A.J. Smuskiewicz — The Unz Review Feb 25, 2023
AJ in Russia hat. Click to enlarge
I was born in Chicago in 1960, and I’ve lived in the same region all my life. But I find myself wondering every day now, “Where the hell am I? Is this really America?”
It seems to me that the United States of America—including its government, its big corporations, and even its population—has purposefully set out to alienate me, by transforming itself into a strange, alien land that bears no resemblance to the country in which I grew up during the 1960s and 1970s. I’ve been observing this twisted transformation with dismay since at least the 1990s, but the evidence has become abundantly obvious during the past few years that this modern-day America does not want me to be part of it, and, conversely, I don’t want to be part of this America.
About the only time I can still see things that seem like my America is when I’m watching Gunsmoke reruns from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s! That’s pretty sad!
I apparently have nothing in common with America or Americans today, judging from the propaganda messages I am bombarded with by television, the Internet, and other media, as well as from my daily observations of the real world out there. I deduce, as reflected in TV commercials for example, that America is now mostly black or interracial and/or gay or trans. Some commercials aren’t even in English these days, as if the advertisers want only Hispanic customers. Well, none of those demographic categories apply to me. I’m just an old, straight, white dude. I rarely see anyone like me on TV anymore. So, I’m guessing that I must be in the wrong country.
Nor do I see my views or values expressed in the American media. I’m educated in, and knowledgeable about, science, history, and the rest of the world. I cherish individual freedom and independent thought, I distrust all authority and group-think, I despise corporate and government “woke” propaganda, I’m not addicted to technology, credit cards, or Amazon, and I don’t smoke pot or CBD.
I constantly see the exact opposite of all views and values expressed in the media. What is presented as “science,” such as climate change, the COVID pandemic, or transgender ideology, I know for a fact to be pure bullcrap. What is presented as history, such as “systemic racism” or “white privilege” continuing from hundreds of years ago right up to today, I know to be more bullcrap. Yet, Americans just go along with whatever prevailing, dominant group-think the media presents from so-called authorities on these matters. Never never question government, corporate, or academic authorities! And never speak up or speak out with any views that go against the prevailing flow!
Americans have become so damn compliant and satiated in their little materialistic technology bubbles at home that they are deaf and blind to the government and corporate tyranny growing all around them. That’s pretty scary!
As for the rest of the world, Americans show absolutely no serious knowledge of the current events or histories of any other countries. That is no surprise, because they are astonishingly ignorant about their own country.
So, Americans understand essentially nothing about their own country or the rest of the world, yet they are somehow convinced that America is superior to other countries and has the moral authority and divine right to tell other countries what they can and cannot do. And they are all for waging wars in foreign countries that they could not even find on a labelled map, never stopping to question the sick motives of those elites who push the wars.
As for modern-day American tastes in music, movies, TV shows, art, sports, or other forms of “entertainment,” I can’t even begin to understand what the hell they are thinking. Do Americans really enjoy all those stupid juvenile superhero movies? Really? People today just seem to go with the popular flow on everything, no matter how crappy, ridiculous, illogical, perverse, or decadent. They are like conditioned Pavlovian dogs, with their simplistic behaviors and consumerist impulses so easily manipulated and directed by mass advertising.
As for the technology gadgets, credit cards, and Amazon shopping that Americans are addicted to, those things could all disappear tomorrow and I would not care at all. I hardly ever use them, and I don’t need them. And I definitely don’t need or want pot, which only makes people more stupid and compliant than they already are. That’s exactly why the government legalized it.
The zombie-like sheep-like group-think mentality seems to define every aspect of American culture today, based on my observations. This cultural mentality is the polar opposite of my naturally rebellious independent-minded mentality. So, yes, I must definitely be in the wrong country!
My independent-minded views and willingness to articulate them have cost me jobs and income. I used to be a pretty successful freelance writer and editor in the educational publishing business, with a healthy six-figure annual income. That was before wokeness came to totally dominate the business, and before the wokesters became emboldened to brazenly start pushing their overbearing weight around.
