This is not hypocrisy and has nothing to do with the cold war. Quite to the contrary: we hold Russians to a higher standard than Saudi Arabia.
Like we hold the USA to a higher standard than either country in regards to privacy.
My theory above is that totally different standards for different parts of the world really is political propaganda to the citizens of the country where the media writes.
Do you have another explanation?
(To take another example -- even with a Palestinian description of Israel, the Sudan atrocities were a thousand times worse. My local leftwing media (more or less all local media) complained many times more about Israel, anyway. And never about that Israel was criticized every year in UN but Sudan very little. How many thousands of times is reasonable for different standards?)
Edit: Note when I wrote that immigrants, even citizens now, in Sweden is criticized much less.. Not even that is neither racism nor double standards?!
Emerging from each massive injustice with a new culture rich from strife, from the cossacks to beauty hidden within the works of the communist era. And the sadness of what totalitarian rule did to a people trying to build an equal and fair society, the people who died for others, and eventually all in vein.
It resonates as a country to admire, a people to admire, the mystique of its history and taste of its asian influence. And despite that its a foreign place. London to St Petersburg is closer than LA to New York, at times Russia has been part of Europe.
The double standard for me and many of friends (whom I talk history with it) is one of love, sorrow, and admiration. When the illusion of the Russian mythos breaks and the reality of human condition seeps through you get held to that standard. Not one of a distant problem, a stranger in a strange land, one of a friend.
I posted a theory about something I find strange -- and waited with bated breath for either support or to be short down with a good reference that taught me a lot about the world. Sigh, no luck on that part. Maybe no one knows.
Not seeing a problem here?
Edit: Not that it is relevant, but I've liked most every Russian I've spoken to more than five minutes. And Putin scares me when he limits press freedom and organized crime gets integrated with the police.
The Russian government is killing press freedom and stealing the oil income. They need external enemies and blame the west. Any criticism from the Western world seems to be dismissed as anti-Russian hate mongering.
Re Israel, good luck influencing them: (1) Consider the US reaction on 9/11. Israel had something like that continuously since long before 1948. (2) I believe most of the Jewish population there aren't descended from European refugees but people kicked out from countries in the Middle East, for having the wrong religion. They think things like "They stole three times the size of Israel from us personally when they forced us out, we're getting back the parts of the West Bank some of us was kicked out from".
First of all, as banal as it may sound, Russian State Duma doesn't represent the interests and wishes of the general public in any meaningful way (at least, if compared to any Western European country or US). The votes are constantly rigged, and even though the Putin is supported by the large majority of population (sad truth), Russian State Duma by the huge part is literally a bunch of degenerates, clowns and Putin's yes-men at best. So, they can pass any insane law that they wish to pass.
Secondly, the regime's popularity is monotonically decreasing, albeit slowly. And the reason is that the relative economic prosperity is based only on high oil and natural gas prices (which can still help you during the next couple of decades). The industrial complex is in decline and nothing is able to revive it (because of the fact that any owner of successful company can be stripped of his ownership in any time -- and this is de facto at the core of the regime and cannot be changed).
When you begin to understand that your popularity trend wont ever change, you start looking for means for tightening control and providing alternative channels to drain the public discontent. For their main ideology the ruling regime has adopted the "back into the future" style monarchism and religion (which is miserable at best, but is the only choice when the largest opposing part of the public still praises higher standards of living in atheistic USSR).
Some jerk has made an arbitrary decision that it is a good idea to also go after gays. The passing of the anti-gay-propaganda law and the half-assed media campaign followed.
How does majority of the Russian people really relate to gays: 1) First and foremost, no one even thinks about the issue. When the large part of a population lives below poverty line, when there are significant issues with police misconduct and corruption, etc. etc., you have larger issues to think of. 2) Literally the overwhelming majority of the people I ever new are highly tolerant to gays. I'm speaking this as a person that has contacts within diverse social groups (university dropout, served as a conscript in a military for two years, born in another region, but now a long time Moscow resident). 3) This does not preclude that the Russian people as a whole are probably less fond of gays than Western Europeans, but not even near the scale of the current media hype. This is sad. But there are some orders of magnitude sadder things in Russia for everyone to deal with every day.
Now, when US and UK have some relationship issues with Russia, they have decided that this is a good time to raise the issue. Since the Russia is de facto tabula rasa for West and vice versa, the bullshit card has worked really fine.
I am personally for allowing gay marriage etc. etc., but we shouldn't even be talking about this, because this "Russian homophobia" is pure propaganda stuff, on both sides. There are huge issues in the West and Russia that are much more important.
