Medvedev candidacy and Russian Black Hundreds

The nomination of Dmitry Medvedev, one of Russia’s two first deputy prime ministers, by the United Russia party (read Putin) as its candidate for the presidential election next March, raised quite a few brows. Quite a non-entity, at least as far as his control of Russian power centers is concerned, Medvedev is a non-starter without being fully supported by Putin. His nickname – “Porridge*” tells the whole story exceedingly well.

Putin’s maneuvering clearly has its goal to keep all the strings of power to himself after the March 08 elections, no matter what role he will take up in the after-elections power structure. Keeping in mind the cosmetic nature of the forthcoming changes, the level of antisemitic histrionics caused by Medvedev’s candidacy is impossible to explain, but it is a fact. Probably since Stalin’s war against “rootless cosmopolitans” and the glory days of the Black Hundreds before that, Russia had not seen such an eruption of antisemitic venom.

A typical example is displayed by this article that will take even the author of the Protocols by surprise. The poisonous language belongs to the times of the Ochranka, Purishkevich, Dostoyevsky – in short, the best and finest.

The article is titled “[Russia] at crossroads: A successor who will never be“.

The title by itself causes a question: why should Putin choose as a successor a man whose chances to be elected are low? Some foul play is being hinted at, but what is its eventual goal is unclear, and no answer is forthcoming from the article. Because it is dedicated to pure hissing Joo-hate that keeps a difficult equilibrium not to become criminal incitement. The article offers a single picture of Medvedev (in the middle, if you haven’t guessed by now):

Of course, Medvedev, as many a political leader, gets his share of visits to various religious chieftains, but this picture is tightly linked to the contents. Now to the contents:

It couldn’t be that important who is nominated by the United Russia party, when the secret plans of Kremlin nurture the idea of the “Chief Prime Minister” or, in other words, Putin. …

To start with, we have to say a few words about the candidate’s CV, but in Russia it is considered a sin to badmouth these people. Nerd, in short. We cannot say anything bad about his Jewish mother, Yulia Benyaminovna, a good woman, apparently, only her nationality is a matter of public knowledge. For example, nobody aside of closest people knew about Mr Blank’s (nickname Lenin) mother, Mr Dzhugashvili’s (nickname Stalin) father, Mr Lieberman’s (nickname Andropov) mother. And 99.9% of the general population and 90% of the world’s elite didn’t even suspect their true nationality. Which means that these people had their reasons to hide their roots. “Russia, you see, they wouldn’t get it.” And this during the totalitarian times.

And now, after a strange “election” a few strange “parties” get together and nominate an apparently good person who doesn’t have any suitable background and just pushed papers all his life. A typical nerd boy and a son of Yulia Benyaminovna to boot, in other words the most Halachic Jew. Not just a potential repatriate to Israel, but one whose genealogy is above suspicion and guarantees him a very good reception in his historic motherland.

I could go on with the translation, but the above is enough to get the drift and, more important, the tone of this quite poisonous piece. Just to get the full measure of hypocrisy, the author (or the editor) put a footnote addressing the potential commentators of the article:

We request that readers be as proper as possible when discussing the article. Jews are not guilty that Medvedev was nominated. Comments that include insulting and provocative statements will not be posted.

As you can imagine… no, actually you couldn’t and I am not going to translate any of the sewer-level comments (which is the major part) that follow.

I intended to emphasize a few especially poignant items in the translation above, but after some mulling decided to leave it to your imagination.

(*) In fact, the direct translation of “манная каша”, which is how Medvedev is nicknamed, is “Cream of wheat”. Porridge was chosen as a better translation that may give an English speaking reader a feeling of the subject matter. Any ideas to improve this translation are welcome.

Cross-posted on SimplyJews.