Within the past few years, several clients that had been important to my income have fired me for my refusal to write their blatant BS propaganda or for other political reasons. I lost one client because I brought up the non-hysterical side of the climate change debate. I lost a second client because I wrote that some people do not accept the concept of systemic racism. I lost a third client because I mentioned the possible adverse effects of COVID vaccines.
I remember when educational publishers wanted you to write about all sides of an issue. Not anymore. Now, if you want to work as a writer, you have to present only the official establishment woke side of an issue. I can’t do that. It’s not honest. It’s not ethical. It’s not education. Hence, I now have little work.
That is what America thinks of my more than 30 years of experience in the educational, scientific, and medical publishing business. America says to me, “Screw you!”
That pisses me off big time. But the incident that really pushed me over the edge and really opened up my eyes to the ugly evil freedom-crushing reality of what America has become was when my most important client fired me because I refused to get a COVID vaccine. And this was for a 100-percent work-at-home job in which nobody else at this institution would ever meet me in person. This jerkoff client said that they had to let me go because of Biden’s vaccine mandate. And they made sure to tell me that I was the only editor that refused to get the vaccine. I guess that somehow helped them feel justified.
I interpreted this incident as America saying to me, “We care nothing about you or your job skills. We just hate you because you will not comply. So, go to hell!”
So, now I make only about 20 grand a year from my couple of leftover clients. I used to make over 100 grand about ten years ago. Thank you, America. In addition, I have had some of my political essays and videos censored or shadow-banned from online platforms. Thank you again, America.
It did not surprise me that I was the “only” editor with that jerkoff client who refused to comply with their damn vaccine mandate. This was during the same time when I would go to stores and be the only person not wearing a ridiculous face diaper. I was thrown out of a few of those stores when I got into arguments about the masks. That’s when I realized for certain that most Americans are butt-head dumbasses. It seemed as if I was the only person with enough scientific knowledge and independent thought capabilities to understand how silly and useless, and potentially dangerous, those masks and vaccines were.
Butt-head dumbass arrogant ignorant zombie clone group-think cowardly technology-addicted pot-smoking sheep. That is my blunt opinion of Americans today. I do not fit in.
What am I supposed to do? Phone my congressman to complain? Vote for better representation to beat back the idiots? You’re joking, right? After the presidential election of 2020 was flagrantly stolen—and they got away with it—I fully understood the futility of that supposed exercise in “democracy.” The ruling elites who control America will never again allow an election victory for anyone, like Trump, who poses a serious threat to their established order or their army of obedient idiots. So, I will never vote again. Voting today in America is for delusional fools. I’m not gonna be one of those fools.
Based on my evaluation of media reports from Western Europe, the same decadent societal situation exists there. Those countries, too, have become hopelessly destroyed by the woke globalist agenda and mass brainwashing and ignorance. Europe, like America, is gone forever.
Real hope, needless to say, comes from inside an individual’s mind and soul—certainly not from any government, corporation, or other man-made institution. A strong-willed person can still summon up hope in the midst of any dire situation. And I try to do that, drawing on my own inner strength, regardless of the hostile outer forces that are seeking to destroy me.
Nevertheless, in looking around the world, I am seeing one large country today that is offering me some lingering hope in human institutions. That country is Russia. When I look at Russian media, such as the news website and live streaming of RT or other news coming directly from Russia, I often see imagery that I can relate to—things that I can no longer see in modern American media or in other aspects of my American existence today.
Americans are so damn race- and ethnicity-conscious today—Black Lives Matter, Black History Month, TV commercials pushing interracial couples or meant only for Hispanics . . . I never used to be like that. I used to just look at people as individuals, not as racial or ethnic groups. But, hell, if that is the game they want to play, I can play it too! Yeah, I can gladly be ethnicity-conscious if that is now the measure in vogue. I’m proud of my ethnicity and ancestry. I am not black or Hispanic. I am white and, in fact, Slavic, with a Polish and Russian ancestry. I believe that I am even distantly related to Yakov Smushkevich, who was the head of the Soviet Air Force in the early part of World War II and a two-time Hero of the Soviet Union.
