White supremacists are up in arms (literally) over the second invasion of Texas.
As they see it, immigrants are occupying the area under dispute, and are outweighing the (white) population. Their familiarity with that tactic appears to be subliminally baked into Texan popular culture, because it takes Texas-level ignorance and projection not to realize that that’s how Texas was stolen from Mexico in the first place.
The Imperial United States has been chipping away at Mexico since its inception – sometimes with overt military force, and other times using geopolitical fait accompli (a tactic Israel appears to have learned from the Texans) you station a bunch of settlers in someone else’s land, arm them, then have them ‘rebel’ against the established authority, declare their own state, and ask to join your country. When Russia uses this maneuver in Crimea it’s horribly naughty, of course.
The Texas Republic was probably not part of a complex maneuver; it’s just a small blip in US expansionism, which used the same tactic organically throughout its early growth. Indigenous peoples were driven off their lands often by colonizing settlers, gold miners, grifters, and hunters who established their homes then defended them.
Briefly, here’s a revisionist history of Texas, sketched from Wikipedia [wik] here’s the first mistake:
When Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, Mexican Texas was part of the new nation. To encourage settlement, Mexican authorities allowed organized immigration from the United States, and by 1834, over 30,000 Anglos lived in Texas, compared to 7,800 Mexicans.
I appreciate Wikipedia’s delicacy calling them “Anglos” instead of “white people” but, what was going on was exactly the kind of cultural takeover and population submergence that today’s white Texans are all worried about. It’s just that it was them doing it.
After Santa Anna’s dissolution of the Constitution of 1824 and his political shift to the right, issues such as lack of access to courts, the militarization of the region’s government (e.g., response to Saltillo-Monclova problem), and self-defense issues resulting in the confrontation in Gonzales, public sentiment in Mexican and Anglo Texans turned towards revolution.
In other words, the Mexican government demonstrated it was weak, and the white people in Texas realized that they had numbers and guns on their side.
Although not recognized as such by Mexico, Texas declared itself an independent nation, the Republic of Texas. Attracted by the rich lands for cotton plantations and ranching, tens of thousands of immigrants arrived from the U.S. and from Germany as well. In 1845, Texas joined the United States, becoming the 28th state, when the United States annexed it. Only after the conclusion of the Mexican–American War, with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, did Mexico recognize Texan independence.
A squatter republic of illegal immigrants complaining about illegal immigrants – the irony would be rich, except it’s not in the slightest bit funny. Texas is a fake state. Put differently, perhaps the former Mexican population of Texas is exercising a “right of return.”
One way to get 4 southern white supremacists out of the senate would be to give Texas back to Mexico.
It was nationalists’ land-grabs that first made me begin to suspect that nationalism is just a sham. They pretend that they care deeply about “their” borders but they cheerfully violate borders when it’s convenient. We can’t conclude anything but that borders are just a convenient fiction to nationalists; perhaps a few are so ignorant they actually believe it, but the rest know it’s all a lie.
There is a long history of Anglos trying to drive Mexicans and Mexican Americans out of Texas. Both government and private individuals.
@robertbaden:
Those anglos sent some of their very worst people. Real bad hombres.
When Russia uses this maneuver in Crimea it’s horribly naughty, of course.
The Crimea was a part of Russia from roughly 1785 or a bit before the USA was founded. That idiot, Khrushchev, for some reason transferred the Crimea to the Ukraine administration but in the context of the USSR it was not that important.
Crimea just returned home.
(Note: As a Canadian I tend to be sensitive to language issues. The Ukrainian government decision to essentially eliminate Russian as a official language was madness.)
I remember reading this about Texas not that long ago and suddenly a whole lot of things about white Americans freaking out about Latinx immigration made sense.
I’m missing your point/joke about getting four southern white supremacists out of the (U.S.) senate by giving Texas back- Texas has two U.S. senators, so whence the other two?
jrkrideau @#3
As a Canadian, you are clearly very well informed about the intricacies of languages spoken in Ukraine. You are clearly best suited for making decisions about how Ukrainians ought to live. Ukrainians not listening to your well-educated advice means that all of them are just fools incapable of seeing things as clearly as you do. (/sarcasm)
What you just wrote is a broad generalization about a complex problem. If you had any idea about language problems in post-Soviet countries, you wouldn’t be stating something as clueless.
