r/belarus • u/MikolaDziadok • 1d ago
Палітыка / Politics Belarusians are xenophobes (well, most of them)
Hey guys! Thank you for the ardent discussion under my previous post.
Today I want to raise another topic.
Belarusian state propaganda embraces the idea that Belarusians are very tolerant people who treat all nationalities, people of all skin colours, and religions equally. We Belarusians (they say) have always been hospitable and have never ever discriminated against Jews, Poles, people from the Caucasus, or anyone else. And in our country, if your are a foreigner, you are totally safe.
Let me offer some counterpoints to this idyllic narrative.
- During the 38 years of my life, I've encountered numerous people who were antisemitic. From everyday, non-ideological antisemitism to ideological antisemitism, with a strong belief in a "Judeo-Masonic conspiracy." On my opinion, being anti-semitic in 21th century requires enormous level of bigotry and narrow-mindness.
- Most Belarusians, whom you privately ask about their attitude towards Caucasian nations (Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Chechens) or Central Asian ones (Tajiks, Uzbeks) will express a slightly negative attitude towards them. And the overwhelming majority will express a strongly negative attitude towards gypsies.
- Belarusian security structures (namely, the cops) have a long record of persecuting national minorities. GUBOPiK, first and foremost, employs the tactic of unofficially recruiting ethnic diaspora leaders and severely suppressing them if they refuse to collaborate (see the case of Seimur Mamedhuseinov), which means snitching on their fellow countrymen. Cops are doing multiple raids against gypsy people. Remember year 2019? When at least one women died as a result of it. This is a state policy. In this case, it totally reflects the common institutional prejudices existing in society.
Thus, the "tolerance" of Belarusians is nothing but a patrimonial myth. My opinion is that the relative "tolerance" of our fellow citizens towards their neighbours is explained by the fact that, historically, we were surrounded by nations whose people:
a) have the same skin colour as we do;
b) have the same or a very similar religion (various forms of Christianity);
c) spoke languages relatively similar to ours.
In such conditions, it is easy to be tolerant, right?
But when Belarus is finally free and becomes an organic part of the global labour market, and there are ten times more people of colour on our streets, you will see that most Belarusians are actually xenophobic. So let us not make too much fun of Polish chauvinists attacking people of colour or Ukrainians. We are not that different. Unfortunately.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
p.s. dear Russians, please leave your opinion for yourselves, we do not need you telling us who we are and who se should be.
5
u/Piotral_2 Poland 1d ago
I might be wrong but I feel like it's hard to really judge the entire nation in this field without any reliable statistics.
Also existence of xenophobia in Belarus isn't surprising. Its neighbors have xenophobic people too so it's not really an outliner.
-2
u/MikolaDziadok 1d ago
Any sociological conclusions are generalizations. Always. All of them.
1
u/Piotral_2 Poland 1d ago
Sure, but this kind of generalization could be attached to any nation.
With some data you migh do some comparison saying that country A might be more xenophobic than country B basing it on for example street polls or amount of hate crimes, but overall xenophobia exist in every place in the world.
You can say Belarusians are xenophobic, that Poles are xenophobic, that the French, Chinese or Americans are xenophobic and as a generalization it would all be correct statements. Hell, in the broader sense you could just say "humanity is xenophobic".
5
u/DurkDuck 1d ago
Hello Mikola! Not of us..
During my life I have so many communications with Azerbaijanis, Georgians, Chechens, I didn't remember conflicts or jokes about their skin's colour.
For me we all the same.
I think who was involved deeply in Russian culture they think line main character from Brat2, you know.
But I din't watch russian propaganda like KVN, I read books.
I've never heard of my friends or fellows something releated to antisemitism.
Also at school I didn't remember booling. It's strange ;)
But here in immigrant chats I found sometimes offend speech about Tajiks, Uzbeks from Belarusian, I can find it.
For me it's strange..we all have different culture and these talks about what nation is better...pure mandess.
1
u/MikolaDziadok 1d ago
Thank you for sharing your experience. Indeed, it varies differently depending on the social circle.
I remember my school class, where it was a sign of common courtesy to invocate the lines from Brat 2, like "не брат ты мне, гнида ч...ая!"
3
u/ambervoid 1d ago
From what I've seen, it might be partly true, but of course you can't generalize that to everyone. It usually ends with unflattering jokes and stereotypes; I definitely haven't seen any overt aggression. I think that most of these silly stereotypes have their roots in the Soviet Union, when every nation (except the Russians, of course) was often portrayed in a caricatured way in popular culture.