Yes, I can see me when I see news reports of current events in Russia. I don’t see blacks or Hispanics. And I don’t see gays or trans. I see white Slavic people. Traditional-type, normal people. Real people with whom I can identify. And I find that observation extremely refreshing, considering the racialized, radicalized, unrelatable BS that I am forced to be exposed to with American media. Russian TV seems less foreign to me than American TV.
I further observe that Russia continues to be essentially a traditional, conservative, rational, healthy, normal society. It has not been overrun by the sick, woke, emotional, hysterical, LGBTQ-BS agenda. In fact, Russia is a distinctly anti-woke society, as are its leaders. And that fact is, of course, the main reason that the ultra-woke U.S. and its woke Western allies are currently waging a war against Russia. Russia is the only major roadblock that stands in the way of their woke globalist domination. They have to defeat Russia to continue to build their globalist utopia hellhole! Russia, conversely, has to defeat them if it wants to survive as a free, independent, distinct culture. That is what the war in Ukraine—including the massive U.S. funding of, and weapons transfers to, the corrupt Ukrainian puppet regime—is all about, in a nutshell.
These observations suggest to me that Russia is very likely the only country today that offers hope for me—hope that a free, independent, and proud people can still push back successfully against the evil and decadent U.S.-directed globalist plot for world control. Putin is basically saying to America and the West, “Back off, you perverts!”
I have become alienated from America, but I think I have found another country in which I can belong—Russia. Russia may not be the most-free country in the world, I don’t know. But I do know, based on my own experiences, that the United States isn’t exactly a free country any more either. And I believe that my demographic characteristics and my personal values clearly fit in better with Russia than with America today.
Okay, so you are probably wondering, “If you think Russia is so great and you hate what America has become, why the hell don’t you just move to Russia?” I can give you three answers: 1) At age 63, I am too old to start my life over in a foreign country; 2) I have family ties here, which are more important than searching for my societal ideal; and 3) I believe that there can be great value in remaining in America while filling the role of a rebel political dissident—something that this thoroughly brainwashed country definitely needs more of.
Thus, I will remain here as an outspoken outcast political and societal dissident, offering my views in political essays, videos, or other means of expression that can, hopefully, escape the bullets of the censors and shadow-banners. I believe that it can also be valuable and worthwhile to just express my views with friends, acquaintances, and people at the grocery store. I may be the only contrary voice that that cashier has ever heard. Who knows how that little interaction might impact her?
I often feel like I’m all alone with my contrary views, but I know that I’m not. I have noticed that a lot of American “conservatives” seem to be looking to Russia for hope these days, and they are strongly supporting Russia in the Ukraine war. I see the comments they leave on RT, Odysee, YouTube, The Unz Review, and other websites. Russia’s message is successfully reaching people around the world and positively influencing them—countering the massive nonstop American-Western propaganda machine.
In summarizing this essay, I will say that I used to be a patriotic American, but I am that no more. How can I be patriotic to a country that, through multiple actions, has shown that it doesn’t even want me?
Today, the United States and Russia are at war with each other. From my perspective, it seems logical for me to root for Russia to win. Oh, do I hear the word “traitor”? Yes, the America government and its corporate partners have indeed been traitors to me and millions of other American citizens. Yet, most Americans are too cowardly, ignorant, and/or distracted by their electronic gadgets to do anything about it. The Spirit of 1776 is, unfortunately, long gone. Perhaps this dystopian American mess will require a foreign power to eventually clean it up.
(Republished from Intellectual Conservative by permission of author or representative)
I feel the exact same way. I lived in two other countries in my life and now after some time back in the states, Russia seems to be the place to go. The immigrants and BLM can have this country. Let the White race be with its own in a country rich in history and morality.
A.J. your article touches all the right cords for me. I do think that your view on Russia is, however understandable, unfortunately off the mark. I have this overwhelming trust that, all considered, Russia is just part of a single plot whereby the good-guy, bad-guy script is playing again, as it has over and over again throughout history.
