The following passage could be used to teach students about understatement:
Remember the jingoistic, post-9/11 days of “freedom fries” and “freedom toast,” after France declined to join the U.S.-led coalition? Well, in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the global backlash it has prompted, Russia is experiencing something similar, only intensified by total state control of the media.
Freedom fries are child’s play compared to the anti-American hysteria that is engulfing Russia. It is a mistake to connect it to current events, though, since it always existed. It maybe took a tiny little break in the late eighties and has been getting ramped up like crazy since the late 1990s.
What’s different in today’s anti-Americanism in Russia is that it is now a lot more racialized than it ever were. Ritual lynchings of President Obama and enormously offensive racial jokes proliferate. And according to the most recent poll, 17% of Russians believe that a nuclear war would be a great idea. This number is growing but it’s heartening that at least some American media have started noticing what is going on.
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