Natalia Narochnitskaya on geopolitics

On April 4, 2004, in the Vremena program, State Duma Deputy Natalia Narochnitskaya, in particular, stated that Europe should decide and, together with Russia, resist "geopolitical" terrorism in the person of Chechnya and "Albanian bandits", but was interrupted here by Vladimir Pozner , who pointed out to her the inadmissibility of using such expressions.

Narochnitskaya immediately corrected herself and used the expression "Kosovo bandits" .

COMM.: Indeed, the second expression, unlike the first, is 100% politically correct, i.e. does not affect ethnicity at all. But, on the other hand, the conflict in Kosovo is precisely ethnic, and the bandits there can be both Albanian and Serbian, and these are different bandits. Narochnitskaya obviously wanted to say that Europe must fight precisely with the Albanians. And the replacement of the wording deprived her statement of its original meaning.

In this case, it can be assumed that Narochnitskaya meant not all Albanians and not Albanians as such, but rather certain "Albanian bandits", i.e. people committing certain acts, referred to by Narochnitskaya as gangster, and identifying themselves as Albanians. This meaning of the phrase "Albanian bandits" is not, in our opinion, ethno-xenophobic.

There is another point of view, which Posner apparently came up with - not to mention ethnic or religious affiliation at all in connection with something bad (for example, in the popular term "Islamic terrorism"). This point of view comes from the best intentions and in most cases we share it, but in some cases it seems to us unconstructive, because it does not allow us to talk about negative phenomena (for example, terrorism, for example), to which their carriers themselves assign ethnic or religious identification.

Returning to this episode, let's summarize: if some groups call themselves, for example, "Albanian fighters", it is wrong to forbid someone else to call them "Albanian bandits".

Times // Channel One. 2004. April 4.