A young man on the Nevsky Prospect in Petersburg reads a book by Friedrich Engels whilst handing out discount coupons to the nearby so-called Lego Museum. Source: Marina Varchenko (Facebook), 9 November 2023
“‘The Arab world is not just beautiful ethnic costumes, exquisite dishes, and other One Thousand and One Nights-type stuff, but also brutal dictatorships, poverty, a high tolerance of violence, and sometimes outright racism and religious fanaticism. According to my observations, however, this second facet is almost always bracketed off by Europeans when describing the countries of the “global South” or is guiltily dished up as a consequence of the traumatic colonial past.’ Essayist Andrei Sapozhnikov (“Department of Culture”) connects the abnormally high support for Hamas’s invasion of Israel in the Western world with this peculiarity.”
Source: Email newsletter from the online Russian magazine Republic, 8 November 2023. Translated by the Russian Reader