We haven’t had a Q&A session at this blog for a while, so let’s conduct one now. Ask questions in the Comment section and I will answer.
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Clarissa's Blog 
Linked to the previous post that you just published (on essential life skills) and the post the other day about how you get on: how do you keep finding the stamina and willingness to manage your psychological health all the time regardless of what happens? How do you get past being fed up or overwhelmed? Sorry if this is too personal a question, but I was really stricken by these two posts of yours.
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There are many tricks I use to replenish psychic energy. Today, for instance, I tried one of my favorite ones. I went to a store and bought a dress and earrings of the kind I never use. Changed in the store’s bathroom and then went on to do my errands, pretending I was not me but a completely different person. I’ve now stopped at a coffee-shop where I ordered a beverage I never drink. This is a very refreshing exercise.
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This is fascinating! I have to try it. Do you return the dress afterwards?
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No, I used it to shock my husband who is still insisting it’s a nightdress. 🙂 It was $26, so it isn’t like I ran into a huge expense.
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What’s the origin of your fascination with the Spanish Civil War?
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How do feel about the charges that Chris Hedges plagiarized some of his work?
A quote from the link below:
“Without professional writing staffs of journalists or correspondents, eighteenth-century newspaper printers relied heavily on an intercolonial newspaper exchange system to fill their pages. Printers often copied entire paragraphs or columns directly from other newspapers and frequently without attribution. As a result, identical news reports often appeared in multiple papers throughout America. This news-swapping technique, and resulting plagiarism, helped spread the ideas of liberty and uphold the colonists’ resistance to British Parliament.”
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/06/plagiarism-theft-fraud-betrayal-extenuating-circumstances.html
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I’m very opposed to plagiarism, for obvious reasons, but I read the article about Hedges and I don’t see any plagiarism. The part about “plagiarizing” Hemingway is downright risible. Everybody quotes Shakespeare all the time, for instance. Is that plagiarism, too? And mentioning that “Less than five percent of the $175 million recovery package was spent addressing the most pressing concerns in the city” is simply stating a fact of reality. How is that plagiarism?
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You have gone to university in three countries. I get the impression you didn’t have much respect for the Ukrainian experience, you loved McGill, hated Yale, and now you are teaching at an American university in a smallish city.
What are the differences between the three systems? Is there much difference between the Canadian and American system? One of your readers got into a huge amount of debt in order to get her PhD. How did you manage to avoid that? Is this possible for the average student? Have you seen any changes in how the universities function in the last few years? Why have administrators become so powerful and highly paid?
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I did get into some debt while in grad school but that was solely a result of my own complexities. I can’t live with a roommate, can’t eat cheap food, have to have fresh fruits and vegetables all the time, and have to travel to the Caribbean once a year. I had very good funding, really can’t complain but I believe the word “frugal” is an insult and just have to have my lifestyle. 🙂 An average student should either forget about grad school or try to be less chic. 🙂
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Another attack against academic freedom: http://nvonews.com/unprecedented-professor-fired-for-questioning-global-warming/
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You may have written about this before, as I know you’ve written a lot about identities. There is a stereotype that goes with many nationalities: Canadians are polite but boring, Americans are warm and generous but loud and sometimes boorish, Germans are efficient, Italians are hot-tempered, French are aloof, etc. These stereotypes obviously don’t apply to everyone. Rob Ford is so un-Canadian. And yet, they exist for a reason. In Florence last summer I saw beautiful, well-dressed Italian men, and American tourists wearing T-shirts that said “I Love New York” and baseball caps. There does seem to be an element of truth to them. Do you think there is any validity to these stereotypes? What do you think are the most important factors in the creation of a national identity (if there is such a thing)? Why are Canadians and Americans increasingly different?
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National identity sucks.
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My fiance and I are eloping in Montreal in January. Any suggestions of fun things to do while we’re there?
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Good for you!! Congratulations!!!
