War!

[emo_snal]

   So Russia's at war. I don't think most of America noticed, though I have heard a few random people talking about it. Anyway, I wrote several papers about Georgia and its breakaway provinces and Russia's interests in the area, so this development is interesting to me

Comments

[emo_snal]

Hmm well "aryan" isn't actually an ethnic group I don't think. Its jsut something the nazis made up. The aryanns were actually an INDIAN ethnic group way back in prehistory, but they were the origins of the "indo-europeans" I guess. Anyway for example Persia changed its name to Iran in the 30s to emphasize they too were Aryan and suck up to Mr Hitler.

BUT the Ossetians are a distantly Iranian ethnic group I believe. So technically I suppose so. But nazi "aryans" probably never beleive they belonged to their made-up conception of their ethnicity.

What skinheads in Russia usually get excited about is people being Slavic. Hence they'll back the Serbs in the Balkans till the bitter end because their more Slavic than the Croats and the Albanians are Muslim.

Basically I don't think ethnicity really plays a part in this because the Ossetians aren't Slavic but neither are the Georgians (I don't think? They might be but that would be backwards as to who Russias supporting in this war), and both formerly belonged to Russia if one wants to harken back to the glory days. So.. yeah.

[silvershamrock]

I'd heard about the Nazi concept of 'Aryan' versus the reality, I just wasn't sure how it worked out in this case. So, it's probably not the Russian Nazis then (now there's a concept for you: Communist Nazis. Pretty sure Simpsons have done that one already).

Even so. Untrammeled Russian aggression is probably not a good thing, especially if there's a strong undercurrent of the 'Bruderbund', or whatever the Slavic equivalent is.

[emo_snal]

Oh yeah there are very definitely Russian skinheads (some left my brother unconscious in a snowbank in Estonia once), and Russian nationalism is definitely pretty strong right now. So yeah. I'm not sure there's a really convenient analogy to anything else but I dunno if you're in America but the Republicans have a kind of "America is awesome in whatEVER it does!!" kind of patriotism, and I think there a bunch of Russians that feel that way about Russia.

And yes, in the Simpsons McBane fights "Commu-nazis" in some short clips of one of his films.

[ext_90340]

This account of Aryans and of the Aryan myth is a bit muddled.

Just where and how the Indo-European languages arose is controversial, but I've never seen an academic propose that it originated in India. (Rather, the name Aryan was pulled from the language and culture of Indo-Europeans in India.)

The most popular theories associate the language group with some initial group of people. For a long time, spread was presumed to have been by forceable conquest (and it was within this context that the notion of a superior Aryan race arose; though, mind you, this myth was adopted rather than generated by the Nazis), Colin Renfrew has proposed a fine, rival theory that the Indo-European languages spread largely as a result of settled agriculture displacing hunting-and-gathering. (Renfrew's theory then locates the original Indo-Europeans in what is now Turkey.)