Land of the paranoid and entitled
Today in my Russian History class (which is also partially a lit class) we read part of a memoir by Nadezhda Mandelshtam, the wife of famous poet Osip Mandelshtam, called Hope Abandoned. For those not willing to read through the two wikipedia articles, Osip Mandelshtam was taken away to a gulag (prison camp) in 1938 for writing poems that criticised Stalin. He died in the gulag of an unspecified illness sometime within the next 5 years, no one knows when, and Nadezhda was not informed of his death until years later.
The section of her memoir that we read was a letter from Nadezhda to Osip which was never mailed, because by this point she had strong suspicions of his death. It's a really beautiful and poignant letter, and I found it kind of heartrending.
As we were discussing it in class, my teacher asked if this sort of thing happened in America- specifically, she said, if poets and artists are imprisoned, sent to mental institutions or forced labor camps, or killed for criticising the leaders of this country. A kid in the first row who I'm going to call E raised his hand, and answered that if a poet makes a death threat against the president, they can be imprisoned.
This is the same kid who, when we were talking earlier in the year about religious violence, stated that 9/11 was an inside job, the same kid who costantly corrects our teacher with incorrect facts, and seemingly believes that he is some kind of voice for the censored American or something. And yeah I'm going to keep calling him a kid, because he acts like one with his stupid victimization complex and his crazy conspiracy theories.
I hate this kind of paranoid thinking so goddamn much. It's beyond insulting to compare modern America to Purge-era Russia, a time when some of the greatest thinkers in the country were killed or imprisoned for speaking their minds, just like it's insulting to compare the treatment of GLBTQ people to the treatment of Black people throughout American history. It's the same kind of facile comparison I heard over and over at the anti-SB1070 rally last year, where a bunch of (white, male) poli-sci students got up and said, and I quote, "This is how Nazi Germany started." No it isn't. You're diminishing the suffering of thousands of people with your stupid, inaccurate hyperbole.
Let me be perfectly clear: These are arguements from the people I agree with. I think censorship is reprehensible, I believe in queer rights and liberation, and I think SB1070 is a disgusting piece of legislation. But here's the thing: we have the right to free speech. We are not killed by the government for writing poems, GLBTQ people were never enslaved or segregated or denied the right to vote, and the Arizona government is not trying to shove hispanic people or immigrants into ghettos so they can commit genocide.
It's important that these causes get real attention. But this isn't helping. Aren't these screaming idiots the same people who laugh at Brother Jed? Don't they realize that they're just as strident and unreasonable? And I hate it so much that they have to act like children about these things, because they're undermining and delegitimizing real problems, and as long as they keep making these stupid, insulting comparisons, well of course no one's going to listen.
TL:DR I really hate this kid in my Russian class because he's making me look bad by believing in the same things as me.