Le Filet is the best restaurant in Montreal currently. It isn’t cheap but the food is sensational. And it’s tapas style, so you don’t have to order a lot.
Don’t eat in Old Port, it’s too touristy. But do go to Le Cartet for Sunday morning brunch. But go early because it’s super popular. There is also a huge selection of chocolate at that place from different countries in the world.
In Old Port, there are some really great galleries. And small boutiques with cool clothes and shoes. And there are open-air stalls with frozen maple syrup, made right in front of you. Yummy!
Go to St. Denis to visit the small shops, jewelry stores (amazing inexpensive amber!) and the Rockaberry cafe for the best hit chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream.
When it’s cold, you can walk in the underground shopping center downtown.
The Musee des Beaux Arts has cool exhibitions all if the time, so check it out.
You will have tons of fun!!!
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Thank you Clarissa! These are great suggestions!
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Are you planning on putting the Ricardian link button back at the top of your blog, or must we continue to find it by memory?
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I put it back!
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How do you know when the end is really the end?
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When you stop caring one way or another, that’s really the end.
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Coolbeans to this thread, as I came today to ask a question! Actually, a few: Clarissa, back in the Soviet Union, I am wondering:
1) How did people get to work? Was there some type of public transportation system (buses for example)? My understanding is that the average Soviet did not have their own car, so how did people in the urban areas get to work?
2) How did children get to school?
3) Could one go out and do whatever at any time (say go to a bar), or were there curfews and travel anywhere, even in the neighborhood, was strictly controlled?
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Clarissa, please tell me if only you can answer, and I apologize in advance… But I could not resist Kyle’s question. I am amused by how life in SU is becoming subject to legends…
People who did not have cars went to work by bus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikarus_Bus
At least in my town it was on time and cheap. In larger cities – also by tram or subway/metro. The fare system was not too complicated, but there were one-trip tickets and monthly cards. Discounts for schoolkids. There were no curfews, and travel within the SU was practically unlimited. With the exception of areas next to the border.
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No, of course, anybody from the FSU can answer. 🙂
I’m from a very big city, and we had the subway, the trolley buses and trams. Most kids went to school close to home, so they’d just walk. It’s like in the US, you were assigned to a school by the subdivision where you lived. I was an exception (ain’t I always?) in that I went to school far from my house. It was a specialized school with an emphasis on English. I took a trolley and a tram to get there. The trolleys were always full to the brim and you had to push and shove to get on them, so I mostly just walked.
There were no curfews but there wasn’t any actual nightlife so it wasn’t like there were places one would want to go. Even my mother got out of work, she’d go on a hunt for food and would come home late because of that.
I disagree as to unlimited travel, though. Nobody would sell you a train ticket unless you had papers from your job showing why you weren’t at work and why you needed to go there. Many towns were closed to visitors altogether because they had defense plants and facilities. Those towns didn’t even have names, just numbers.
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That really sounds kind of dehumanizing, towns without names.
“I am from town 604.”
If you wanted to visit family or friends in a different town, was this possible? Or did you need special permission from the government to engage in the travel to do so?
Also, how did one obtain a job/career in the Soviet Union? Like was it assigned to you based on how you did in school, or could you try to choose which job? For example, if you did well academically, could you choose to go into a particular profession, or the government still decided for you?
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People chose their professions freely. After graduation, they were assigned jobs in their discipline. There was no job search, no CVs, no unemployment, no job market. Normally, for the first 2-3 years after graduation you were sent to a job in a different city, unless you had connections. I actually exist because of that practice. 🙂 My father graduated and was sent to work in Lugansk, the city where my mother worked. And that’s where I was born. And my husband’s parents met the same way.
And yes, of course, we could travel to see relatives. And we did way too much of that to my liking. 🙂
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Seems you might have preferred if there were some restrictions in place on visiting relatives 😀
If assigned a job in a different city, how did you get living arrangements? Were you just assigned a random apartment when you arrived?
