“They raped every German woman from 8 to 80.” - Anthony Beevor on the Soviet occupation of Berlin, 1945. https://t.co/hGSKwgk6f7 https://t.co/rV0yia55CP— David Frum (@davidfrum) January 3, 2017
I knew this was coming. The wave of Russophobia among the elites and the corporate media knows no bounds. I was wondering when this history would be resurrected.
It is well documented that Red Army soldiers were responsible for thousands of sexual assaults as they invaded Germany in 1945. I'm not disputing this fact and I'm certainly not defending it. But I find it interesting what the American media choose to report and when they choose to report it.
Enslaved black women were raped routinely throughout the United States, Caribbean, Central America and South America over the more than 200 year history of slavery. How many indigenous women were raped by conquistadores and pilgrims? I'm sure that number is equally enormous.
Let's look at America's 21st century gulag, the mass incarceration system. Men and women are routinely sexually assaulted and more often by prison personnel than by other inmates. I could go on but I find it odd that when Americans want to make a case against someone they immediately talk about rape, as long as it happened somewhere else on the planet.
Frum is a confirmed neo-conservative and senior editor of the Atlantic. Like all members of the Washington elite and the war party he is a die hard Russophobe. It is no wonder that he resurrects this book published in 2002.
Why now? That should always be the question. The tweet not only highlights a story I doubt Frum is really interested in but has the value of mocking the Russian effort in Syria. That is my issue with this subject being raised now. Every Russian move is denounced and dismissed, lies are told as truth and crimes of 70 years ago are suddenly found worthy of attention. If Russia was America's friend this history would be kept hidden. But Putin is successfully pushing back against U.S. hegemony and that is why he has been declared an enemy. Every bad chapter of his nation's history will suddenly get renewed attention.
Making fun of Putin for riding shirtless on a horse didn't keep him from stopping the regime change plot in Syria. Neither did falsely claiming that he interfered in the presidential election. So now the corporate media will suddenly tell us about rapes in Berlin in 1945. That wouldn't bother me if I thought the retelling came from any honest concern about the past or about brutality committed against women.
The British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Belgians and Germans committed crimes against humanity all over the world. But those crimes are swept under the rug because they were committed against black and brown and yellow people.
Let David Frum write about that.