Slightly offtopic: great lecture about ideology by Slavoj Žižek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Kb4JZGpA0
Some points:
1. I was lucky I saw that, stuff disappears quickly from the front page on HN. Next time the subject comes up, please post it again (or a link). Others would appreciate reading it too, imho.
2. If you go back just a few decades, intolerance to homosexuals were also official policy in the west. This moral panic about Russia is a bit ridiculous (my original point). Russian attitudes will change when (/if :-( ) the economy gets better and social development gets going.
3. As probably most West European computer people, I know enough Russians/East Europeans to understand that "Russians are X" is as stupid as generalizing about West Europeans.
4. I doubt there is a conspiracy to make Russia look bad. The coverage of human rights violations in Caucasus would then be much better. (You bought your local media's hype. :-) )
(I added the video to my "Watch Later", I would rather watch that than write more tests for old code... Just 20 pages of tests or so left. :-( :-) )
Thanks for a tip about posting a link on HN news, it didn’t cross my mind since I usually think of it as if it is a feed with important and interesting stories for the general public. It's hard for me to judge if my reply was interesting to anyone apart of you and a couple of other posters on the thread.
As about conspiracy theories, maybe I didn't choose the right words. I don't think about the Russian homosexual issue as a part of some grand plan, rather as a temporary and somewhat arbitrary distraction from more important issues. At least today, when Russia is more or less compliant with the West on the major issues. Even when the most of the people like to think otherwise, Russia is nowhere near waging an independent foreign policy (we can probably argue on that for a long time, but I don't think it's worth it). Also, such distractions and theme changes as "Snowden revelations" >> "Problems of Russian homosexuals" don't even need to be conscious.
You've made a great point about Caucasus and the overall horrendous human rights record of Russia. And it is a really interesting point that the media has raised some relatively mild issue instead of, just from the top of my head, jailing of union workers that were fighting for better wages and improvement of abysmal safety controls on the factories of Western automotive conglomerates that are based in Russia. Or even something just as horrible and at the same time not strictly related to the interests of Western business. An equally interesting question is why we hear lamentations about the homosexual propaganda law now and not couple of years before, when the policy was implemented. These are important issues that you've raised, but the answers to them don't lie on the on the surface. IMHO, they also don't lie in the field of conspiracy theories, rather in the field of human psychology and the somewhat recent history of US-USSR relations. I'd really like to expand on this, but now I need to write some code, too. :)
Good luck!
It would be interesting to hear your opinion about Žižek's points! (Don't consider this too binding: if you won't find time to watch the talk, or would be reluctant to express your thoughts about it, I would understand! :))
P.S. If memory serves me well, the largest media hype about atrocities in Chechnya was just before the Kosovo War, when Yeltsin hasn't yet decided not to provide direct military support to Milošević regime. At least, that was my impression.
I have no clue how posting stories works. (I have a suspicion that a of extra accounts are often(?) used to vote most stories up, so they get to the front page.) Most of the times when I get (or lose!) karma is when I write something in a very new story.
Interesting point about laws re homosexuality, I didn't know they were that old. Hmm, maybe there is some reason why it is so visible right now. Maybe not only the Chinese state can set the media's agenda...?
Good luck yourself! Still writing tests and I'll go drink at a wedding this weekend. :-( :-)
I'm aiming for beginning of next week.
Here is a good summary of the situation: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=...
I should have checked the facts earlier. The media was babbling about the need of the law for so long, that it seems that I've lost touch. The ruling party has introduced the bill in March of 2012. They government is doing so many blatantly absurd things, that it's hard to track of all of them. The current issues that I'm interested in are the dissolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences; extending of blatant religious propaganda to small children in schools; possible two-fold or three-fold increase of the utility payments; introduction of the ‘non-state’ center for fighting ‘atheist extremism’ by the church which is so integrated into the ruling regime, impudent and crooky that it alienates not-insignificant part of it's own congregation; the legislation for prohibiting the Tor network and the growing list of banned websites; dismantling of free education. And the disturbing fact that anything that doesn't go along with government's plans is becoming ‘extremism’. Even small local protests against non-political issues are being videotaped by the FSB, in the regions some people literally go to jail for protesting against minor stuff, etc., etc.
Have a good time! Since I haven't been invited to any wedding party, I have no choice but to resort to drinking alone. Ha ha, just kidding. In the coming days I would probably do some work. )))
I had forgotten about the Tor network and most of the other craziness.
So, the last dictators kept the church down and the coming one one hugs it closely? Re religion...
