Humanity's main coping mechanism is rallying in tribes. Those tribes are defined by the exclusion of other tribes. Our instinct is to band together with those who are like us. The grand human project is expanding the tribe large enough to include everyone and sometimes, it's one step forward, two steps back. I'm almost done with this book. Yesterday's read was all about the Italian partisans and the death of Mussolini... and that under the Fascists, anyone who wasn't a Fascist was an ally. Staunch anti-communists would join the Communists to fight because regardless of what you think of Communists, they weren't Black Shirts. Plenty of people were willing to align with Hitler over his economic ideas while completely ignoring what a rabid, apocalyptic anti-semite he was. And, of course, he was merely the most extreme. A gentle reminder: Russians are not innocent.
Last year, I was doing some sort of a municipal-level questionnaire. They said they were doing it to send it around possible employment sites around the city once I'm done with the education. The guys I did it with (it was male-only, and there was a point about serving in the army) thought it was some sort of a government-control checking-up. Point is: they still asked me about my nationality. The black-on-white was there, even though the lady who came to explain the procedure to us said it didn't matter whether I filled it. My mother is passively aggressive towards Jews: they're the "clever, cunning fellows". My father... don't even mention the "browns" (read: Uzbek, Tajik, Azerbaijani, Dagestani etc. etc. etc.) around him. But at least - thank goodness we're taking the peoples of Dagestan in with us, right?A gentle reminder: Russians are not innocent.