Aslambek Paskachev: “The average person concluded: Caucasian means alien”

On August 6, 2007, the Novye Izvestiya newspaper published an article by Aslambek Paskachev, chairman of the Russian Congress of the Peoples of the Caucasus, "Geography of the conflict: Kondopoga, Stavropol, Moscow", dedicated to the danger of Caucasian phobia in Russian society and, among other things, touching upon the problem of hate speech.

First of all, A. Paskachev explains to the readers the absurdity of the very phrase "a person of Caucasian nationality." It is no accident, he writes, that these "persons" include Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians, Avars, Chechens, Ossetians, and about 50 other national groups of our country. Moreover, the process of turning these people of different ethnicity into "persons of Caucasian nationality" is not accidental, the author emphasizes.

In the current conditions, when "more than 100 newspapers are published in Russia, propagandizing nationalist views in "hate speech" and forming negative ideas about Caucasians among the population" , and "about 60% of the Russians surveyed in one form or another are carriers of such ideas and sentiments" , arguments that criminals have no nationality and that Caucasians are the same citizens of Russia, that their ancestors lived in a single country for hundreds of years, absolutely do not work. “On the contrary, they cause hostile perception and irritation in a certain part of the population. Based on their own life experience and many years of “brainwashing” by the media, the “blinkered” layman made a clear and unambiguous conclusion for himself: Caucasian means alien, and if alien, then bad and dangerous" .

Today there is a serious threat to the unity of the state, the author warns. "Nationalist groups do not realize the disastrous consequences of the chosen path, since the super-task of their puppeteers, despite the patriotic rhetoric, is to turn a mini-war against "persons of Caucasian nationality" into great social upheavals" .

"Until the mass consciousness wakes up for active actions and rejects derogatory concepts like "persons of Caucasian nationality", the existing system of social relations will continuously reproduce ethnic conflicts ," writes A. Paskachev. And in such a situation, it is impossible to carry out socio-economic transformations and specific measures to ensure the implementation of Art. 19 p. 2 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

Sources

• Paskachev A. Geography of the conflict: Kondopoga, Stavropol, Moscow // Novye Izvestia. 2007. 6 August.