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People were assigned to dorms if they wanted. But my father living in a dorm is a preposterous idea, so he rented a room. My mother lived in dorms since the age of 15 and she is still traumatized. In the dorm, they weren’t allowed to sit on the beds but there were no chairs. I guess they were supposed to just stand all day long.
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—Nobody would sell you a train ticket unless you had papers from your job showing why you weren’t at work and why you needed to go there.
I guess this depended on destination. From where I lived, one could just buy a ticket to Leningrad, or Moscow, or Crimea, or Riga, for example. It was tricky because of shortages of everything, including tickets to popular destinations, but one did not need to ask government’s permission.
—Many towns were closed to visitors altogether because they had defense plants and facilities.
This is true. My own town was closed to foreigners (because of a heavy bomber base) but Soviet citizens could enter it without special permission. On the other hand, there were much more “closed” cities. I actually know at least one such city which is still “closed”. Soviet/Russian counterpart of Los Alamos… Local girl had to get special permission to invite her boyfriend from Moscow… In the 90-ies.
One could choose a job/career. Note, however, that there were entrance examinations at the universities. So one had to be good at whatever one had chosen. (And in many places – not to be a Jew). After finishing with higher education, one had to work at a position assigned to him/her by the state for three years. Sometimes in remote area. One could get out of it by bribing corrupt officials. After three years one was free to choose where one wanted to work.
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Did you guys get vacations at all?
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Whoops, meant for that to be right under valter07’s last post.
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I’m very glad the thread is getting so animated. Thank you, Kyle and valter07.
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Thank you Clarissa for answering all of my questions.
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Yes, there were vacations but you had to take them whenever they were offered. We hardly ever went on vacations as a family because my mother always got hers on summer (she was a teacher) and my father never got his in summer. My father’s vacations were normally in March or in October.
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One other question I have (actually, I could probably write a whole book about questions I have on life in the Soviet Union for the average citizen), is if you were assigned a different city to work, how did you arrange a living place? Was it just assigned to you?
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People were assigned to dorms if they wanted. But my father living in a dorm is a preposterous idea, so he rented a room. My mother lived in dorms since the age of 15 and she is still traumatized. In the dorm, they weren’t allowed to sit on the beds but there were no chairs. I guess they were supposed to just stand all day long.
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Why weren’t they allowed to sit on the beds and how was this enforced?
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“Why weren’t they allowed to sit on the beds and how was this enforced?”
– So that the bedding wouldn’t crumple, I guess. There were constant spot-checks by inspections.
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You have mentioned from time to time that in Ukraine, and maybe Russia as well, women tend to want sex more than men do. Does this mean that there are a lot of male sex workers to take advantage of this market of horny women?
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Crowds of migrants from poorer Muslim FSU countries have come to Russia. (And some to Ukraine, as well). They are even more sex-starved so it’s all been evened out.
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This is true? Ukraine and Russia, here we come! 😀
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How does one manage to have a fulfilling professional life that also leaves time for personal development? I’ve realized that I’ve been using university to postpone becoming an adult, more or less (and I’m working on this fear of adulthood with my shrink) and one of the things that scares me is that I see vibrant, interesting young person after vibrant, interesting young person getting a job and becoming sad people who veg out in front of a screen all the time they don’t spend working and who complain endlessly about adult responsibilities meaning they don’t have time for anything. I really don’t want to turn into that sort of a person, and you’re my best model for someone who has a job *and* fun *and* continued personal development, so I could use any pointers you might have.
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Yes, I’ve seen this a lot, too! And it’s so sad. But this phenomenon isn’t really connected to one’s professional responsibilities. Intellectual inertia is very common. I will write a post later on how to battle it.
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An offbeat question:
If there’s a book you want to read in a language that’s inaccesible for you (let’s say Swedish or Turkish) and you have equal access to translations in English, Spanish and Russian which would you choose and why?
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I always choose English in these cases. I find it easiest to read in English and, besides, an English translation is much more likely to be good than Russian.
