Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought the racism behind Europe’s refugee crisis to the surface – Ukrainians, apart from the Black variety, are the Right, White kind of refugees
UPDATE
'Russia's #NATO Enlargement Redlines' - #Ukraine Cable from 2008 written by #CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow Link:
'Russia's #NATO Enlargement Redlines' - #Ukraine Cable from 2008 written by #CIA director William J. Burns, then US ambassador to Moscow Link:
Contrast the welcome for Ukrainian refugees with the reception for Afghan and Middle Eastern refugees
Why, you might ask, has RT been banned throughout Europe?
Britain was supposed to have left the European Union with Brexit yet it has
willingly succumbed to the temptation to clamp down on
any alternative sources of information or narrative. What have they got to hide?
Let's remember how the prostitute press treated the invasion of Iraq, which broke international law and the ICC and UN didn't lift a finger
I listened to RT most of yesterday, before it was taken off
air. It was remarkably balanced in its coverage, giving equal time to critics
of Russia’s invasion. But that was the problem. The Government does not want any alternative coverage. It wants us
to rely on the BBC, which is acting as a cheerleader for NATO. Al Jazeera isn’t
much better either.
RT was broadcasting from the two breakaway republics of
Donetsk and Luhansk, unlike the BBC. As far as the Government was concerned
that was the problem.
Racism
Rears its Ugly Head
Hungary has welcomed
85,000 Ukrainian refugees. Contrast this with the ‘daunting
new barrier’ with Serbia
‘capable
of delivering electric shocks to unwanted migrants and armed with heat sensors,
cameras, and loudspeakers that blare in several languages.
Poland is another country which is noted for its hostile attitude to refugees, erecting barbed wire fences with Belarus. It, together with Latvia and Lithuania, described refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq as ‘not refugees but part of a “hybrid warfare” campaign being orchestrated by Belarus’.
Poland sent 500 troops to fight the ‘invasion’ and there are reports that at least five people died. A Polish soldier who deserted in disgust at the behaviour of the Polish army reported that several refugees had been killed by the army. Contrast this with the welcome given to Ukrainian refugees.
However there is one exception. Black, Asian
and Arab people in Ukraine are being prevented
from getting out of the country and then, when they manage to get to the
border, are being prevented by Poland from entering.
According to Al
Jazeera
Since the
war started, more than 870,000 refugees have fled from Ukraine to neighbouring
countries, the United Nations said. Half of those are currently in Poland.
Queues along the border are now tens of kilometres long with some African
students describing to Al Jazeera how they have been waiting for days to cross
amid freezing temperatures and with no food, blankets or shelters.
Contrast the coverage of Ukraine with Palestine
On Monday I went to my local
store to be greeted with an almost unprecedented unity amongst the press. Every
front page had a picture of a Ukrainian child and a variety of emotive
headlines. Contrast this with Israel’s murder of Palestinian children.
18-year-old Shadi Najim (left) and 22-year-old Abdullah al-Husari (right) were killed by Israeli forces during a night raid on the Jenin refugee camp on Tuesday March 2, 2022. (Photo: Social Media)
In just one day this week three young Palestinians were killed with shots to the head. In May last year 62 children were killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza. You could have been forgiven if you missed the front page coverage because there wasn’t any.
White children harmed or hurt make headlines, especially if opposition to the war is in line with American war aims. When it came to the war in Iraq when hundreds of thousands of children were killed, there were no headlines or coverage of victims of American military murder.
When Julian Assange revealed the truth behind one particularly
murderous assault from the air, which included shooting down two Reuters journalists, because it was filmed, it was Assange who was
penalised. This is the hypocrisy which lies behind the wall to wall
anti-Russian propaganda.
The Racism that runs through the Ukrainian Refugee Crisis – they are White like us
There has been a systematic and persistent racism in the coverage of the Ukrainian
refugee problem.
On Radio 4′s Today programme Thought for the Day’ Tim Stanley,
historian and Daily Telegraph writer said:
“Ukraine has touched the West in a way
that Syria or Yemen did not.’ And why was this? Stanley explained that ‘one of the reasons is that being a European
country, it looks so familiar.’ In other words they are white.
As Nadine White wrote
‘From France to the UK and the
US, much of the media coverage of the war in Ukraine has been saturated with racial bias.’
A CBS News senior foreign correspondent Charlie D’Agata claimed
that the attack on Ukraine cannot be compared to the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan because the Eastern European country is more “civilised”.