I’m not educated about the specifics of language issues in Ukraine, so I will be talking about post-Soviet countries in general. The truth is that in all of them it’s the same mess. Let’s begin with how things ended up the way they did. For several centuries Russians have enforced policies designed to eliminate all the minority languages spoken within the empire. In Tsarist Russia (before WWI), Latvian children were forced to attend schools where all the lessons were in Russian. If two children spoke in Latvian to each other, both of them were publicly shamed, and the school teacher forced them to wear a wooden board with the words “today I spoke in Latvian” in a string around their necks.
Fast forward to WWII. As the Soviet army advanced, people from newly occupied territories were mass deported to Siberia and a bunch of other remote regions. That was part of an intentional policy. Grab thousands of Latvians, shuffle them in cattle cars, transport them to Siberia. If a huge chunk of people starve while in these trains, that’s an added bonus. Once the Latvian cities and towns are semi-empty, send there people from other regions of the Soviet empire. If you make a Latvian and a Ukrainian work in a single factory, both of them will be using Russian as the lingua franca.
Schools were also heavily promoting usage of the Russian language. On the surface, it didn’t seem that bad, for example, school lessons in Latvian language did exist. But there were some catches. For example, Latvian parents of male children often sent their kids to Russian schools. Education programs in Latvian schools were one year longer, thus the young man graduating from one of those wasn’t able to apply for a university before being forced to join the Soviet army.
Next were the workplaces. Everybody was forced to speak Russian at work. Even those working in shitty, low-level, poorly paid jobs. In general, ethnic Russians were bosses. Everybody else did low level menial jobs. For example, my uncle was an airplane engineer. He spoke perfect Russian, he didn’t even have an accent at all. Nonetheless, he could never be promoted due to the pesky fact that he had a Latvian name. Lots of ethnic Latvian parents wanted their children to perfectly master Russian language and pretend to be ethnic Russians for the purpose of being able to get better jobs.
From Wikipedia:
The numbers are somewhat similar in Latvia, where Latvian is the native language of 60.8% of Latvia’s population.
Before you all-knowingly proclaim that post-Soviet countries should have Russian as their official languages, you should first understand the reasons why the there are so many native Russian speakers in the region. It wasn’t an accident. It is the result of Soviet government policies purposefully designed to eradicate minority languages from the Soviet Union.
The older generation still has living memories of how Russian language was enforced upon them. They perceive the forced Russification as an immense injustice. You have no clue how bitter my mother is about this. Yes, she speaks perfect Russian without an accent. And simultaneously she absolutely hates the language and the people who enforced it upon her. If Russian became an official language in Latvia, people would perceive it as a continuation of the forced Russification, an attempt to eradicate Latvian.
Of course, if forcing Russian language upon Latvians was wrong, then forcing Latvian upon Russians living in Latvia is also wrong. To some extent, I agree. Latvian nationalists routinely chant that everybody who wants to speak Russian should buy a one-way plane ticket to Russia. For obvious reasons, that’s a malicious attitude. But how can people who speak different languages communicate with each other while living in a single country?
Personally, I have no objections to other people using whatever language they like for communicating among themselves. I don’t mind Russian schools and universities, workplaces where Russian is the main spoken language, whatever. I even see reasons why the status of a regional language for Russian would be reasonable. But if you, a Canadian, told me that Russian should be an official language in Latvia, I’d answer with “fuck you.” And bear in mind that I am not a nationalist. And I’m being nice.
I happen to be fluent in Russian. I will happily speak Russian while travelling abroad of Latvia. But if some stranger approaches me and tries to speak with me in Russian while I’m within Latvian borders, I will pretend that I don’t understand Russian.* My problem is the sense of entitlement numerous Russians have demonstrated. If they speak in Russian among themselves, that’s none of my business. But if one approaches me and demands that I accommodate them by speaking their language, then I simply won’t do that. If they feel that they aren’t obliged to learn my language, why should I be obliged to learn theirs? If some person wants to communicate with me in Russian, they shouldn’t feel entitled to me responding in their preferred language.