As a hard line atheist, I have to admit the Orthodox churches I saw in a short St Petersburg visit long ago impressed me.
You know Scandinavian "taste"? One extra line in a design is a bit... brave. Two lines is, well, avantgarde. Three -- beyond tacky. The churches there made my eyes bleed from the sheer amount of details, while they blew me away with sheer beauty. Cool feeling.
I exaggerated the drinking. I was outsourced to Romania a couple of years back and am still here. People here are nice but just don't drink for fun. (In the small villages they are said to drink like sponges, I'll avoid moving there. :-) )
You might see that as propaganda, I see that as acknowledgement of reality. Everybody expects Israel to behave like the democracy they claim to be, nobody expects the Sudan - with its self-appointed president of nearly 25 years - to behave like a democracy. In other words, Sudan's problems are a symptom of Sudan's level of social progress, while Israel and Russia's problems are seen as an aberration in their level of social progress. You would never see the Olympics hosted in Sudan.
As for immigrants being criticized for holding 3rd world views after moving to a 1st world country, they don't have the kind of power that a government does so the harm they can do by acting on their beliefs is significantly less than what the state could do.
I acknowledged that when I wrote "How many thousands of times is reasonable for different standards?"
So, how many factors of ten higher standards should be held for Israel than for, say, the countries that spend a large part of their GNP on artillery for use on civilians?
3? 4?
(I've asked that multiple times and never gotten an answer when people repeat your argument. Including in what you comment on.)
>> Sudan's problems are a symptom of Sudan's level of social progress
I also brought up that at least Swedish media avoid mentioning that the dictators taking control of the UNHRC and not complaining about each others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Cou...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Cou...
That is not explained by you thinking it is OK to have a factor thousands in different standards.
>>As for immigrants being criticized for holding 3rd world views after moving to a 1st world country, they don't have the kind of power that a government does
You really see no problem having factors of ten different standards for different groups of citizens inside a country?
Besides, I think you simplify (on the border of excusing) unpleasant regimes that oppress, mass murder and steal -- when you just describe the reason as "different levels of social progress". Countries today are poor mainly because they are controlled by corrupt juntas (or in a conflict, usually created by juntas). Every country on the planet with population over a few millions can and should have a competent government.
That is hyperbole. You've quantified something that is not really quantifiable. As long as that is your argument you'll got no satisfactory answer. All you are doing is begging the question.
And that is not an argument. I motivated my position, you're calling names.
I wrote specifically that Sudan is at least a thousand times worse than Israel -- even with a Palestinian description (where e.g. killing people attacking civilians is not self defence). Look at number of dead, rapes, deportations etc etc -- what is NOT a thousand times worse?
If we can't quantify e.g. human rights violations we should close down international law.
Etc.
>> Your complaint is that the media criticism is not proportional to the level of harm. The hyperbole is in your measurement of the criticism
Well, no.
One is at least a thousand times larger than the other in effect.
The criticism (in my local Swedish and from much of the European media) is much larger. See e.g. the UNHRC discussion above. That is all I need for my thesis to not be "hyperbole".
Notes: 1. Since the Syrian situation started it has been very quiet re Israel, the different standards would probably be too obvious. 2. Serious media, e.g. BBC/NY Times, was (well, by definition) more serious than bad media.
Yes, I started off explaining why there is relatively unbalanced coverage.
You made it clear that your argument is based on hard numbers that you've basically made up. So now I am pointing out that making up hard numbers and not accepting arguments that don't precisely fit your arbitrary numbers is just a form of rhetoric. Measuring the effect of coverage is even more arbitrary. "Effect" is something so vague that there aren't even any units to measure it.
You will not receive any satisfactory answers because you have designed the question to be unanswerable so as to advocate a position rather than seek an explanation.
Here are quick overviews of the facts I claimed in the GP:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Sudan
http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/sudan-southsudan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_con...
But you knew that.
So it is easy to claim different standards as a factor of thousands. But you knew that, too.
For any given year before the Syrian crisis, you could find kilometers of criticism of Israel. On the other hand, the first thing I saw over decades in Swedish about the Tunisian dictator was when he fled!
The criticism of Syria, easily one of the planet's worst police states even before the present atrocities, was a bit more than Tunisia -- but far from even one kilometer/year.
(Note that Syria was a large part of the Israeli conflict, so it should be discussed quite a lot.)
(Not hard data, but hardly arbitrarily. I could continue with mentioning that Pallywood and torture among Palestinian groups where just censored in Swedish. And so on, and on.)
But frankly, I think you knew this too.