I had expected since the fall of the Berlin Wall for a change in the pump and dump scheme of world governance. That meaning the US and the collective west changing roles with the so-called ex communist countries, taking us down and putting the rulers previously seen as totalitarians on the pedestal of the virtuous winners. And this, just as a step towards a single, standardised form of total oppression.
We’re almost there already and with the evidently unavoidable heightening of the hot conflict going on, I really think the US will ultimately play the part of Germany after WWII, when all is said and done…
That is the most effective way to keep the heads of whoever is left bowed forever in a trance of guilt, earned due to all the brainwashing manipulations the people go though up until that point.
There is no real battle between those ruling over us, the conflict it is all by design and only the unknowing public, the almost complete totality of humanity, falls for it.
How to get out of of all this? By knowing that everything starts and ends with what we hold in our minds, hearts and souls. We can transcend the words and actions of those weak individuals who simply cast spells on us with deviant propaganda. If we don’t, we are simply complicit in the creation of the distorted reality we find ourselves in.
Reality, in fact, is created first in our minds and this is the real reason why we are entrained via the media: we see, fixate and create first in our minds the vision of the world we are fed with, whether we are for or against that vision. Media of all forms would otherwise have no power, if not regurgitated by each one of us conditioned by it.
We need to fix our vision on what we want as our own narrative and relegate the so-called rulers and their vision to the insignificant role they deserve.
“I believe that I am even distantly related to Yakov Smushkevich, who was the head of the Soviet Air Force in the early part of World War II and a two-time Hero of the Soviet Union.”
Hmmm, a dubious honour indeed.
…at least he’s not looking to ZOGUK for hope! 😅
Good start.
Now get together with people who think the same, and know that the current US regime is on its last legs.
Let the regime fall. HELP it fall — then you can live in a nation you can be proud of again.
And get acquainted with your pals overseas, You ain’t alone, buddy!
To state the obvious, everything this man drones on about in this insipid essay has been brought to America by Jews and he makes no mention of them. On top of that, the man appears to be Jewish himself and a search for his putative ‘distant relative’ ancestor Yakov Smushkevich reveals an image of a man who was an obvious Jew. Even in a small pixilated black and white photograph…Oi, de sufferink!
A little digging reveals that he does in fact have Jewish ancestry:
“Some ancestors of my paternal grandfather—ancestors who were Jewish—moved from Russia to Poland at some point in the past. After settling in Poland, they or their children or grandchildren (or whoever) must have converted to Catholicism and adapted the spelling of Smuskiewicz (kiewicz is a common Polish name ending, and it typically implies a Russian Jewish heritage). Or maybe the Polish authorities just changed the spelling of the family name—the way U.S. authorities have often changed the spelling of immigrants’ names to Americanize them. Then eventually my grandfather moved to America, and here I am today.”
https://www.ajsmuskiewicz.com/a-j-s-essays/my-polish-and-russian-ancestry
Did you get that? They converted to Catholicism. “[A]nd here I am today.”
It get better: “(I sometimes fantasize that I might be related to Dracula on my mother’s side, because Transylvania is also in the Carpathian Mountains, in Romania.) I don’t know exactly where in Poland that my maternal grandfather was from.”
In addition to being a superlative writer, this guy has a lot of class: “So, now I make only about 20 grand a year from my couple of leftover clients. I used to make over 100 grand about ten years ago.”
There were no comments posted as I write this.
How many are saying the same.
“I haven’t felt like my country of birth has been ‘home’ for decades.”
It is probably a mistake to judge Americans or Europeans by the Jew msm; sometimes we do, but it only influences about half the people, the half that is too trusting and not Jew-wise
THE BUBBLE HAS BURST
All over the world we have recently seen
the socialist hoax collapse.
This idea that the rich would give to the poor in the
name of equality is bunkum.
Can you see Mr Rothschild giving away one cent ?
no neither can i.
The USA is bankrupt and plundered the gold in the vaults
of Iraq Libya Syria etc to fight more wars of plunder.