When a German tourist visits Latvia and I answer to them in German, they will be happily surprised and thankful for me accommodating their preference in terms of language usage. When a native Russian speaker tries to communicate with me in Russian, they aren’t thankful that I answered in their language, instead they assume that they are entitled to me answering in their language. This kind of entitlement bugs me immensely.
Incidentally, this sense of entitlement is common among many native speakers of large languages. English-speaking tourists also tend to get dissatisfied whenever locals don’t speak English. Of course, this depends on the person. I’m not denying that among English or Russian speakers there are lots of nice people who don’t show any signs of entitlement. It’s just that native speakers of smaller languages never show this kind of entitlement. Instead of feeling entitled, they are happy whenever somebody demonstrates a proficiency of their native language.
By speaking a foreign language, I am doing the other person a favor. It’s something that I choose to do. It’s not something that I’m obliged to do, and nobody is entitled to me accommodating their language usage preferences.
I speak six languages. I perceive learning foreign languages as immensely fun. I love learning and speaking foreign languages when I do so voluntarily. I absolutely hate being forced to learn or use some language against my will. Nobody is entitled to me accommodating their language usage preferences.
Back when I still went to school, I took some Russian lessons there. Those were voluntary. Majority of my classmates decided not to take those lessons and went home earlier. If Russian became an official language in Latvia, all Latvians would be forced to have Russian lessons at school. All state employees would be forced to be fluent in Russian or else said person wouldn’t get hired. People would perceive such a change as a return of forced Russification.
I know that the line between learning some language voluntarily versus being forced to learn it against my will is blurry. If I go to live in Germany, I have to learn German, because otherwise I couldn’t communicate with the locals none of whom speaks Latvian. Yet even though learning German is pretty much obligatory in the given situation, I don’t perceive it as forced—if I freely choose to move to a region where majority of the population speaks German, then it is in my best interests to learn said language. On the other hand, if I live in a country where majority of the population are Latvians and some native Russian demands me to learn their language, then I feel as if that was coercive.
The long history of Russification in the region is part of why it would feel coercive. I can imagine that in regions where people of various ethnicities have happily cohabited for centuries such bitter sentiments do not exist. People in post-Soviet countries are still dealing with wounds inflicted by oppressive and discriminatory Soviet policies. They still remember the man-made famines and deportations. They remember the forced Russification. You cannot just tell them that they should instigate Russian as the official language, forget their scars from the past, and all live as a one happy family where everybody in bilingual. That simply cannot happen. Non-nationalistic people like me understand why it’s wrong to force Latvian upon native Russian speakers and we will let Russians peacefully live as they see fit, but many people are still squishy whenever they personally are being required to speak Russian.
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*I learned Russian as a child. At that time I was just happy to learn foreign languages and oblivious about how assholish some native Russian speakers can be. When I encountered this sense of entitlement for the first time, I briefly wished I didn’t know Russian. I instead settled for faking that I don’t know Russian in certain specific situations. Incidentally, there are lots of people in post-Soviet countries who understand Russian but refuse to speak it.
Google’s stupid nag-link code scraped this up for me, which is worth a read and frankly astonishing to me.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/declare-war-on-white-nationalist-terrorism/amp/
I always kind of liked Buckley. Repellent, elitist, but clever as fuck and a sailor besides. NR was at least interesting under his leadership, but fell immediately into idiotic right wing ranting on his death. And then this thing turns up. WAT?
Marcus,
I heard stories about the Texas Rangers murdering Mexican people as a kid. La Matanza. The stories are coming out now more and more. One of my cousins is collecting oral histories about it.
There is a group called Refusing to Forget that has a Facebook Page.
@ 6 Andreas Avester
As a Canadian, you are clearly very well informed about the intricacies of languages spoken in Ukraine.
Not even close, I just come from a country with two official languages and some conflicts.
We do have “Hockey Night in Canada” being broadcast in Punjabi. Not an official language but who cares? Hockey fans are nuts.
Martin Veneroso@#5:
I’m missing your point/joke about getting four southern white supremacists out of the (U.S.) senate by giving Texas back- Texas has two U.S. senators, so whence the other two?
I counted Ted Cruz a couple of extra times, I dislike him so much.
