Just when you think the far left can’t get any more far-out, along comes their hot take on Ukraine: Our reaction, and all media coverage, is racist.
Yes, even Vladimir Putin’s genocidal invasion of a peaceful neighbor, and the evolving threat of World War III, must be viewed through America’s racist past.
How perverse. How narcissistic. But this kind of virtue-signaling is always in the service of self-regard.
The woke speaker’s subtext is: Look at me. Look how much more evolved I am on these matters than you. Appreciate me. Marvel at my ability to sniff out racial animus, especially where none exists.
For a faction that ostensibly values equality and unity, woketivists sure love to sow divisiveness while burnishing their own superiority.
Here’s Joy Reid, that great embarrassment to MSNBC, on her show Monday night: “The coverage of Ukraine has revealed a pretty radical disparity in how human Ukrainians look and feel to western media compared to their browner and blacker counterparts,” she said, adding that “we don’t need to ask ourselves if the international response will be the same if Russia unleashed their horror on a country that wasn’t white and largely Christian.”
Certain members of the left have spoken about how the media has covered the Russia-Ukraine war was opposed to other conflicts. AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda
Joy Reid talked about the media’s coverage of the war in Ukraine. Theo Wargo / Getty Images
People are evacuated by bus from Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine on March 9, 2022. AP Photo/Vadim GhirdaPutin is targeting women, children and babies. He bombed a children’s hospital and a maternity hospital. His soldiers are shooting fleeing civilians, assured safe passage, dead in the streets. He is threatening to use nuclear weapons.
But sure, the world is horrified because the world, so very homogenous, is racist.
Newsweek op-ed: “We Care More about Ukraine Because the Victims are White.”
Ukrainian soldiers and emergency employees work at the side of the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine on March 9, 2022. AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka
The Ukraine war map gives perspective of what is happening in the country as of March 9, 2022.
Writes Michael Shank on the coverage of Ukraine: “The explanation is unavoidable. Because this war is in the global north, because it’s impacting white Christian communities, and because it’s close to home, not in some far-off land.”
He argues, incredibly, that while “many have tried to claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is somehow unique and thus deserving of a new level of urgent response,” that “this excuse falls apart upon examination.”
Does it, really? When the world finds Putin most reminiscent of Adolf Hitler, this “level of urgent response” feels — call me crazy — proportionate.
The building at the Karazin Kharkiv National University is destroyed following Russian military aggression in Kharkiv on March 6, 2022. Sergey Bobok / Getty Images
The 1619 Project is an initiative from The New York Times Magazine. Jason Armond / Getty ImagesNikole Hannah-Jones, founder of the 1619 Project, on Twitter: “What if I told you Europe is not a continent by definition, but a geopolitical fiction to separate it from Asia and so the alarm about a European, or civilized, or First World nation being invaded is a dog whistle to tell us we should care because they are like us.”
Her own newspaper is wall-to-wall with coverage of Ukraine. Is the New York Times racist?
Not since World War II has there been such a stark contrast between good and evil. The invasion of Ukraine has shocked and saddened good people of all races, nationalities, creeds and colors. It has united humanity as few things ever have, because humanity — in every sense of the word — hangs in the balance.
But sure: We’re racist to care.