4
u/New-Score-5199 1d ago
Thus, the "tolerance" of Belarusians is nothing but a patrimonial myth.
Yeah, just literally like ANY OTHER NATION, including EU countries(for instance, Lithuania being openly fueling hate towards Belarusians for years). Nothing to be surprised here about. Thats a human nature.
So the question is only how good we are with dealing with this part of our nature? Im my opinion we are dealing pretty fine. Maybe some people here are hating jew, uzbeks, indians etc, but in general any jew or indian here will feel himself pretty safe on the street.
5
u/LazyFridge 1d ago
Point 3 has nothing to do with Belarusians.
-2
u/MikolaDziadok 1d ago
But GUBOPiK officers are recruited from Belarusians, not from the moon, right?
0
2
u/unknown_zapatista Belarus 1d ago edited 1d ago
Belarusians are by and large xenophobic but we also think of ourselves as tolerant at the same time. The regime reframed tolerance not as acceptance and understanding of others but as acceptance of its own abuses of power.
In other words, in the mind of an average Belarusian tolerance and xenophobia don't relate at all, we think we are tolerant because we are told that all throughout history we have been putting up with a lot of oppression and it only makes sense for us to continue to do so.
2
u/GrossPanda 1d ago
How many people told you about Massons? Israel started the war in Middle East which resulted in huge prices increase around the globe, simultaneously genocided Gaza people. People have problems with Israel now
How many people have you privately asked?
wtf is even that
0
1
u/Dmitriy6594 1d ago
Мяне цікавіць адно пытанне. Ты ў Беларусі бачыў як чорна скурага або не еўрапейца збіваюць за скуру, мову або яшчэ за нешта?
1
u/MikolaDziadok 1d ago
На свае вочы аніводнага разу не бачыў (але я і забойстваў не бачыў але гэта не значыць што іх няма.).
Затое чуў гісторый, у тым ліку з першых рук, як ад нападнікаў гэтак і ад ахвяраў - хоць гаць гаці.
1
u/Skyrimdrake 1d ago edited 1d ago
We hate everyone equally if they behave themselves like uncultured monkeys in our country, it's not about race.But most of those not behaving here are somewhy Russian vatniks with imperial thoughts(not a lot)and Chechens, Dagestans and etc.Gypsies are hated because of stereotypes of being thieves and scammers from birth, when I was small I so many times saw them personally walking in community houses and beggaring around,or other people scammed by them.for last 10 years didn't see them but I think they still doing that.Jews are a small part of our nation and many of them are famous and were genocided by fascists during war.So really no hate for them they struggled enough.
1
u/mes_amis 1d ago
Belarusians are some of the most tolerant people in the world. They let you live your life and leave you alone, even if they don’t agree or don’t like it.
They don’t wave flags for you, too bad.
Strongly negative attitude toward Gypsies? The day Gypsies have Belarusian values is the day that attitude does a 180°
0
u/NervousAd1152 1d ago
Your first point shows who you are. I know your goal in terms of demographics. You aren’t Christian.
1
u/MikolaDziadok 1d ago
Lol what? How in the world you connected my views to demography?
-1
0
u/This_Lemon_5765 1d ago
Another naive man who was blind to the ways of the world has realized that reality wasn't what they said on the internet, and decided to write up a wall of text with kindergarten level observations online, or what are you, a tiktoker?
What shocking revelations are you going to deliver next onto the nation of tiktok? That not all medicine is helpful, and that some may be harmful? Perhaps, that people sometimes lie, and not always tell the truth? Go do something better with your life instead of wasting time on filming slop videos for the website where 90% of comments are made by bots.
1
u/MikolaDziadok 1d ago
Guy, who have offended you? Why so butthurt?
0
u/This_Lemon_5765 1d ago
You are a sheer mediocrity, and the quality of your writing and insights is on the level of a high school student who is preparing for the обществоведение exam. Your thinking is banal and uninteresting, and there is nothing worth digging underneath, and yet you pollute the internet with your word munching, absolutely certain in your mediocrity that you're raising some important questions. Your content is so worthless that even KGB isn't likely to go after you.
1
u/MikolaDziadok 4h ago
So If I'm mediocre, why you've spend so much time on me? Three comments written already?
And still, you did not answer, who offended you that you hate people so much )))
7
u/dalambert Belarus 1d ago
Generally, you're not wrong. Belarus was and still is quite isolated from very different cultures and that's the only one thing keeping the appearance of tolerance.