Andrew Molitor@#7:
I always kind of liked Buckley. Repellent, elitist, but clever as fuck and a sailor besides. NR was at least interesting under his leadership, but fell immediately into idiotic right wing ranting on his death.
Really? He was a shitbird of the highest order. And, other than being a sort of idiot savant sociopathic manipulator I don’t think he was particularly smart (observe his encounters with James Baldwin and Noam Chomsky) – he just sounded smart to the wanna-be upward mobile middle class that he appealed to.
I admit I do like the idea of “declaring war to end violence.” That’s like “fucking for virginity” and “lying for honesty.” Good American tradition.
robertbaden@#8:
I heard stories about the Texas Rangers murdering Mexican people as a kid. La Matanza. The stories are coming out now more and more.
You can’t have an American takeover without a bit of ethnic cleansing, it seems.
jrkrideau@#3:
It was apparently important enough that Stalin deported an entire native population from it. That’s why they speak Russian in the Crimea: the Crimean Tartar speakers had all been removed to central Asia.
Would you be in agreement that Quebec would be “at home” speaking English if a century ago Ottawa had rounded up all the Francophones and shipped them off to the Yukon?
So, the difference between Texas and the rest of the US would be that Texas had already been stolen from the natives by settlers, when other settlers stole it from them? Well, I suppose you worry a bit more about migration waves when you’re recent arrival and like to pretend the place you live has only had a few centuries of history worth considering, making you the only and rightful “permanent” resident.
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Re: Andreas Avester (#6):
That was an interesting read, as is often the case, so thanks. If Marcus ever opens his shop to guest bloggers you should sign up. (I may have suggested this before. If I have it clearly hasn’t worked and I ought to try again.)
As mistakes go “language franca” is simply perfect. You might consider an emphasis rather than an error, especially since language mixing is becoming more and more common.
Andreas:
Switzerland has four official languages. But AFAIK, almost nobody outside of the Kanton of Graubünden bothers to learn Romantsch (Raetoromanic). The native speakers of said language are all proficient in at least German, and additionally in either Italian or French.
No need for swiss public servants to learn Romantsch, in spite of it being an official Language.
In Germany, some public institutions offer services in non-official languages, like Turkic or Polish. I guess it’s the same in Latvia with Russian, in certain places?
komarov:
Andreas runs their | his own blog. No link because it’s obvious :)
If Marcus ever opens his shop to guest bloggers you should sign up. (I may have suggested this before. If I have it clearly hasn’t worked and I ought to try again.)
I’m willing to have guest posters however I prefer for people to have their own blogs because that way I don’t have to try to figure out whether to police comments or not, etc. Also, basically, blogs are free. It’s just a management headache. I did have someone (a while ago) approach me offering to correct some things I said wrong about nuclear stuff – which I was looking forward to learning – but then they evaporated. I’ve got enough headaches chasing myself around without inviting more headaches, basically.
Andreas’ blog is here:
https://andreasavester.com/tribal-badger-t-shirt/
wereatheist @#15
Yes, I’m familiar with languages in Switzerland. I speak German, French, and Italian, and thus I was interested in learning about the countries where these languages are spoken. Even though Romansh is called “an official language,” a Latvian would still consider it just “a regional language for all practical purposes,” because (1) it isn’t taught to every child in all schools in the entire country, (2) all public servants aren’t legally required to speak this language. In Latvia there exists the Latgalian language, which is spoken only in a single region. There have been debates about whether this language should have an official status, and all the opponents of this idea kept arguing that the correct definition for “an official language” requires that all kids learn it at school and all public servants must speak it, otherwise the status of an official language would become meaningless and one might as well just call Latgalian merely a “regional language” (which it already is for all practical purposes, albeit “unofficially”).
Yes, unofficially. When it comes to state employees and state mandated paperwork, all the written documents are exclusively in Latvian. Nonetheless, pretty much all Latvian citizens who were born before 1985 speak fluent Russian. Thus if some person needs to do some business with any government institution, the employee they will interact with will simply verbally translate for them whatever written form they are confronted with.
