Moscow’s Blaming School Violence on Foreign Websites Gets the Situation Exactly Backwards and Reduces Chance of Reducing Attacks, Arkhipova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec.16 – Whenever a Russian student attacks another, Moscow officials are quick to blame what they say is the nefarious influence of foreign websites. But doing so not only gets the explanation exactly backward but limits still further any genuinely effective efforts to reduce such violence, according to Aleksandra Arkipova.

            The independent Russian anthropologist says that Russian youths turn to foreign websites about or even celebrating violence only after conditions in their own lives dispose them to violence and they are looking for validation. Blaming the sites rather than other factors ignores that reality (t.me/anthro_fun/3741 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/prichinno-sledstvennaya-zavisimost-v-takih-sluchayah-obratnya).

            That mistake is bad enough in and of itself, but its consequences are worse, Arkhipova says. It reduces in Russia attention to violence in the home, racism and xenophobia and means that the ways in which these phenomena spread to the schools is not addresses, unlike in the US and elsewhere where more psychologists are now working in schools and violence is down.

            While attacks still continue in other countries, she continues, they have been reduced in number while in the Russian Federation on the contrary, they are increasing in number and ferocity because Moscow won’t face up to the domestic roots of such violence and take action, including deploying psychologists to the schools.