Nation states are a modern concept. Religion, ethnicity, culture and language were the primary identifiers for groups of people. The State was typically multi ethnic for most of history.
@Virgil: “Z” is a Jew before he is a Slav. And a Nazi before he is a Jew. He does not mind how many Slavs he kills, or whether they are Russians or Ukrainians. If Z had any pity for the people he represents as President of Ukraine, he would not have permitted NATZO to build up a Nazi Azov Brigade, to build fortifications so as to shell Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens of the Donbass, and to order Ukrainian soldiers to be needlessly killed in the meat grinder by not allowing them to retreat — neither from Mariopol nor from Bakhmut.
What does Z care? He is handsomely financed by Jewish oligarch Kolomoisky, owns a British passport, a $20 Million retirement home in Florida, enjoys fashion photo-shoots for Vogue, and as President Z currently controls $Billions of un-audited aid money poured into Ukraine from EU$A. Not bad for a second rate tv star.
Z is Ukraine’s version of the Ronald Reagan success story — except that Reagan did not lead his country into genocidal civil war followed by a suicidal foreign war.
Remember Ze back in time after he was elected with the message of peace confronted nationalists at the frontline to lay down weapons, saying “im president and im not a loser, lay down weapons”, but was threatened back.
There even was an Istambul peace talks, where both sides were literaly grabbing pens to sign a deal, but…
It seems there is a dark force in ukraine supported by US/UK elements hellbent on “holywar” with moskals.
And Ze joined this force and under influence of cocaine, changed his mind and now he is a different person enjoying his new found role of leader of free world with every sniff. There is no coming back.
You’ve got one thing right, Taffy: Zelensky’s Jewish origins are part of the problem.
Things work differently, however, from the way you say. Though he was not raised as a strictly practising
Jew, has married a non-Jew and even once said, ““The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he is still undoubtedly seen as Jewish by many Ukrainians, especially the powerful fascist elements, in a country with a long history of anti-Jewish feeling (see below.) He therefore now has to do everything to be “more Catholic than the Pope” – to be seen as a good Ukrainian! A while ago he poked fun at Ukrainian nationalists on his show and was for reconcilement with Russia. Not so now! He’s a Western puppet, probably a self-seeking one, but he’s doing his best to be seen as an integrated Ukrainian!
Be careful with sweeping statements about “Jews”!
First of all, many good historians, such as Shlomo Sand, believe that most “Jews” are not racially Jewish, but the descendants of other converted populations: the Ashkenazis from the Khazars and the North African Sephardim from the Berbers, for example.
Secondly, especially before the rise of Zionism (which once interested only a small minority of Jews), most “Jews”, despite and to some extent because of the way they were to some extent excluded in most societies,
were patriotic. Check out the role of Jewish soldiers on both sides in WW1.
Many Jewish communities were different from those that surrounded them, partly because of active religious and cultural differences, but also because they were excluded from many occupations and for convenience and self-protection. They had an advantage in commerce and some skilled trades because of their tradition of a sober life-style and learning. As a Jew with a memory of pogroms, would one have chosen to be a jeweller, with a personal capital transportable elsewhere if needed, in a town with other Jews or a farmer-even if one had had the right to live or own land there-somewhere in the steppes? Think of the Pakistani shops in the UK: they exist not because the Pakistanis are racially inclined to be shopkeepers! Nor is the absence of Asians in the European agricultural sector due to any racial allergy to farming!
There were and are, however, many Jews in the towns and cities who weren’t and aren’t very different from everybody else.
The anti-Jewish feeling in Ukraine goes back very much to:
-the role of Jewish grain merchants there in imperial Russia: in normal times they provided credit and a valuable service, but in hard times and especially in those of war, they could no longer provide the same service, resulting in hardship for the farmers and resentment.
-the pogroms encouraged by the ruling establishment all over Imperial Russia with a view to divert popular unrest from revolution: this was intensified after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881.
-the role of Jewish Soviet commissars in the Ukraine before WW2, especially during the Holodomor.
Previously largely excluded from political life and government service, many Jews became “more Bolshevik than the Bolsheviks”!
So, to repeat myself, Taffy, you’re right about the importance of Zelensky’s Jewish identity, but wrong about the way it works, and you also grossly oversimplify the question of the Jewish difference. As a Welshman, you should know better than to trust popular stereotypes!
By the way, I do know something about what I’ve been talking about. My father, a historian, was from an Old Believer family in the Donbass, a Ukrainian with a Russian identity and his first wife was from an aristocratic Russian family but with a Ukrainian identity-she was decorated by Petlyura. My mother and her parents were from an urban intellectual middle-class family in St Petersburg- anti-Zionists, irreligious and pork-eaters! They thought of themselves above all as Russians!
My wife’s family were impoverished North African Jews, some of whom served in the French army during WW1. Most of the Jews that left North Africa in the 50s and 60s then did their best to get integrated and play down their different cultural heritage, often overdoing it: my mother-in- law hid it from her children as long as she could. There has now been a resurgence of identification with Jewishness and, unfortunately, with Zionism among some of the young, but that’s another story!
I’ve also lived and worked in Caaardiff, so I know the popular ideas about the Welsh are generally wrong!
Not very important, but I forgot to say that my mother’s family in Saint Petersburg were by some criteria Jewish. As I said, they thought of themselves as above all Russian.
Zelensky is a Slav, right? So why does he want to kill Russians?
If Z is any kind of Slav, he is Russian.
Russian is his first language.
However, he is a Jew. First he is a Jew.
Basically, I think, a Russian Jew.