When it comes to private businesses, everybody is free to use whichever language they want. In order to attract more customers, majority of businesses will have versions of their webpages in Russian, shops will hire bilingual sales assistants, etc. This is actually sort of a problem for younger Latvians. Most of the people from my generation of Latvian native speakers (I was born in 1992) never bothered to learn Russian. Thus it’s harder for them to find jobs, because many businesses prefer employees who know both Russian and Latvian. On top of that lots of businesses also demand their employees to be fluent in English. The latter is actually no problem for my generation. Everybody who was born after 1990, be they native Latvian or Russian speaker, is fluent in English. So yeah, if you want to get a nice job in Latvia, you are effectively required to speak at least three languages. Incidentally, monolingual people do not exist in Latvia. When it comes to people born before 1985, all Latvians know Russian. When it comes to people born after 1985, all Russians know Latvian and English, and all Latvians know English. By now, majority of Russians of every age have learned at least some Latvian. Truly monolingual Russians are rare and they exist only among the elderly people who are quickly dying out by now.
Daily communication can actually become fun here. I have a Russian friend, and we both speak in English (that’s both of our preference). In my university I occasionally spoke with my Russian classmates in German (we were studying German philology). When my boyfriend speaks with somebody who is Russian, he will usually speak in Latvian, but the other person will speak in Russian. The result in a conversation where each person speaks a different language, but both are bilingual and understand what the other person told them. My boyfriend bothers to switch to actually speaking Russian only when he realizes that that other person does not understand Latvian (or when he’s at work and has to interact with a Russian-speaking client). People actually not being able to understand each other is something that just doesn’t happen in Latvia. But there are plenty of people who are nationalists and don’t want to use some language. Or want to force their language upon other people against their will. We have both Latvian and Russian nationalists here, all of them suck.
My own attitude is an odd mix. I perceive Latvian language as mostly useless. If I could have chosen my native language, I would have picked German. I also have reasons for strongly disliking my country due to the prevailing transphobia. My country discriminates me, and lots of Latvian citizens are bigots. So I’m not a Latvian nationalist. I hate this country. I don’t desire more people to learn and use Latvian language. As far as I’m concerned, Latvian language might as well die out. Simultaneously, I also strongly dislike the sense of entitlement I periodically sense from native Russian speakers. I don’t want Russian forced upon me. Nowadays in my daily life I use mostly English and German. I still use Latvian for talking with my mother and boyfriend, but that’s all. I can’t even remember when was the last time I read a book in Latvian. It must have been years.
komarov @#14
My website is meant to be an artist’s website that exists for the purpose of advertising the art that I sell. Thus I really have no clue what to do with my blog there. On one hand, I shouldn’t make it political. It’s supposed to be about art. On the other hand, I don’t want to self-censor myself due to fearing that I might alienate some potential customer who ends up disliking my political opinions. Thus for now my blog there is a mix of art and my everlasting complaints about cissexism. Complaining about cissexism is what I do for venting my anger and frustration about getting discriminated. The rights of queer people are already a politically divisive topic, so for now I don’t want to make my website even more political than that. Then again, I actually have some ideas for political art. I just hope I won’t end up regretting anything. I wouldn’t like to get to the point where people don’t buy my art due to disliking whatever they read in my blog.
I wrote my comment @#6, because jrkrideau’s statement irked me in the wrong way. Personally, I will never make any statements about what Ukrainians should do with their language problems. Languages in Eastern Europe are a complicated issue and it’s not up for an outsider to decide. More importantly, it’s one of those conflicts where people on both sides have good reasons for sticking to their guns. Sure, forcing native Russian speakers to use some other language against their will is a bad thing. Simultaneously, given the historical context, there are valid reasons why non-Russians all over the Eastern Europe do not want to acknowledge Russian as an official language in their countries.
What pisses me off immensely about all this mess is how Putin uses it for propaganda purposes. He constantly talks nonsense about how in Eastern Europe Russians get discriminated (in general, they mostly aren’t) and denied their freedom to maintain their language and culture (again, in general, this isn’t happening either). Thus Putin’s rhetoric only fuels pre-existing dormant ethnic tension in Eastern Europe. On top of that, he is utilizing Russian-speakers as political weapons, as shields behind which to hide and justify his imperialistic ambitions to invade some places.
Marcus @#17
Guest posts exist, because this way professional bloggers who try to monetize their blogs can reach a wider audience. Other than this benefit, guest posts are a pain to manage. So yes, I agree with your attitude.
