Paul Goble
Staunton,
July 7 – More than a century ago, many prominent Russians went to South Africa
to fight on the side of the Boers, the Dutch Protestants opposed to British
rule. Now, some of the descendants of the Boers are coming to Russia, an exodus
that a Vzglyad commentator says
reflects what he describes as almost a genocide against whites in South Africa
now.
The
history of Russian involvement in the Boer War has attracted some interest
among historians (For a celebration of that involvement and a bibliography, see
Apollon Davidson and Irina Filatova, The
Russians and the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902 (Cape Town, 1998) at http://ab-war.narod.ru/DAV-1.PDF.)
So
far, however, Eduard Birov’s article yesterday in Vzglyad is the only prominent
one devoted to the decision of some of their descendants to move to Russia, an
article that is important because it suggests how Moscow will use this
migration as an ideological theme (vz.ru/opinions/2018/7/6/931052.html).
Putin’s Russia has cast itself as a
defender of Christian civilization against Islam from the south and the radical
secularism of the West, a pose that has won it support from Christian
fundamentalists and the right in many countries, including not unimportantly
the United States; and this has made it easier for some in these countries to
push for rapprochement with Moscow.
But now Birov has highlighted what is
really going on: Russia is positioning itself as the last defender of the white
race against attacks by members of other races, a much more visceral and
perhaps among some white activists more powerful message however morally
repulsive it clearly is.
The journalist reports that some
15,000 Boers are now prepared to move to Rusisa, although only a handful have
done so up to now. The reasons for this migration, he says, lie in what has
been going on in South Africa over the last 20 years: “attacks against whites
by the Negro population” which he says “with each passing year, ever more recall
genocide.”
According to Birov, in the last year
alone in the Transvaal, there have been 345 attacks by blacks against whites and
70 people have died as a result. This comes on top of “the hundreds who have
died over the last decade” and “the thousands who have suffered,” about whom “no
one is collecting statistics.”
But despite this, he continues, “international
human rights organizations and freedom loving Western media demonstratively prefer
not to speak about the suffering of the Boers, limiting themselves to dry reports
and communications.” They fail to note that what is happening in South Africa is
the rebirth of “something like apartheid but now against whites.”
The Boers have been leaving South
Africa as a result and mostly seeking to settle in the West, Birov says; but “being
religious people who retain traditional values, the Boers have encountered a
lack of understanding in the post-modernist West where everything traditional is
driven into a corner.” As a result, they are now seeking to come to Russia
where that isn’t true.
“The traditionalist and
anti-globalist Boers oppressed by black racissts and not accepted by liberal
Europe see their salvation in Russia as the bastion of the last healthy forces
of the Christian world,” Birov says. Their “choice is not simply about a suitable
territory for leaving as about spiritual issues.”
Moving to rural areas in Russia is
no easy matter for anyone, he continues; and those who do so like the Boers are
not looking for an easy life. What they care about is coming to a country which
is today “the antipode of the decaying and unjust world order” that has allowed
them to be oppressed.
“They see in Russia a defender of
the Gospel and of traditional values, including the principles of the equality
of peoples and justice,” Birov argues. As a result, “Russia is fated to become
a new Ark, which will remain the only place not harmed by the destructive
forces of chaos and in which all the remaining healthy forces of humanity will
find a home.”
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