[dictum]

It's disappointing how this kind of commentary, disparaging a whole nation/language instead of a government/chief of state, is seeping into mass media. Another recent example is the mock-Cyrillic in the Silicon Valley intro.

It stops being about Putin, the Russian government, leading Russian politicians, Russian oligarchs or some identifiable group. It becomes "the Russians".

(It's not a new phenomenon—remember Dr. Seuss's cartoons about the Japanese?—but it's being done by people who arguably didn't skip the lessons about the problems with national exceptionalism and just recently were making sure everyone knew that.)

[oblio]

That tends to happen when you’re supposed to be living in a democracy.

At least with the Soviets there was no pretending.

[celdon25]

There was plenty of pretending in the Soviet Union. Perhaps even more.

[prolikewhoa]

It's turning into Russiophobia.

Criticism of Putin and the Government, fine, understandable. When you start bringing the language, culture, and innocent people just trying to get by into it and start picking fun at it, that's not OK.

The same people who are OK with this are appalled at the similar right wing/4chan generalizations about Israel and Jewish people.

[throwaway84742]

There’s plenty of “americanifobia” on the other end. But I think in both countries the extent of the problem is wildly exaggerated by observers. The vast majority of normal people don’t really fear or hate the entire other people. It may be trendy or “socially acceptable” for them to say they do, but deep down they understand it’s all propaganda and bullshit.

More generally, the quantity of fucks anybody gives about things that do not affect them directly tends to be exaggerated.