@Andreas Avester, funny how you mention Germans being grateful to you for learning their language and not being snotty and taking it for granted the way Russians do. In CZ, shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the situation was similar to what you describe, only the bad guys were not Russians, but Germans.
After the borders to the west opened, the districts adjacent to them were flodded with Germans in pursuit of cheap goods and services (and sex-work). Many, if not most, were arrogant and they took it for granted that everyone will learn German or make an effort to understand them – despite the fact that Czechia was independent of any German-speaking government for over three generations at that time.
In those times, whenever approached by a German within Czech borders I too was pretending to not understand and I insisted on using English.
Today the situation is slightly better, many germans who cross the border regularly have at least learned Czech greeting phrases, and many shops on the German side make a point of employing people who are capable of communicating in Czech, so in the one generation that has passed since then there is some progress. But still it will take generations to overcome the resentments stemming from history.
Unless the EU disintegrates, in which case we are unfortunately back to square 1.
Funnily enough, this does happen in the UK even though we’re mostly monoglot, because we have such an extreme range of accents and dialects. There are people from my own home town that I can barely understand.
I was mildly surprised when I learned that in some countries the dominant language isn’t official – because there was never any need to support its use in public.
I hear in US some people want English to be federally recognized as the official language (it already is in some states) of United States. What would this mean in practice? I suppose, whatever you choose to write in the Language Recognition Act (or whatever it’s called). Perhaps it’d guarantee that all federal services and documents will be available in English, thus neatly solving a non-existing problem.
Aside from that, I get a sense that this language recognition would used as a leverage in all kinds of contexts to undermine any accommodation of other languages. Possibly, some low-information voters even assume it’d automatically outlaw any public use of other languages. Or if not, they’re going to act like it does.
(BTW, how’s the official status of Spanish in southwestern border states, which are supposedly under invasion?)
Charly @#19
That’s interesting. Maybe it depends on the region. I spent a while living in a German student town. My university offered courses in English, so there were lots of foreign students who only knew English. Thus nobody expected that an exchange student should know German.
Cool. Knowing about other people who behave the same way makes me feel a bit less petty.
@ 13 Curt Sampson
Check your history. Yes Stalin did deport the Tartars but some seemed to have returned, apparently there are about 250,000 living there at the moment.
Thank heavens we never imprisoned the Japanese Canadians and Americans.
jrkrideau @#23
WTF? Do you even understand that a huge amount of deported people died in exile due to inhumane living conditions that promoted starvation and diseases? On top of that, even when they were finally legally allowed to return back to Crimea, they still faced various economical and political hurdles. Here’s a simple enough picture for you — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Demographics_of_Crimea.png
First the Tsarist Russia and later the Soviet Union purposefully eradicated Crimean Tatars, and only a tiny fraction of them managed to survive despite the genocide.
If you want to discuss the history and current political problems of Eastern Europe, I strongly recommend you to further educate yourself.
Andreas Avester @ 6:
The British used nearly exactly the same technique in Ireland:
Even outside an imperialist context, the treatment of minority languages within the nation-states of Europe has not been good (see: the treatment of Basque, Catalan and Galego speakers in Spain, Occitan and Breton speakers in France, etc. etc.)
I keep forgetting names can be links to interesting stuff, so I’ll file that under “too obvious” as well as in my bookmarks. Whether the blog is meant for art or politics or anything in between, interesting stuff is bound to crop up. Cheers!
komarov @#26
My latest blog post https://andreasavester.com/my-country-wants-me-to-suffer-for-my-own-benefit/ was me complaining about transphobic doctors yet again. At this point I’m more hopeless than ever before. I won’t be able to get a hysterectomy in my country. I now need 5000 EUR for a trip to Thailand. And I have no clue where to get that much money. I’m feeling really shitty right now. I’m angry about the discrimination, frustrated, sad. It’s not enough that I was unlucky to be born with the wrong body, I also have to deal with a society that wants to torture me. For the last three days I have been trying to force myself to stop lingering in a uselessly unproductive state of depression (feeling shitty isn’t going to help me earn more money).
On the bright side, I have two months old Pomeranian puppies right now. Today I took some photos. If you like puppies, my next blog post will have lots of puppy photography.