Learning From the Russians
Aperture Priorities Contact Sheet #14
By Joel Schalit
PUTIN, RAUS! Written in thick, bright pink on a wall in Mitte, it was hard not to read into it.
En route to a local restaurant for lunch with coworkers from Moscow, one of them said, "Berlin is too Russophobic for me."
It was the first time I'd seen graffiti like that. It sounded enough like the Nazi slogan "Juden raus" (Jews go) to imply something similar.
Another Russian in our group downplayed its significance, saying it was about Vladimir Putin's homophobia - hence the colour.
A third suggested "Raus" was an echo of the city's division between the USSR and NATO.
It was a perfect moment to be a fly on the wall.
The exchange was redolent of those overheard about pro-Palestinian graffiti in the city, of which there is a lot.
Particularly amongst the large number of Israeli and American Jews who live in the German capital.
Just replace "Russophobia" and "Antisemitism" and "homophobia" with "Israeli airstrike" or something about Jenin and voila.
The saner heads in our party prevailed, and everyone ended up agreeing it was about Putin's repression of LGBTQ Russians.
I started to get jealous. These people weren't leftists but were reasonable enough not to settle on a knee-jerk response.
It's not like Russians don't have historical reasons for oversimplifying things. 27 million died in WWII.
If only we could be this reasonable, I remember thinking. What I wouldn't give for more thoughtful exchanges like this.
Especially in Europe, where the volume of anti-Gaza war graffiti has been particularly heavy since the conflict began six months ago.
Even for the hardest of hearts, repetition has a corrosive effect. It can't just be Antisemitism to be this hardcore.
That's not to downplay Europe's responsibility for the Holocaust and growing racism. Denial and scapegoating are the new normal.
But it is to say that governments can do wrong and must be held accountable for their actions for failing their people.
No appeal to racism should contradict that.
That's where I'm at. Whether in Brussels or Torino, I blame Benjamin Netanyahu for what I see.
I'm not a graffiti writer. But if I were, I wouldn’t use BIBI RAUS.
Netanyahu would weaponise it in his favour.
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Photographs courtesy of the author. All rights reserved.