“This isn’t
a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict
raging for decades,” he said. “This is a relatively civilised, relatively
European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city where you
wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.”
One shudders to think what D’Agata would have said if he wasn’t
being careful.
On Saturday, Ukraine’s former deputy general prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze was interviewed on Radio 4
“It’s very
emotional for me because I see European people with blonde hair and blue eyes
being killed every day with Putin’s missiles and his helicopters and his
rockets,” Sakvarelidze said.
The BBC presenter responded: “I understand and of course respect the emotion.”
Molotov Cocktails and Resistance
“Amazing
mainstream Western media gives glowing coverage of people resisting invasion by
making molotov cocktails,” one social media user remarked. “If they
were brown people in Yemen or Palestine doing the same they would be labeled
terrorists deserving US-Israeli or US-Saudi drone bombing.”
Al Jazeera’s Peter Dobbie was forced to apologise after he said
“What’s
compelling is looking at them, the way they are dressed. These are prosperous,
middle-class people. These are not obviously refugees trying to get away from
the Middle East [...] or North Africa. They look like any European family that
you’d live next door to.”
Nadine
White observed how ‘
Visibly fighting back
tears during a broadcast from Poland, Lucy Watson of ITV News said: “Now the unthinkable has happened to them,
and this is not a developing, third world nation, this is Europe”.
Yes it must be a shock that Europe is tasting a fraction of
what it has visited on other countries.
We also saw the hypocrisy of the United Nations on full
display today. The General Assembly voted to ‘deplore’ Russia’s invasion. So do I. But compare this with America
and Britain’s invasion of Iraq which caused approximately one million deaths as
well as destabilisation and slaughter across the Middle East. It was the Iraqi
invasion which led to the creation of ISIS.
Yet what was the UN response? Absolutely nothing. There was no criticism
of the USA.
I won’t bother detailing every instance of media racism
because, as they say, every picture tells a story. It is a story of ingrained media
racism.
Ukrainian Opposition to Becoming the United States’ Pawn and
Plaything
And there’s something else that the mainstream media has not
shown. That not all Ukrainians are happy that the United States, which has been
enforcing austerity on Ukraine via the IMF and World Bank, is now using them as
a pawn in its battle with Russia as it seeks to achieve hegemony in Europe and
the world.
What coverage have there been of these demonstrations in Kyiv
against US imperialism? Again it doesn’t
fit with the BBC narrative and now that RT is off the air, we can be sure that
they won’t be shown either.
Tony Greenstein
"It's so odd (that) war is no longer
being waged exclusively against Black, brown and poor people. Shock.
Horror"
‘We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing the
bombing of the Syrian regime”
American Ignorance – ‘the lady on CNN just now said that the
damage in Kyiv is something a capitol city in Europe hasn’t seen in almost a
century… the siege on Sarajevo began on April 5, 1992 and didn’t end until
February 29, 1996’
Molotovs – ‘If this was done by Palestinians, Afghanistan or other nations resisting occupation, it would be terrorism.’
Al Jazeera racism – ‘The Supremacy around
the media coverage of this isn't even subtle.’
BBC Racism – ‘But people with 'blue eyes and blonde hair' dropping bombs over the Middle East and Africa is OK. And 'Blue eyes and blonde hair' is Hitler's words from the Mein Kampf about the superior Aryan race.’
Non-whites who resist occupation are of course terrorists
Raising funds for Ukrainian military
Raising funds for Ukrainian military 2
And then there is the Jewish Chronicle’s fascist sympathising editor, Stephen Pollard. According to Pollard Boycott Divestment and Sanctions against Israel is ‘anti-Semitic’. But when applied to Russia it is perfectly kosher.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has backed the
boycott of Russia from sports, but criticised the boycott of last month’s Sydney Cultural
Festival over receiving sponsorship from the Israeli embassy.
Claudia Webbe, a British member of parliament, tweeted that
the people who genuinely care about Ukrainians are the ones who will welcome
all refugees with open arms.
“The rest?” she posted, “Well, they’re pretending.”
See They are ‘civilised’ and ‘look like us’: the racist coverage of Ukraine
Agree on the main points of course, only to say that Germany took in a huge number of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries some years back and invested heavily in their resettlement. I think it was about a million which is simply vast (Japan took in less than 100 refugees last year!). This needs acknowledgement.
