerance, they know how to “unkindly” treat the demonstrators, in this case the participants of “Russian marches”, “anti-migration” assassins. Perhaps, there is no need to remind as to when and at what moment the outbreak of xenophobia is spread in the history of this-or-that country, when, to put it mildly, there is nothing to be proud of in the state construction and economic sector.
Under the political and economic difficulties, the citizens of given country need to have some kind of support point, and under hard economic conditions, social solidarity and mutual assistance, which is, of course, an ideal option, can not be such a support point. And the worst option is to look for the guilty, create an image of an enemy, and “play off” the people against it. For Russians, such enemies traditionally were the Jews, but in the last two decades Caucasians, Middle Asian people and generally migrants “successfully compete” with the Jews in this respect.
There is no serious danger of nationalism in Armenia, for the simple reason that ethnic minorities form a negligible percentage among us and absolutely “do not disturb” us in any sense. But since our economic, political, cultural and spiritual situation is also not enviable, some political and public figures are trying to ‘shock’ people by nationalism and xenophobia. Sometimes, these figures have fair aspirations: to activate and mobilize the public. And here, religious or sexual minorities, Turks, Europeans, or Russians imitating the Jews are chosen as targets for “shocking”. But, they are actually false targets, the “struggle” against them is fake, and does not contribute to mobilization of the society at all.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