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So one thing that I don’t understand is that, far as I can tell, you are a person who values her privacy very much and is even sometimes flustered with unscripted social encounters, but nevertheless loves parties and going out to bars. How does that work?
The reason I ask is because I find active informal socializing to be harrowing, and always assumed this was a byproduct of my extreme introversion. It puzzles me to see that’s not the case for you!
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A small correction: I don’t like parties, especially the American kind where you have to eat standing up and walk around trying not to look too forlorn. And bars are the best place to be alone and introverted. 🙂
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Okay, hm! Well, I was mostly going by your description of (parts of) grad school. I think I remember a post or two somewhere that said you compensated for the lack of partying during your late teens-early twenties by partying really hard during grad school. Was this the case?
You know what you like and don’t like, of course, but I hope you can see how I got my impression.
Would still like hear more on your approach to partying, though. My usual approach of dreading the occasion, treating it as a social experiment to be observed from the outside, and then secluding myself in a dark corner with zero to two inebriated conversationalists only works well enough for me to enjoy myself half the time.
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“My usual approach of dreading the occasion, treating it as a social experiment to be observed from the outside, and then secluding myself in a dark corner with zero to two inebriated conversationalists only works well enough for me to enjoy myself half the time.”
– And welcome to my world. 🙂 I only went to those parties back in grad school because there wasn’t anything else to do. It isn’t like anybody studied or anything like that. I was miserable and I was punishing myself by doing things that made me miserable.
But you know what? It’s perfectly fine to be like you and I. I’ve lurked in so many corners at so many parties that I know for a fact that the best, most intelligent, worthwhile people are hiding there.
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Haha! I was hoping for words of wisdom, but I guess camaraderie is as good. If not better.
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Here’s an interesting paper on moral dilemmas using English, Spanish learners and Spanish, English learners.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0094842
The dilemma:
“We used the “footbridge” version of the trolley dilemma [23], where one imagines standing on a footbridge overlooking a train track. A small on-coming train is about to kill five people and the only way to stop it is to push a heavy man off the footbridge in front of the train. This will kill him, but save the five people. A utilitarian analysis dictates sacrificing one to save five; but this would violate the moral prohibition against killing, and imagining physically pushing the man is emotionally difficult and therefore people routinely avoid that.”
A comment made in the analysis:
“For example, Spanish-speaking societies tend to be more collectivistic than English speaking societies [27], [28]. If using Spanish primes such norms, it could lead one to prefer the common good over the rights of individuals. This could have led participants in Experiment 1 who used Spanish as a foreign language to push the man to his death more, not because of the foreign-ness of the language but because of its associated norms.”
Is this true? Or is this Anglo moral superiority using stereotypes of southern Europeans?
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I wouldn’t push the guy off the bridge. I know myself and I’d just freeze and stand there terrified. I can’t really imagine anybody who’d have the presence of mind to calculate the degrees of damage instead of just freaking out.
But even if I had the time to ponder, I’d still not push the man off. Unless the other folks were people I knew.
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IMO, I don’t think the human brain is really capable of making such a calculation properly in such a small instance of time regarding such a huge decision. You’d need a minimum of probably three to five minutes of being alerted as to what would happen and told your choice of decisions. There could also be legal repercussions which you might factor in as well.
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And a person who can calculate the legal ramifications in such a situation is a srange person indeed.
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It is sad, but in today’s ultra-litigious society, it’s a legitimate concern. There have been people who tried to help an injured person later end up sued by said person, for example. In this particular example, I was thinking there could there be ramifications for pushing one person onto the track to save others. I don’t know how that would play out legally.
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I would be curious how you managed to overcome your fear and learn to drive. I am in my mid-30s and I have been trying to get over my fear of driving, and learn to drive well for the past decade, but haven’t managed to do so. At this point, I am beginning to think it’s partly psychological. Any tips for someone like me? Thanks!