People are wising up they now know of the covid scam
the moon landings the two party political system even the holocaust
scam all exposed.
The cutting of of childrens body parts in transexualism
is a huge evil which has resulted in many suicides
and the government people trafficking has ruined the country
in a massive hate crime,
“Perhaps this dystopian American mess will require a foreign power to eventually clean it up.”
Too bad you failed to mention the foreign power stuffing it up?
What a refreshing post. I’m 100% in agreement with this author. When viewed with a critical eye, one cannot ignore that America is no longer the home of the brave. It has become evil and decadent and Russia has at the same time, shown that it is righteous in protecting its citizens, especially the children.
America has lost all moral authority. She has become the sickening filth of a woman during her periods. With 800 bases around the world, America is the modern-day Babylon holding the world’s citizens captive. It is only a matter of time before America is destroyed by nuclear bombs, which will make 911 seem like a picnic for her demise will be horrific and millions will die.
Our only true hope is an all-powerful God who will shortly intervene and deliver His people from this Satanic mess.
‘Totalitarian’ refers to the politicization.of every aspect of society (in totality)..the wealthy ((French Salon)) educated dog eater Pol Pot (whose unexciting moniker was drawn from ‘Political Potential’..l kid you not!)..beta tested this methodology for the ((technocrats))..
decades ago…(the same for ((Harvard)) educated Mao)…
Of course Pol had the young massacring and imprisoning their population for a ‘Workers Paradise’… whereas nowadays it’s so tranny’s can bugger their kids….
At least …that’s the cover story…
NB: Nowadays due to the rewriting and redefining of language and history..it has become customary to conflate ‘Authoritarian’ and ‘Totalitarian’ ..which of course are quite distinct from each other…
..in the same way that a Tyranny and a Despot have come to mean something quite different from the original definitions…
this hell planet is for slaughter offerers
as written in the “holy” abrahamitic scriptures .
This is exactly how I feel. I’ve sent similar rants in emails to friends for years. Very few of them can handle what I say, and most have banished me to Cancelvainia forever. Well god riddance to those small-minded cowards, I say!
Everything this guy said resonates with me big time. except the weed thing. I like a bit of pot. It helps me from going completley insane in this insane asylum world.
I live in Russia, I left the U.S. in 2015 and would not care. to go back. There is freedom here, freedom from crime, identity politics, perversion, massive corporate greed.
You live in Assyria. You are in exile. Unfortunately, the clean up may take a really short war…
TPTB : EITHER YOU ARE WITH OUR WOKE
(pervert) JEW WORLD ORDER OR AGAINST US !
Amen, Amen and Amen! Im 64 and couldnt agree more. Where is the “Land that I Love” and sang about in my elementary years? As a daughter of a WWII veteran I was raised with patriotic pride and respect for my country but this country no longer respects or serves its’ people. In under 40 years we went from being a friend and humanitarian helper to the bully on the block! Unfortunately, most Americans have a mask on their eyes or suffer from cognative dissonance and are unable or unwilling to hear any real truth! “If you tell a Lie enough times, the people will believe it”. Sad, but true.
The same goes for Scotland. You would not think it was the land of Robert Burns. I will never comply!!!!!!!!
Yeah go visit Commie ZOG Russia, vocally question/deny the ‘holocaust’ fantasy, & get sent to some gulag for five years…yeah some real ‘hope’ there…LOL
I feel exactly the same way toward Canada and for the same reasons. If the Putin government would come clean and expose all of the fake perils that have been used and continue to be used to usher us into the UN-WEF-WHO-NWO control grids, he would have my total support over my own government and likely gain a very active support of most of the people in the West. However, the Putin government will not do that simply because it has played along with too many of the UN-NWO schemes, a sees nothing wrong with the concept of top-down totalitarian rule by stealth and deception in the West. Yet, despite its top-down control of its people its government appears to be more honest and open with its own people. Our governments and the establishment of the West running things on the other hand use layers and layers of sophisticated deception apparatuses, perception management, and various means of oppression through the media, government agencies and various universal diktats. Russia may not have woke, 100% junk TV, and every insane fad of the West, which is good, it is still a nation with a lot of problems and likely not willing to welcome very many refugees from the West fleeing those things.
