While Russian forces invade Georgia...

[fpb]

...the silver and bronze medallists of one of the Olympic gun competitions not only shook hands, but hugged and did everything in their power to demonstrate the deepest love for each other. The silver medalist was Russian, the bronze Georgian. The BBC commentators were all over this like white on rice, calling it a wonderful display of the power of sports to bring people together.

I find it revolting.

The proper word for it is collaborationist. It is, traitorous. It is, quisling. Sorry, but if your troops have just invaded my country and killed hundreds if not thousands of my people, I will NOT shake your hand and I will NOT act as your friend. There are too many dead between us. I hope the Georgian woman is chased out of her country by popular rage.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

So the racism of Italian Fascists and German Nazis towards their own Japanese allies means something to you? It means nothing to me. It is exactly what is to be expected by creatures so convinced of their own racial superiority. I am surprised that you should take them as role models.

At any rate, all of this is bullshit. The Second World War took place seventy years ago. The war of Chechenya is taking place NOW, and so are Russian war crimes. End of story.

[fishlivejournal.livejournal.com]

The reason the story is not regularly told is because the 'racist' slur always comes up. Never mind that they were defending aborigines as well.

Still, I'm glad that you are prepared to concede that examples from seventy years ago are 'bullshit'. If you're willing to extend that to your example from two centuries ago, then that would be better still.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If there is continuity between 200 years ago and now (such as Russians committing war crimes regularly and Russians being dominated by a corrupt tyranny), then it is not bullshit to recall what they have done, not only seventy years ago, but sixty years ago, ninety years ago, a hundred and thirty years ago, two, three, four hundred years, and throughout their history. However, if there is no continuity, then to invoke what the adventitious tyranny of the adventurer Mussolini did in the service of his masters in Berlin is not only irrelevant but insulting. You are trying to argue as though this monster, who destroyed Italy's original constitution, perverted its liberal institutions, stole its citizens' freedoms, and finally sold them into bondage to their worst enemy, were something organic to Italian history down the ages. If you read up about the Yugoslav testimonies to Italian war crimes, you would find that the Yugoslavs themselves were not only horrified but bewildered at what the Fascists were doing; that while they had good, long, solid reason to expect this kind of thing from Turks, they would never have expected "civilized Italy" (I am quoting one Yugoslav witness' contemporary war diary) to behave so very like Turks, Throughout their unhappy history of Turkish invasion, threat and tyranny, the South Slavs not only of Croatia but even of Serbia had looked to Italy, specifically to Venice, not only for support and a place to escape, but also for a model of civic and polite living. Many Italian terms, such as corso for a town's main road (a significant institution both in old Italy and in Yugoslavia), went straight into Serbo-Croat and are still there. So you are still and again and always trying to associate me and my country with a tyranny that perverted everything Italy had ever stood for and that we rejected, and with a traitorous tyrant who sold us to the Nazis and whom we hung up by his feet. You really are incapable of learning, aren't you?