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My problem with driving turned out to be a lot more psychological than neurological, contrary to what I thought. We worked on this with the analyst for a while. The question to answer is always, “What benefits do I derive from not driving?” It turned out that I had more benefits from not being able to drive that could fit on a page. It allowed me to be less sociable than I’d have to otherwise, it allowed me to shirk some work-related responsibilities, it slowed me to avoid taking care of my health because I simply couldn’t go see a doctor. It allowed me to feel dependent on my husband. It allowed me to identify with my Dad. It was an effective tool of self-infantilization. I could pretend (to myself) that I couldn’t even mail a letter without a car even though there was a post office right on campus. But I could afford not to know this because I had such a great excuse. I could feel sorry for myself and blame so many things on not driving. It was enormously useful. But when I realized all these things, I didn’t want to be that person any longer.
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Another Soviet questions:
What did you do after a typical day at work or school in the Soviet Union? For example, in America, people come home, eat dinner, watch television, read books, etc…but from what I understand, food was very limited in what was available, so dinner in the Soviet Union I am assuming was not like dinner in the U.S., and most people did not have televisions I am assuming? Were there books available, say at least from a public library, or none of those even? What did people do? Were there playgrounds outside for children?
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No, everybody had TVs. They didn’t have a lot of channels, though. First we had 2 channels and then 2 more were added. There is this joke about a guy turning on the TV, seeing Brezhnev and switching to a different channel. There he also saw Brezhnev, so he switched again and again saw Brezhnev who wagged his finger at him and said, “I’ll show you how to look for something better!”
It was an effort to find food but the effort was made. Paradoxically, I think we ate better than an average American because all our food was homecooked from scratch. People were very inventive and house-proud and created elaborate meals out of limited supply. We are a very meal-oriented culture and sitting down to an abundant and beautiful meal is crucial.
There were many playgrounds and things felt very safe. When I was a kid, we played outside all day long with no adult supervision and it was great.
Things were in short supply but people got very inventive and created everything out of nothing. You wouldn’t believe the beauty of my apartment back in the USSR where I grew up. My mother is very talented at interior design and into arranging beautifully laid tables. When I traveled to England back in 1990, I stayed with two very well-off families. They had huge houses but the interior design and the sophistication of their food was actually quite inferior compared to ours. I’ve seen such beautiful food back in the USSR, made by regular people, that I can’t say I’ve seen anything as amazing since. And I go to very expensive restaurants here. 🙂 I remember once for the World Cup, a family friend made a cake that looked like a football. And you could remove each pentagon because it was like a slice. Such a beautiful thing! And the cake my grandma made for the Olympics of 1980! I was 4 but I still remember how stunning it was visually and how tasty. A lot of time went into cooking and people competed over who’d produce the most beautiful and complex meal. And also everybody knew how to sue and knit. Even I learned when I was a kid. 🙂
Precisely because things were in short supply, food, clothes and interiors of homes got so much attention and were very sophisticated.
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And since there were no restaurants or cafés, people would gather with friends and relatives for long sit-down meals all the time. These were very long, complex meals. I still don’t get American dinners where everybody is done in an hour. No, we sit down fir hours, for food, conversation, singing, etc. We sing when we eat a lot, usually during dessert. Everybody would have tea and cake while somebody would just break into a song and then the entire table would join. My father always sang The Beatles songs, for instance.
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And books were available, both for purchasing and from the library. With the exception of literature deemed anti-communist, of course. Most people I know had appreciable personal libraries. Some popular books were offered in exchange for certain amount of recycled paper. 🙂 A lot of western classics has been translated. There was an extremely popular TV show where participants competed/played for books.
One could subscribe to a number of newspapers and magazines. One was not obligated to subscribe to “Pravda”, by the way, we never subscribed. There even was a weekly newspaper with translated articles from western press. Of course they were preselected, and direct criticism of the SU did not pass the cut, but the articles were from the mainstream media, not communist ones.