ReplyDeleteI was talking to a Russian friend yesterday and he said some of his Russian wife's relatives are now on the move from Kiev to Armenia as they have some ancestry there /speak the language. But they could have gone to southern Russia due to other links they have instead, only that they think it is too impoverished compared to Armenia. So, they have choices even in the midst of war.
He added that other relatives of his wife had left Ukraine for Russia a few years ago due to anti-Russian sentiment which they could not manage any more. This is hardly covered in the news - as you say anti-Black racism is rife, but also anti-Russian (except that I do not have enough information on it as this is not properly covered in the news).
It is a very complex story. No one wants the Ukrainians to die, particularly the children, and many Ukrainians are being very heroic too. And Russia is totally wrong to act like an imperialist power.
Agree but remember the backlash politically against the million refugees that Merkl took in. It led to the birth and growth of a neo-Nazi infested AfD.
DeleteExcellent exposé of the rampant hypocrisy and subliminal racism of the ‘west’ and its ‘news’ coverage of Ukraine.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for this Tony. I shall be sharing it on social media. 👏
glad you liked it. This whole affair is permeated by racism
DeleteFree speech in the UK is banned so easily by taking RT off the air urged on by Labour Party, yet it is still broadcasting in the USA! How's that for irony. Has a single MSM actually mentioned this act of censorship never mind find out the who, what, why and when? Remember we are not at war, the only other time this has happened. I am sick of the propaganda gushing out of the BBC, even C4 news has gone 'funny'.
ReplyDeleteyes the BBC is nauseating in its propaganda. Al Jazeera isn't much better either
DeleteWorth saying that although RT is no longer broadcasting in the UK their website at https://www.rt.com/ is still up (though subject to DDoS attacks).
ReplyDeleteyes I've gone to their website but there is no live broadcasting on it as far as I'm aware
DeleteAgree in the main. I have to say I've just been slightly sickened by the DEC appeal, since I seem to remember that Israel were killing children for weeks on end and there was a dire humanitarian crisis before they would raise an appeal for Gaza. Am I remembering that right?
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, there's a difference between concerns over injustice and whataboutism, which is what Russia is trying to get away with. What of the genuine concerns of those of us who were just as against the Iraq war and Afghanistan war as this one? We seem not to exist.
Every time any of the Russian ministers speak it sounds like they are having a bad LSD trip. I can only imagine how it is to be Russian and to be so profoundly gaslit.
There are fascists in europe, we all know that, and in Poland I think there are quite a lot, but they are not in control I don't think. During the build up, I was half expecting Putin to enlist their aid, and to go into Poland via Ukraine, but instead he appears to be using them as a pretext for attack. Now we know he will go into Moldova next (also not in nato).
In Poland they are in government! In Ukraine the fascists have influence far beyond their electoral support thanks to the US and its involvement in the Maiden coup
DeleteI had no idea it had got as bad as that, but I have been quite distracted. Do you see any hope?
DeleteThank you for this excellent article, Tony.
ReplyDeleteTaking RT off of the air speaks volumes. They’ve been wanting to do this for a long time now. Now they have complete control of the ‘news’ on the telly. Fascists.
Can this be shared on Facebook?
ReplyDeleteyes. Just copy the url
Delete…I just managed to post on Facebook
ReplyDeleteIn terms of Chomsky and Herman's book: 'worthy' and 'unworthy' victims
ReplyDeleteRT's demise was a shock to me: it came much faster than I expected.
AJ: mostly beyond hope now, behaving increasingly like US vassal. Now also runs ads on it site. Only a matter of time its I/P coverage is also affected.
Rule of Law(TM) winning, sadly...
yes I agree entirely. They can't stand any different narrative. That's capitalist democracy
DeleteI've Facebooked this.
ReplyDeleteThere is of course another very important principled that's been raped here: Freedom of Speech(TM), that thing the 'West' lectures anyone about. Well, it's just been buried.
ReplyDeleteNext, coming to you shortly: book burning!
Yes, an excellent article which I've also re-posted on Facebook. The racial segregation of refugees fleeing from Ukraine is disgusting, no doubt linked to the influence of the far right in Ukraine and Poland.
ReplyDeleteWe can still get RT Live here in Australia and I agree that although, of course, it presents the position of the Russian government, it is actually far more balanced than the vast bulk of Western media propaganda outlets. I have also been very disappointed with Al Jazeera.