this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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There's a reason Western Europe focuses on the Nazis in the context of the Holocaust: the Nazis never saw the Western Europeans as a stain on the Earth like they did the Jews and the Slavs. Russians don't need to point to Jews to claim Nazism: they can point directly to the treatment of ethnically Russian Slavs during WW2 and the plans that Nazi Germany had for the eradication of Slavs.
Russia doesn't need to point at how Ukraine treats Jews because to Russia, the Holocaust is dwarfed in societal impact by the issues that motivated Operation Barbarossa. The Russians lost 19 million Russian civilians in the war, why would they care about the Jews?
Nevermind that minorities in China get so many advantages it's actually silly how much affirmative action goes on. Provinces dominated by minorities get significantly more funding per capita and even get loss-leading infrastructure projects like the Tibet and Xinjiang railways. Students from minorities get additional bonuses on gaokao (basically SAT, but imagine if schools didn't look at anything else). Minorities are exempt from family planning policies and get massive interest-free loans for starting businesses. They get proportional representation in government. Hell, there are 55 minority groups in China making up 8% of the population.
In the army? The prevalence of rural populations in the army has been observed AROUND THE WORLD. It's a function of rural communities being rather poor and underserved by governments in general, as well as the lack of economic opportunities that living on a farm provides. In fact, the entire notion of the underserved countryside is what allowed communism to rise in Russia and China.
25% ish of the Russian population live in huts and shit in holes in outhouses for a lack of plumbing (mostly ethnic minorities), all while the ruling Mafia collects yachts and private jets, and launches wars.
I'm not saying there isn't wealth inequality elsewhere, but how about a bit of perspective here. Russia cannot actually conscript too many ethnic Russians or use them as cannon fodder, since that is the only ethnicity in Russia that matters politically, since they are the middle class. Instead they send the colonized people, who happen to be those who shit in holes for a lack of plumbing.
Poor people are overrepresented in the army? No way!
It's a conscript army. They shouldn't be.
You say that, but conscription always has exceptions, which usually include having an important job or going to university, which would presumably skew the result towards more poor people in the army. There's also corruption of course.