One could completely legally purchase a short-wave radio receiver capable of catching western radio stations. In the cities there were noise generators interfering with western broadcasts, but in the countryside one could listen just fine. And people were listening pretty openly. (Or, more precisely, two groups of people existed, those who listened and those who did not, and each group did not believe the other existed 🙂 ) In the northern Estonia one could catch Finnish TV. Some people made money by making PAL-SECAM converters in their living-rooms and garages…
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My father would listen to the BBC and some American radio channel every night. 🙂 And we were in a big city.
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One question, but if the Soviet government didn’t want people listening to non-Soviet radio broadcasts, why not just outlaw the sales of the radios instead of creating noise generators?
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The KGB was filled with very smart people. They knew there wasn’t anything dangerous anybody could hear on those radio stations. Until this day my father mocks the silly things he heard on those stations. The point was, I believe, to give those who weren’t very happy with the regime a sense that they were doing something dangerous and clandestine when in reality all they did was harmless.
I have to say, you are definitely in no danger of intellectual inertia. This curiosity is very heartening. 🙂
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Thanks 🙂 What is “intellectual inertia” though? I Googled the definition and couldn’t find much at all. Your blog was one of the top entries that came up.
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Many people just stop developing on a personal and intellectual basis. They keep repeating the same ideas and regurgitating the same beliefs for decades. They become limited and boring. There is a natural tendency to become more rigid as we age but I believe it’s our duty to battle the desire to stagnate. When one stops exploring new things, that’s living death.
You are in no danger of this, though.
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Wow, this is all very fascinating! I had no idea Soviet cooking involved so much. I had the idea that the average Soviet just ate potatoes mostly. From what I have seen of Russian and Ukrainian cultures, and some other Eastern European cultures, color is very abundant and important. That is one of the things that I love about those cultures, so it makes sense the efforts at interior design and table making and all that during the Soviet days. How were the televisions acquired? Also how were things like dishes acquired? Was there a store or was it where you went and waited in a line? Also, did people have refrigerators and freezers, or did food preservation have to be done in different ways?
In America, things like home cooking, sewing, do-it-yourself on things is making a comeback. America used to be like that back in the 1800s, but then when the Industrial Revolution really kicked into high gear and appliances and supermarkets and all that became widely available, it eased up life so much that people wanted nothing to do with the old ways and ended up forgetting about the old skills. When my mom was a kid back in the 1950s for example, nobody wanted handmade clothing or hand-crafted furniture, the big thing was to buy things like that store bought. Now, culturally, it seems like we are seeing a reverse in some ways, where hand-made clothing, scratch-made cooking and meals, etc…are what everybody desires.
Bit of a side issue, but from an anthropological viewpoint, your description of the Soviet people’s creativity also is an example of how humans, as an animal, are so adaptable to varying circumstances. I have always been fascinated by the creativity of the human mind.
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There were refrigerators but no stand-alone freezers. There were refrigerators with in-built freezers. The domestic appliances were a disaster, everything always broke down, it was horrible. But again, people who struggle with repairing their appliances all the time are very docile bd exhausted. 🙂
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Speaking of refrigerators – I disagree. The one we bought in 1983 served about 20 years, and was discarded because the rubber seals on the doors disintegrated, it used too much energy, and it looked ugly and made apartment difficult to rent; the cooling part kept working fine.
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Another question, Clarissa and valter07, together you have spoken of things like apartments and garages and living rooms. I am wondering how many Soviets had these? I know the Soviet Union had communal apartments, where multiple families lived together, but how many people had to live in those versus having had their own apartment and/or house?
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How goods were acquired varied from place to place and year to year. In good periods and lucky places one just went to the store and bought things. There was not much variety in terms of models though. Every now and then there were shortages of something, including the TVs. When that happened, labor unions were in charge of distributing desirable goods, keeping waiting lists, etc.
