His dad was a highly ranked general and engineer.
His wife has several prominent realtives that worked in Soviet space programs.
That's a geat example of nepotism, the main social lift in contemporary Russia.
He first gained notoriety at 2003 parliament elections leading a pro-Putin ultranationalist party Rodina.
One of Rodina’s TV ads were comparing Caucausus people to street trash.
People say though that Rogozin is not a big believer in anything, he’s just a huge cynical careerist coming from a very privileged nomenclature background riding any wave that brings him to the top. Right now he’s one of the major pro-war hawks.
What are the F words? Fascist?
As for the N-word, there is a similarly sounding but fairly neutral Russian word which was OK to use until the influence of the US culture tarnished it.
I am genuinely puzzled.
N-word as well. Ordinary Russians will fight tooth and nail for their right to use this word.
To be honest I believe the americans promoted the n-word and they still do it MORE than anyone else(i.e russia). Just listen a random rap song or watch a movie with black people. It seems part of the american culture. As someone from a small European country I couldn't really understand how a word can be both "forbidden" and widely used by the offended party.
Nevertheless offensive words are offensives and we should try to avoid using them but talking about F word and N word and B word and M word even in a neutral context seems a bit too much censorship. We are not kids to be told we are not allowed to say specific words.
And it looks like now another word is going to be forbidden: H word.
> One of Rodina’s TV ads were comparing Caucausus people to street trash.
This seems to be a common trait across the political spectrum in Russia. The darling of the west, Alexei Navalny, is just as nationalist and xenophobic, and while he doesn't compare people from the Caucasus as trash, he did compare them to vermin that need to be exterminated in his TV ads.
And any politician who actually wants to succeed is bound to channel this energy or at least address it.
Russia has severe ongoing problems with national tensions and conflicts.
Not only between Russians and other nations but among those nations as well (e.g. ingush vs chechen).
Main reason is that Russia was built as a colonialist empire. Most ethnic regions had nothing in common except for being conquered.
That led to bad blood such as ongoing ethnic conflicts, disputed regions and insurgencies being crushed by Kremlin using mostly ethnically white army.
Multiple bombings of Grozny easily rival current destruction of Ukraine, along with mass rape and pillaging.
Conscripts were executed and tortured by locals which led to army’s brutal retaliation leading to cycle of violence.
Ethnic crime also contributed with some diasporas having immense powers in Moscow.
This boiling cocktail leads to a huge albeit suppressed anger amongst general population.
A politician who proposes disbanding Russian Federation and imposing a visa regime with ethnic regions will ride a wave of support not seen by Putin.
That’s why Putin crushes any nationalist opposition much harder than liberal one. It’s the biggest threat to his rule if there’s one.
Rogozin served mainly as a spoiler. His fake party sponged some dissent votes in 2003 and then disappeared. Once again even if his Nazi views are genuine, he’s a power hungry Machiavelist first.
Someone else in this thread linked a video of him giving the Nazi salute (is there a name for this?) after his speech at the rally mentioned in the Reuters article. I can't think of any reason someone would attend or speak at such an event, let alone salute like that at such an event, aside from being a neo-Nazi.
No its not
Here's one counterexample: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansi,_the_Girl_who_Loved_the_...
This distinction is a very frequent source of misunderstanding for both native speakers and English speakers, as Russians might hear one where you imply another, and vice versa.
pretty sure many Turkic, Mongolic, etc. people lived in what is now Russia long before a Russian state existed.
That's treating the phrase an an ethnic thing, you might say "well clearly they mean Russian as a Nationality" but in that case Russia already belongs to Russians.
It’s has a few connotations. The mildest is proposing to throw all colored people out of the cities. The most severe is to exterminate them.
"Dmitry Rogozin (Director General of Russia’s Roskosmos State Space Agency, former Deputy Prime Minister) – comments on his Twitter feed and Telegram channel (June 13, 2022)
“In general, what has grown up in the place of Ukraine is an existential threat to the Russian people, Russian history, Russian language and Russian civilization. If we do not put an end to them, as, unfortunately, our grandfathers did not do away with them, we will have to die, but end up at an even greater cost to our grandchildren. So let’s get this over with. Once and forever. For our grandchildren.”"
https://www.justsecurity.org/81789/russias-eliminationist-rh...
He also was a leader of right-wing party Rodina in early 2000s, see more details in Wikipedia:
>Under Rogozin, Rodina shifted towards the right wing of Russian politics and became the second largest and one of the country's most successful parties. A number of controversies on Rogozin's policies culminated in it being banned in 2005 from standing for election to the Moscow City Duma for using what was considered as chauvinist slogan 'Let's Clean the Garbage!'.
I think I've been hasty to judge other people's positions in the past. I'm guilty of confidently stating a view on a topic despite knowing that I haven't taken the time to really understand the others' position. Probably 80% of the time, my final conclusion matches my initial one. But I'm trying to become more responsible about this kind of thing. So to that end...
I'd like to understand Rogozin's reasons for holding those beliefs. I know basically nothing about that region's history. Is he working from bad factual / historical data? Has he been exposed to specific propaganda / psy-ops? Has he seen or experienced something traumatic that makes him hyper-vigilant about Ukranian leadership or non-Russians in general?
>People say though that Rogozin is not a big believer in anything, he’s just a huge cynical careerist coming from a very privileged nomenclature background riding any wave that brings him to the top. Right now he’s one of the major pro-war hawks.
(quote from this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32108578)
Going down that rabbit hole or learning about things like the "2014 Odessa Clashes [2]" (and think about how we would treat that event, or even call it, had it happened to the side that we're supposed to like) or even the Language Policy in Ukraine [3], and you can actually start to see how deep in information warfare we currently are. And it's unpleasant.
I am avoiding doing much beyond giving references for you to read yourself largely because of what you mentioned. In the current atmosphere it's basically impossible to actually discuss the war in an open fashion, and probably will remain so for years to come.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odessa_clashes
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine
They then retreated to the House of Unions where pro-Russian opposition was based. Basically taking them as hostages.
The house was set on fire and multiple people died a horrific death.
While immensely tragic, don’t “both sides” this and spread Russian propaganda. The skirmishes were all captured on long live streams.
Afterwards Russian TV used it to further spread anti-Ukrainian hatred.
How the Ukrainian government conducted the investigation is quite telling.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Odessa_clashes#Investigat...
It’s a really easy climb if you share Nazi and homophobic views of Russian elites and being vocal about it.
Plays very well with army generals, old Kremlin elite and general population as well.
Nomenclature was a very small class of people with privileged exclusive access.
It’s either families with relatively short ties to Kremlin: people with high positions, spies, diplomats, nuclear scientists, state journalists, pro-government writers.
Or people like heads of grocery chains, import shops who controlled access to goods and clothes.
People like these could put their children at most successful universities without exams, buy them Western cars and spoil with caviar while most people stood at the queues for hours to get sour milk or bones for soup.
Luckily I decided to look into it a bit.
It turned out that Shahnazarov was saying the reverse -- some evil forces decided to eradicate Russians (and that's why Putin fights the war) and 'they' won't have mercy even for the anti-war activists -- hence 'concentration camps, reeducation and sterilization' for pro-Western Russians too.
Here is the full video from which parts were cut and rearranged -- https://t.me/kolezev/11213 .
The article itself is written by an American and helpfully translated into Ukrainian to let Ukrainians know what Russians think of them.
Rogozin's quote seems real though -- the link leads to what looks like his Telegram channel :-(