The top-down systems in both the West and the East tend to regard the human person as no more than numbers, or codes to be be manipulated. If you every aspire into the ranks of any elitist organization in either top-down order you will simply have to do what those higher up in the food chain deem as necessary.
If Russia is no refuge from the mass deceptions, mass brainwashing, and all of the insanity around us, then it is clear that we have to start in earnest building our own refuges in our own nations, even if we have to go underground, and even if we have to become freedom fighters. Whatever we do, we have to wake up to the fact that all of our political systems and parties are top-down controlled and corrupt, and that we as real people have to organize, meet together, work together, deciding on how to advance the things we know are good while opposing and effectively resisting all the things we know to be bad.
This grumpy guy is running out of moola – Mammon is the idol that America and the West worship. Hollywood has glorified violence as sexy, winning as noble, killing as sophisticated ? When I do see tv which is rare I am always shocked by its progression into darkness. The idea of submitting to long sickly corporate adds – like the bank which shows an idyllic moneyed scene with “how can we help you” is actually saying how can we fuck you. The deception and duplicity is everywhere and always has been. When does the frog jump out ? And as for him banging on about weed he is a victim of carrots. He is probably really short and got bullied by a hippie in Florida. If this dude was a proper conspiracy theorist he’d know the game from 1st base. I mean all he needs to do is leave Chicago.
No mention of the Jews in Amerika’s downfall by the gentleman. Either he is stupid or misinformed or he is running cover for them. Jews are really good at diverting attention to the problem THAT THEY CAUSED.
If you can’t mention the Jews as the main causal agent then you are wasting time reading a complainer, not a solver. “everthing has gone to shit, it’s not my country no longer”
He says he grew up in/near Chicago, which has a huge Jewish population, and he looks like a typical eastern European Jew.
@ Ray
We have to unify and organize for real action. It is not just a matter of a mental attitude and ignoring them like some kind of buzz in the background. The evil has to exposed and then cleansed from our midst. They are not content even to let us think or believe as we ought to, based on reality. The Covid operation against us was very real and not only did millions of innocent people needlessly die and lose their businesses, but just in resisting the vaccine mandates millions lost their jobs. In Canada even those in the practice of medicine and in the health-care services who refused the jabs will not be the reinstated.
Our economies are deliberately being surprised with no opposition whatsoever. We are being subject to one mass deception after another to make us more and more dependent on their handouts and to force everyone into their control grids.
We have to UNITE and DO something very SOON.
I agree with A.J. on everything except marijuana, which took a long time and a lot of effort to get legalized in those states that have. As far as Russia, it is a bit of a shining star right now, but the psychos have their foot solidly in the door. They went along with the Covid nonsense just like the rest and they’ve been talking about a CBDC style currency already. Won’t make any difference whether they have gold to back it or not. As far as making a lot less money, so now he has time to write rants, that’s the way the “system of the beast” works. You don’t go along, you get disenfranchised, left out.
As a boomer I take full responsibility for my part in our current diabolicalocracy.
My senses absorbed the seeming logic behind equality of races & copulative practices & even ‘birthday suit’ rejection during my ignorant teens & 20’s- the ‘superior’ jew intellect was everywhere. Yet American soldiers fighting the communists in Vietnam (including my brother) had my full support.
Then at age 27, having by born again, such notions were reversed one by one through the Logos of God- except my position on the Vietnam War.
It took another 30 years for the ‘natural’ enemy of Christ & man to be revealed in my mind. The path got alot straighter & narrower.
So the bulk of life for me was I error & the irreparable catastrophe is fixed into place.
The largest white generation was processed to fail the America that at least respected Jesus Christ & His Word- which was purpose & achievement of ww2.
Is this younger boomer author guiltless?
@Fred B
I agree with you wholeheartedly.
