More Bad Signs From Russia

Russia is displaying more symptoms of its disease:

Russia's nationalist lawmakers have asked the prosecutor general to ban all Jewish organizations because of their "extremist" views, in a vitriolic call ahead of this week's 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz.

...The seven-page call signed by 20 members of the 450-seat State Duma lower house of parliament that included the Communist Party and nationalist groups used some of the most profane language against Jews publicly published in the post-Soviet era.

"The whole democratic world today is under the financial and political control of the Jews," said the statement.

The group was led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his Liberal Democratic Party.

"We would not want our Russia, which is subject to a permanent, extra-legal war seeking to prevent its rebirth, to find itself among unfree countries," the statement said.

It called on the Russian courts to ban "all Jewish religious and community groups" which the statement also described as "anti-Christian" and accused Jews of staging attacks against their own community as a provocation so they could pin blame on others.

"We would like to underline that many anti-Jewish acts around the world are staged by the Jews themselves as a provocation in order to take punitive measures against patriots," the letter said.

The Russian state officially does not subscribe to any religion but Orthodox Christians dominate the country's religious life and often enter into politics with the patriarch's frequent meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and some visiting heads of state.

"We cannot follow the false idea of tolerance which is imposed on us, such as that of the acceptance of sin, of evil, of heresy, and in the present case, of nothing less than satanism," said the document.

It was also published by a periodical called Orthodox Russia in a version that had some 500 signatures that included editors of nationalist publications.

The appeal was published on paper carrying the parliament's letterhead and called on Russia's prosecutor general to "officially open a legal investigation into banning all Jewish religious and community groups" on grounds of "defense of the homeland."

Sound familiar? As in failing Islamic nations, "blaming the Jews" provides an avenue to project one's own internal decay onto a group of people that have nothing to do with it. This "rally around the flag" attempt at Russian neo-nationalism sadly has a rich history in Russia.

Around the time that our country was developing its first constitution, Catherine the Great, through a series of wars, expanded Russia's borders. Part of these conquests included areas with large Jewish populations in what is today Belarus and the Ukraine, west of Kiev. These Jews would become a valuable tool for the tsars when they faced internal strife. Instead of facing their problems, they would shift blame towards the "Jesus-killing" Jews.

This method turned violent just after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881. Russian mobs would gather together and riot against Jewish communities. These riots were called pogroms--the Russian word for "devastation." The pogroms against the Jews would continue through the following tumultuous years as the Russian population became increasingly restive against tsarist rule.

As Nicholas II began his reign in 1894, the revolutionary atmosphere was electric. Vyacheslav Plehve, his Minister of the Interior, believed that in Western Russia, Jews comprised 90% of the revolutionaries in Western Ukraine and 40% of the entire Russian population. However, those seeking reform comprised of a broad base of Russia's constituents. The spontaneous and failed revolution of 1905 was carried out not by the Jews, but by 110,000 factory workers.

The Jewish scapegoat has a long and rich history in Russia. Just like their Islamic counterparts, they ignore their real problems at their own peril. In the meantime, the Jews, yet again, suffer the brunt of their delusions.

UPDATE: This comment, left by Supernatural Rabbit Scribe, was way too good to keep off the front page:

Actually, speaking as an ignorant drunken idiot living in a dilapidated mobile home and seeking someone to blame for my condition, Zhirinovsky's position really sorta resonates with me. The last bill collecter who called before they cut off my phone was named "Nguyen." That a Jewish name?