*end rant*

Oh and @gwensnyder.bsky.social to be clear, by "you" I don't mean you specifically, I mean leftists generally. A lot of the above isn't aimed at you but is responding to other comrades interacting with your post and with the post that you quoted 💜

And finally, as a trans woman I beg you, I implore you: PLEASE recognize that the Russian state is one of the biggest perpetuators of trans exterminationism and pose a much bigger existential threat to queer/trans people globally than all of the (yes, very real) neo-Nazis in Ukraine put together

As a somewhat relevant side note, the Ukrainian and Palestinian struggles for liberation have a lot more in common than a lot of online leftists seem to realize and I really really wish that more of our comrades saw that joined in solidarity

And before anyone comes for me, I'm a Yiddish teacher and I've worked with actual Antifa groups to fight against actual neo-Nazis in the PNW and in my home town. I know from fascism, and a whole lot of comrades in the Good Fight need to check their rhetoric and rethink who our enemies are

And finally, as a trans woman I beg you, I implore you: PLEASE recognize that the Russian state is one of the biggest perpetuators of trans exterminationism and pose a much bigger existential threat to queer/trans people globally than all of the (yes, very real) neo-Nazis in Ukraine put together

As a somewhat relevant side note, the Ukrainian and Palestinian struggles for liberation have a lot more in common than a lot of online leftists seem to realize and I really really wish that more of our comrades saw that joined in solidarity

And before anyone comes for me, I'm a Yiddish teacher and I've worked with actual Antifa groups to fight against actual neo-Nazis in the PNW and in my home town. I know from fascism, and a whole lot of comrades in the Good Fight need to check their rhetoric and rethink who our enemies are

Not to mention that especially since Maidan, Ukraine has effectively gone from an ethnic nation to a political one and that is reflected by most people in Ukraine. Like, the literal president of Ukraine, would be Not Ukrainian 50 years ago, same with the PM and at least one Governor (Vitalii Kim)

Not to mention that especially since Maidan, Ukraine has effectively gone from an ethnic nation to a political one and that is reflected by most people in Ukraine. Like, the literal president of Ukraine, would be Not Ukrainian 50 years ago, same with the PM and at least one Governor (Vitalii Kim)

Oh and by the way, calling Ukraine as a whole fascist or neo-Nazis and not Russia, when overt fascism is so much more normalized in Russian media and the Russian state has overtly fascist policies that Ukraine just doesn't, really just plays into racialized rhetoric about Ukrainians 🤷‍♀️

Oh and by the way, calling Ukraine as a whole fascist or neo-Nazis and not Russia, when overt fascism is so much more normalized in Russian media and the Russian state has overtly fascist policies that Ukraine just doesn't, really just plays into racialized rhetoric about Ukrainians 🤷‍♀️

Hilariously enough, Caucasians, as in people from the Caucasus Mountains, are often called "black" in Russia as a slur

Compare that with Ukrainians and Chechens who are basically automatically assumed to be terrorists

I saw an interview with a Black woman born in Russian that said that Russians she'd meet would at first assume they were foreign and be curious about why she's visiting, but would hear her speak and go "oh wait so you're actually Russian" and then treat her accordingly for the rest of the convos

And like, yeah the russian racial system definitely had elements of colorism to them, but also like, Black people in Russia have famously that they did not experience the same kind of treatment as in the US and did not feel in danger like they did in the US

(FoR: half my family had "Ethnicity: Russian" and half had "Ethnicity: Jew" on their "internal passports", and guess which side were rejected from universities based on ethnic quotas)

The racial "caste" system upheld in much of the West is, and that's especially the case in the US, but that wasn't the case in Nazi Germany ("Aryans" vs Jews, Slavs, etc), and definitely not in the Russian Empire/USSR/Russia ("Russians" or "ruskiye" vs Jews, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, etc)