Last night's pogrom in Makhachkala was not an isolated incident and was preceded by searches for Jews in Derbent and arson of a Jewish center under construction in Nalchik. Relative to these events, the demonstration that took place tonight in Cherksark – the capital of the Republic of Karachay-Circassia – is, of course, completely furry, but teaches something about the terrible ignorance on the one hand and the wild incitement on the other to which the Muslim residents of the Russian Caucasus are exposed.
Antisemitism in North Caucasus Again: Demonstration in Cherkessk | Telegram channel VCHK-OGPU
During the demonstration, in which only a few dozen women and children participated, Palestinian flags were raised. In a recording now circulating on Russian social media, one of the demonstrators is heard saying: "We don't want to live alongside the Jews. We don't want to be here in a few decades what happened in Palestine. We don't want to, we're against."
"We don't want Jews", photo: Telegram channel VCHK-OGPU
Another woman chimes in: "They are child killers." The third "reveals" the roots of the conflict: "We have already seen the humanity of the Jews. At first they came to Palestine, received help from them (the Palestinians), and when they gained power, they began to expel them from their lands. We don't want to lose our country and our heritage." And a fourth woman says: "We want a quiet life for our children. Let the Jews live where they live. They like to spit into the well from which they drank. Now they will do it with our republic." The second demonstrator adds: We ask the republican authorities to prevent Jews from entering here. We are even willing to adopt the Palestinians."
Anthropologist Dr. Alexandra Archipova noted in a post today that what is happening now in the Caucasus is moral panic – a sociological phenomenon, in which a society encounters a big problem, but due to an inability or unwillingness to solve it in the direct way, finds itself a scapegoat. "Rumors about the arrival of refugees from Israel in Russia have been circulating on Russian networks since October 10," Archipova wrote on her Facebook page. "What is the logic of them? The refugees are foreigners and will compete with us for resources."
According to her, the stranger is demonized and his exclusion — or even murder — is the way to reorganize moral norms. "So they say they will poison our wells like they poisoned in Gaza, as they wrote on social media. Why in the North Caucasus? Because this is an area with a high rate of anti-Semitism and there is also a common course of action: in Dagestan and Ossetia (its neighbor) there are constant riots against the background of conspiratorial moral panic. In 2020 there was a big movement against the lockdown, in the same area they also knocked down antennas using 5G technology."
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