So much with the "hospitable nation" myth

[htpcl]

Hey, fellow indifferent popcorn-munchers conscientious peace-lovers! Here's a tale for ya. "We're one of the most hospitable, amorous and warm-hearted people in the world", the communist propaganda used to teach us Bulgars back in the good days of old.

Well, not so fast. Here's one "example" that I don't recommend anyone emulating:

Asylum Seekers

Comments

[htpcl]

Well, too late, unfortunately. See, I haven't been to the village of Rozovo but I know a few guys from the regional center, Kazanlak. One added some insight to the matter, reminding me that the famous Festival of the Rose starts in that village a few days from now (the BG rose is one of the symbols of the country, and that valley is its epicenter). So, in less than a month there'll be German tourists and Japanese tourists and all other sort of tourists flocking back there, they'll be meeting the young rose gardeners, the hotels in the area will be flocking with visitors, the restaurants will be making some nice revenue... All in all, the Festival of the Rose will go as planned - except, this time we'll all know for sure that it's just a facade, it's a circus of hypocrisy. A cheap trap for tourists that has nothing to do with this fabled hospitality of ours.

Don't get me wrong, I can understand where this ignorant hatred is coming from in those simple people. It comes from fear. They're afraid, because that's how they've been shaped by both their peers, the media, and most of all, their rulers - because it's way easier to rule a scared flock that's easy to manipulate. Yes, I put the bulk of the blame on the local authorities and our political culture at large. The latter should've initiated information campaigns about the Syrian refugee situation a long time ago. Our people should've been provided with a chance to get closely acquainted with the foreigners, establish personal contacts, and realize that they're just people like everyone else. Then public perception of them would've been much different. But that was a missed chance, sadly. Now all we have is ignorance, stereotypes, and all that ugliness.

And some of this has been directly and overtly aided and inflamed by the local representatives of authority, mind you. For example the mayor of Kazanlak, the regional center (who btw is from a party that's supposedly pro-European) recently went to that particular village and explained to the locals that it was one of the "purest" (read: ethnically purest) (?!?) villages in the region, and she'd personally take measures to keep those foreigners out of Rozovo. And that's not even her first gaffe of this sort: last year she headed the anti-refugee protests in her town, under the pretext that... wait for it... "there are arms factories in town" (?!?). It's as if she was saying those Syrians were a bunch of terrorists who were a threat to our national security who'd seize our meager arsenal at first opportunity. What the fuck.

That same mayor regularly boasts of having realized a bunch of EU projects, using EU money, including on programs of ethnic integration. The hypocrisy here is staggering...

Such people, IMO, should get straight into jail for inciting aggression, racial, ethnic and religious discrimination on a large scale. Fuck them. Fuck them all.

[johnny9fingers]

It's difficult for folk from small enclaves to be cosmopolitan in the good sense of the word: and it is a word with a good sense.

In Blighty the propaganda ministry BBC has a long-running radio soap called The Archers, an everyday story of country folk, wherein immigrants are portrayed positively, or at least as human beings. Radio still existing in steampunk Britain. Even so...we have our Farages, and worse. After the French bankers came the Poles and then the Romanians, after the Transylvanians came the Bulgarians...small numbers actually, but a blade to the heart for a certain sort of small-minded Englishman who cannot see enrichment from other's experience.

Be nice to the tourists, try to operate honourably, and lead by example, I guess: we can't fix all our countries' ills. But what we can do is try to shout out about what is good and proper in policy. Most of us will have our differences in defining that specific...but the demagogues and populist semi-racist-fascist-nationalist parties should unite the rest of us in opposition to them completely. And maybe we have some small duty to challenge the reasoning behind the extreme right's agenda as well as confronting the agenda itself.

[htpcl]

They seemed cosmopolitan all right when it was suggested to them that some English pensioners could move to town and purchase and renovate a few deserted old houses to live there permanently, mhmmm?

Hell, they even seemed OK with the idea of hosting Ukrainian refugees there! As long as those were white.

Obviously, the problem is not the lack of cosmopolitanism (sic?).

[johnny9fingers]

The racist feelings that some folk have, have very deep roots. Like homophobia, it seems to some as nature re-enforced by nurture. In order to learn fairness, we must unlearn prejudice, and you have to want to do that, or be put into a learning situation which you have no control over. The latter is ethically and politically impossible. So...hearts and minds, old thing, hearts and minds. You may find some of the English who go out to you are adventurous enough and cosmopolitan enough to have some benign influence on the locals, but I wouldn't bet on it from our expats.

You are bound to get the odd Anglo-Asian/Carribean doctor/accountant/lawyer in your retirement villages too. That might provide the thin edge of a wedge...

[htpcl]

Fear is at the bottom of all this. Fear that these foreigners are coming to gain something at the expense of the locals. It's this inherent fear of change that the unknown tends to bring.

Since lots of English pensioners have already moved here, I can tell you the difference in their case is that they're perceived as people coming from a wealthier society, therefore it's the reverse expectation: that the locals could actually gain something from them.

[johnny9fingers]

Well...we all have to lick someone's arse for the money. Unless you're actually an oligarch, I suppose.