As someone observed way back in the 19th century, Jews constitute a state within the state wherever they reside.
They never truly adopt the nationality of the country where they reside.
Nation states are a modern concept. Religion, ethnicity, culture and language were the primary identifiers for groups of people. The State was typically multi ethnic for most of history.
@Virgil: “Z” is a Jew before he is a Slav. And a Nazi before he is a Jew. He does not mind how many Slavs he kills, or whether they are Russians or Ukrainians. If Z had any pity for the people he represents as President of Ukraine, he would not have permitted NATZO to build up a Nazi Azov Brigade, to build fortifications so as to shell Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens of the Donbass, and to order Ukrainian soldiers to be needlessly killed in the meat grinder by not allowing them to retreat — neither from Mariopol nor from Bakhmut.
What does Z care? He is handsomely financed by Jewish oligarch Kolomoisky, owns a British passport, a $20 Million retirement home in Florida, enjoys fashion photo-shoots for Vogue, and as President Z currently controls $Billions of un-audited aid money poured into Ukraine from EU$A. Not bad for a second rate tv star.
Z is Ukraine’s version of the Ronald Reagan success story — except that Reagan did not lead his country into genocidal civil war followed by a suicidal foreign war.
Remember Ze back in time after he was elected with the message of peace confronted nationalists at the frontline to lay down weapons, saying “im president and im not a loser, lay down weapons”, but was threatened back.
There even was an Istambul peace talks, where both sides were literaly grabbing pens to sign a deal, but…
It seems there is a dark force in ukraine supported by US/UK elements hellbent on “holywar” with moskals.
And Ze joined this force and under influence of cocaine, changed his mind and now he is a different person enjoying his new found role of leader of free world with every sniff. There is no coming back.
I like Clayton Morris, he has a nice down to earth common sense style to his reporting.
Makes current affair easily accessible to the unsuspecting public.
You’ve got one thing right, Taffy: Zelensky’s Jewish origins are part of the problem.
Things work differently, however, from the way you say. Though he was not raised as a strictly practising
Jew, has married a non-Jew and even once said, ““The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he is still undoubtedly seen as Jewish by many Ukrainians, especially the powerful fascist elements, in a country with a long history of anti-Jewish feeling (see below.) He therefore now has to do everything to be “more Catholic than the Pope” – to be seen as a good Ukrainian! A while ago he poked fun at Ukrainian nationalists on his show and was for reconcilement with Russia. Not so now! He’s a Western puppet, probably a self-seeking one, but he’s doing his best to be seen as an integrated Ukrainian!
Be careful with sweeping statements about “Jews”!
First of all, many good historians, such as Shlomo Sand, believe that most “Jews” are not racially Jewish, but the descendants of other converted populations: the Ashkenazis from the Khazars and the North African Sephardim from the Berbers, for example.
Secondly, especially before the rise of Zionism (which once interested only a small minority of Jews), most “Jews”, despite and to some extent because of the way they were to some extent excluded in most societies,
were patriotic. Check out the role of Jewish soldiers on both sides in WW1.
Many Jewish communities were different from those that surrounded them, partly because of active religious and cultural differences, but also because they were excluded from many occupations and for convenience and self-protection. They had an advantage in commerce and some skilled trades because of their tradition of a sober life-style and learning. As a Jew with a memory of pogroms, would one have chosen to be a jeweller, with a personal capital transportable elsewhere if needed, in a town with other Jews or a farmer-even if one had had the right to live or own land there-somewhere in the steppes? Think of the Pakistani shops in the UK: they exist not because the Pakistanis are racially inclined to be shopkeepers! Nor is the absence of Asians in the European agricultural sector due to any racial allergy to farming!
There were and are, however, many Jews in the towns and cities who weren’t and aren’t very different from everybody else.
The anti-Jewish feeling in Ukraine goes back very much to:
-the role of Jewish grain merchants there in imperial Russia: in normal times they provided credit and a valuable service, but in hard times and especially in those of war, they could no longer provide the same service, resulting in hardship for the farmers and resentment.
-the pogroms encouraged by the ruling establishment all over Imperial Russia with a view to divert popular unrest from revolution: this was intensified after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881.
-the role of Jewish Soviet commissars in the Ukraine before WW2, especially during the Holodomor.
Previously largely excluded from political life and government service, many Jews became “more Bolshevik than the Bolsheviks”!
So, to repeat myself, Taffy, you’re right about the importance of Zelensky’s Jewish identity, but wrong about the way it works, and you also grossly oversimplify the question of the Jewish difference. As a Welshman, you should know better than to trust popular stereotypes!
By the way, I do know something about what I’ve been talking about. My father, a historian, was from an Old Believer family in the Donbass, a Ukrainian with a Russian identity and his first wife was from an aristocratic Russian family but with a Ukrainian identity-she was decorated by Petlyura. My mother and her parents were from an urban intellectual middle-class family in St Petersburg- anti-Zionists, irreligious and pork-eaters! They thought of themselves above all as Russians!
My wife’s family were impoverished North African Jews, some of whom served in the French army during WW1. Most of the Jews that left North Africa in the 50s and 60s then did their best to get integrated and play down their different cultural heritage, often overdoing it: my mother-in- law hid it from her children as long as she could. There has now been a resurgence of identification with Jewishness and, unfortunately, with Zionism among some of the young, but that’s another story!
I’ve also lived and worked in Caaardiff, so I know the popular ideas about the Welsh are generally wrong!
Not very important, but I forgot to say that my mother’s family in Saint Petersburg were by some criteria Jewish. As I said, they thought of themselves as above all Russian.