People had wide variety of living conditions. Communal apartments existed, but mostly in large cities. Often they were the former apartments of bourgeoisie or middle class people that were considered too large to house a single Soviet family. In most cases people waited for a long time for the state to assign them a state-owned apartment, for which they then paid some marginal fees. As a result several generations of the family lived in one apartment for a while. But one could also buy an apartment (formally one did not own the apartment per se, but the share of the cooperative). Anyway, one could sell coop apartment/share to another private citizen. One could have a private home. One could have a garage… Not many people could afford all of the above, but many had one thing or another…
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1. Do you still consider the taxicab a symbol of civilization?
2. Are you a young punk scholar?
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Yes,oh the taxicab… My love for them will never fade. Or for what they symbolize. 🙂
I don’t know what a young punk scholar is but I don’t like the way it sounds. 🙂
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What does the taxicab symbolize?
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What did you guys use for toilet paper in the Soviet Union? Did you have to improvise with other things?
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When there was a shortage of toilet paper, we had to improvise. Usually newspapers were used.
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Yes, we improvised. The best improvisation was not going to the toilet.
Let’s not be ridiculous and abstain from ridiculous questions, OK?
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How was the question ridiculous? It was a serious question on my part.
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I read “You Only Live Twice” – a seemingly good and thoughtful article (especially 5-7 parts)
http://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/2013/08/you-only-live-twice/
And this response to it:
http://mosaicmagazine.com/supplemental/2013/08/halkin-response/
Wanted to ask you whether you view the future of Europian Jews as pessimistically as “You Only Live Twice”, and if not so – why? I am saddened to imagine Jew-free future Europe, but if you read those facts 😦
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“For the record, it should be noted that in Eastern Europe and the USSR—the same countries that had hosted the killing fields of the Holocaust—anti-Semitism never really abated after 1945, and at times became even more open and strident than before”
– So Jews were killed in the USSR during WWII because the Soviet people were anti-semitic??? This is just offensive. I can’t remember a similarly egregious attempt to whitewash Hitler’s crimes. Wow.
“for the recent reemergence of explicitly anti-Semitic parties in Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Ukraine.”
– I don’t know what else Ukraine needs to do at this point to prove it is not anti-semitic. This is simply offensive.
Yes, France has degenerated to the point of being beyond pathetic – see the recent Limonov-worshipper from France leaving inane messages on my blog. But that is not about Jews, it’s about France’s rapid decline and turn towards barbarity.
“Not only did the euro fail to sustain prosperity on the Continent—with the exception of Germany, which in time undertook to lower wages and cut welfare payments—but after 2008 it led to a series of national bankruptcies or near-bankruptcies from Ireland to Greece and from Spain and Italy to France.”
– An extremely simplistic and childish assertion.
“Jews had benefited from their identification with the European project as long as “Europe” was a warrant for prosperity and progress. As “Europe” came increasingly to connote disruption, stagnation, and poverty, they were increasingly held in suspicion—guilty by association with a false dream, as it were, and all the more so since many of the charges against the EU”
– Absolutely ridiculous.
“This is quite problematic in itself, and all the more problematic to the degree that Islam overlaps with radical Islam: a philosophy and a way of life that reject democracy, the open society, and, needless to add, Jews. Islamists see Europe as an Islamic-society-in-the-making; attempts by ethnic Europeans or by democratically-minded Muslims to reverse that process, or to reconcile Islam with European and democratic values, are regarded prima facie as “Islamophobia””
– One can’t celebrate the building of synagogues at the same time as condemning the building of mosques. Either both are great or both are horrible.
The article on the whole is extremely careless with data and doesn’t even strive to be internally consistent.
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There is one glaring truth that these articles don’t want to recognize. Three Jewish boys were killed for being Jewish very recently. And they were not killed in Europe.
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I also found this in comments to one of articles:
Click to access dp3006.pdf
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The “Limonov-worshipper” from France will not leave other posts in this blog so tolerant!
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Yes, the truly tolerant are neo-Nazis. Sure enough.
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