The focus of my comment was actually to highlight that even those who know much about the situation as it is, end up fixating on the destruction on all levels and this neuters them almost as much as those who are completely unaware. So, the deception works for all, unless one realizes that our actions should follow what each of us individually and, finding our similars, collectively want our reality to be, ignoring the diktats of the so-called rulers.
I know this seems easier said than done and it is, but we have to start from our ideals and then have the cojones to follow our own narrative, knowing that there is and will be resistance to it.
That is the beginning of turning the tables, where the apparent rulers try to stop us from doing what we want to do, which is quite different from trying to stop them from what they want us to do – it’s the right paradigm shift. It is always tough for the first (that actually started long ago, although it doesn’t seem that way), but it is inevitably the route towards the desired outcome.
Screnton–I too noticed that he was a bread-head, demoted from 100k to 20 and greedy for his old rates, and Bob Smith tells us of his Jewish ancestry, whose Mammonism is legendary
@Aleister: ‘question/deny the ‘holocaust’ fantasy, & get sent to some gulag for five years…’
I suspect that this is Jewish fake news, aka hasbara. Consider this from the Radio Free Europe website:
‘Russian University Professor Investigated For Holocaust Denial’, 26 March 2021
https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-professor-investigated-holocaust-denial/31171077.html
Note (i) that the professor in question is not even named. But this does not daunt Radio Free Europe, a heavily Jewish organisation since the immediate aftermath of WWII:
‘The statement does not identify the professor, but the chief editor of Ekho Moskvy radio in St. Petersburg, Valery Nechai, said earlier in January that the webinar in question was held by Professor Vladimir Matveyev of the St. Petersburg State University of Economy and the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.’
Note (ii) who is bringing the charge against this professor. This organisation is:
‘Menachem-Mendel Pevzner, a rabbi from St. Petersburg, said his office is pressing charges against Matveyev for hate speech and Holocaust denial, which are illegal in Russia, the news site Jewish.ru reported.
https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/russian-university-fires-lecturer-who-denied-holocaust
The JTA said in 2014: that:
‘Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law making Holocaust denial illegal.
The law signed Monday makes denial of Nazi crimes or misrepresentation of the Soviet Union’s role in World War II punishable by up to five years in jail or a $14,000 fine.’
https://www.jta.org/2014/05/05/global/russia-makes-holocaust-denial-illegal
Where is the ‘holocaust denial’ reference in the above JTA text? It is not there, is it? The JTA text above says no more than hat this 2014 law ‘makes denial of Nazi crimes or misrepresentation of the Soviet Union’s role in World War II punishable…’. There is no reference to ‘holocaust’. And this makes our ‘Aha!’ moment: There is no holocaust denial law in Russia!
Rather, the international Jewish holocaust champions have noticed that there is scope in this 2014 Russian law cited above for a twisting that could make this law serve as a holocaust denial law. Indeed, exactly that has already been done in English law with s127 of the Communications Act 2003. There is no mention of holocaust denial in this provision of English law. Yet Alison Chabloz has been imprisoned four times on this s127. The charges against her were brought by the Jewish Campaign Against Antisemitism. Her ‘crime’ was singing her deliciously funny satiric songs that upset some Jews.
But it seems that the Russian 2014 law of which Radio Free Europe and JTA speak has not become twistable as a law against holocaust denial. If it had proved to be twistable, we would certainly have heard of the conviction of someone, perhaps Professor Vladimir Matveyev , for holocaust denial But we have not heard anything like it!
If indeed someone was charged with holocaust denial in Russia, then that charge failed. If it had succeeded, we would have heard about it ad nauseam. But we did not. This suggests strongly Russian courts are nowhere nearly as ready as are our English courts to comply with Jewish interests. That is why hasbara was taken on the task of making out that there is a holocaust denial law in Russia.
Where, then, are you coming from, Aleister? Are you the victim of hasbara, or are you part of the makers of it?
A fascinating and most informative comment from Sophie. It answered a question that I had about holocaust laws in Russia.
Alison Chabloz’s musical style and vocal register don’t appeal to me much. I still love her though.
Holodomor – Ukraine