|
Once a staple
of Russian politics, has anti-Semitism disappeared from the stage?
“Spoken by anyone else, Alexander Belov's words would
have been unremarkable.
"As far as I know, and I can trace my descendants
several centuries back, I have nothing to do with Jews," he said, adding,
"which is neither positive or negative."
But Belov is far from a simple man on the street. The
charismatic and media savvy leader of the Movement Against
Illegal Immigration, or DPNI, heads what is by many
accounts the most powerful ultranationalist movement operating in Russia today.
His Jewish-neutral comments to JTA almost certainly
represent a calculated consideration. What that calculation by Belov and others
on the ultra-right represents, though, is revolutionary.
Anti-Semitism, once at the forefront of Russian
nationalism and electoral politics, has ceased to be a viable political tool
and virtually has disappeared from the national stage.
"Not too long ago, the Duma was not willing to
condemn anti-Semitism because it was politically expedient not to," said
Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, who was in
Moscow earlier this month for meetings with the Putin government.
"That's changed. You have an election now which,
for the first time in recent history, there are no issues about who's a Jew or
who's supported by a Jew."
... Post-Soviet politics is rife with
attempts to manipulate deeply entrenched anti-Semitism for electoral gains.
During the tumultuous decade following the collapse of the USSR, numerous
political parties ran and made significant gains by employing crass
anti-Semitic imagery. Indeed, the first major grassroots movement of the post-Soviet
era, Pamyat, was heavily anti-Semitic.
In 1993 Vladimir Zhirinovsky, although himself part
Jewish, was a member of Pamyat and won 23 percent of the seats in the Russian
Duma.
"Political anti-Semitism was much, much more vocal
than today," said the chief rabbi of Moscow, Pinchas Goldschmidt.
Even as recently as January 2005, when 19 Duma deputies
introduced a bill proposing to ban Judaism as "satanic," accusing
Jews of engaging in ritualistic murder, anti-Semitism remained at least a
nominally acceptable tool among both the mainstream and fringe.
It is not clear whether the situation has changed due
to changing public perception or genuine contrition.
Experts cite the personal involvement of President
Vladimir Putin and his commitment to combat anti-Semitism as one factor in the
decline of popular anti-Semitism. But many believe the real reason is that the
political center and ultra-right have found a more palatable enemy: westerners
and immigrants, many of them Muslims from the Caucasus.
.... Belov himself, despite his
pronouncements of religious tolerance to JTA, seems to understand its potency
as well as anyone.
Born Alexander Potkin, he changed his name to Belov,
taken from the Russian word for '"white,"' after breaking with Pamyat
some years ago. Since then he has been unable to shake the rumor that he is
Jewish. Many Russian Jewish surnames end in "kin," and the question
has sparked Internet chatter that still persists.
A recent search on Stormfront .org, a worldwide neo-Nazi
chat board, revealed pages of commentary and speculation in both English and
Russian as to Belov/Potkin's ancestry, and whether it disqualified him from
leading the Russian ultranationalists.
"I wouldn't be linking to videos of the
DPNI," wrote a user calling himself Paladin89. "It's leader is a Jew,
Potkin, who changed his name to Belov which means white/of white! The sad thing
is that many Russians on this board know this yet they still follow a
chosenite!"
Belov continues to maintain he is not Jewish.
Still, anti-Semitism remains too tempting to pass up in
certain cases, even for those with mainstream political aspirations like Belov.
Verkhovsky described anti-Semitism as being central to the identity of the
Russian ultra-right.
Some weeks after his conversation with JTA, during this
year's "Russian March," a large annual demonstration uniting groups
as seemingly disparate as the National Socialist Party and his DPNI, Belov made
anti-Semitic remarks to much applause.
"We came here to say simple words: We are sick and
tired of the power of occupants, of conquerors, and now it's enough,"
Belov was quoted as saying by The Associated Press. "We are the real
power, not those who are hiding in this Torah!"
In a follow-up interview, Belov insisted that the DPNI
is not anti-Semitic, attributing the spontaneous chants of "Death to the
Jews" that were reported by AP as the work of fringe elements in the
crowd.
"At the event, after every orator, every speech,
people were shouting 'Death to the Jews' -- also during my own speech," he
said. "I didn't mention Jews or anything to do with them. As concerns this
factor in any society, even in Israel, there are people who behave too
extravagantly."
Published by the JUF, 29th November 2007
|