Reply to Turns out the Falls Church school board guy from the Koch thinktank, Ilya Shapiro, really is toxic

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Reply to "Turns out the Falls Church school board guy from the Koch thinktank, Ilya Shapiro, really is toxic"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]^^^ The other thing I'd note is that growing up in an authoritarian regime with bad nationality policy should have made Shapiro LESS likely to support authoritarians and bad nationality policy.

Unfortunately, it did not. [/quote]

Very well said pp in your post above this one. But how old is this guy? All this focus on his USSR history, but how old was he when the USSR disintegrated? 10 at most, living in Moscow (a huge privilege in USSR days in itself).[/quote]

I'm the PP who posted about Soviet nationality policy and there are two threads of discussion around his background, both of which would be kind of interesting if folks on DCUM were a little more nuanced:

1) Are Gen X and Boomer generation Soviet immigrants reflexively conservative? Even reactionary at times?

2) Should Mr. Shapiro get a "pass" on racist comments because he was a member of a persecuted minority before his family emigrated from the USSR?

On number 1, I'd say yes, sometimes. This is a hard conversation, but I think the reflexive conservatism of many Soviet emigres (particularly those 50+ right now) stems from genuine trauma but also from frustration about "starting over" in this country and having to work their way up under people who they think are inferior to them, including POC.

On number 2, no. Mr. Shapiro has accessed this country's finest educational institutions, and been given opportunity after opportunity to succeed, including overlooking some past bigoted statements. I am not doubting that his family faced antisemitism in the USSR, and that he may have faced it in North America as well, but that does not give him a "get out of jail free" pass when it comes to public racism. He should own the consequences of his words. [/quote]

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