I don’t give a hoot about your skin color, religion or sexuality as long as you do not a) impose them on me or b) deny me full respect of mine!
In 7th grade, I was a mentally and emotionally abused teen, who despite all that was being dumped onto me by my parents, school and the entire Soviet Union, chose to be like the Decembrists and other period heroes I admired, a freethinker. I define freethinking as upholding that knowledge should be grounded in facts, scientific inquiry, and logic. Coincidentally, that is exactly what my teachers were teaching in class. In practice, however, I was told time and time again by my teachers, my mother and other relations to learn how to hide my true sentiments, ideas, thoughts or else! In sum, I was being taught to lie.
Everyone in the USSR lied as a matter of practical survival.
I loathed lying as it created and perpetuated a logical conflict to the facts I observed and of which I wrote in detail in My Life Through My Dresses – Growing Up Socialist. An incident with my 7th grade Russian Language and Lit teacher, Valentina Lazarevna Shilo, who I hear is now gone and I do not have to worry about using her real name, is as fresh in my mind’s eye as if it happened yesterday.
VLS was my homeroom teacher, and on several occasions when Mama was too verbally abusive in her intolerably cruel way, I ran off to VLS and slept over. I yearned for a mother figure, and to some extent, this Jewish teacher and mom of two young sons, provided me with minimal comfort of a dinner and conversation. I suppose that was why, out of her best intentions, she proceeded to instruct me on how to stop pursuing truth. “If you will not stop this truth-searching,” VLS forewarned me, “you will suffer all your life. No one wants the truth. You’ll be penalized for it.”
It was after that particular phrase that I stopped seeking refuge at her home, because I figured out that just like Mama, VLS was a broken soviet woman, repressed in her views, as every soviet citizen, but more so by being a Jew in Kiev, the Capital of Ukrainian Anti-Semitism.
I decided to remain true to my nature, keep my innate moral center, my ideals of what I should do and how, and so I have been true to the truth seeker in me. Not to hold myself as a perfect human, I erred all through my life, but I have tried my best to guard that 13-year-old truth seeker through all her life battles.
People forgot that Soviet Union, The USSR, was the first ‘socialist paradise’. After socialism failed there, the Soviets taught the Chinese, the Cubans, the Vietnamese, the North Koreans, multiple African nations and on and on and on how to create the society based on socialist-communist lies of Lenin, Marx and Engels and breed generations of useful idiots, just like Stalin commanded.
As the “conversation about privilege” has now taken a racist overtone, I keep hearing about the white privilege. It’s the same lie the socialists planted in Russia to create religion and class struggle, redistribute wealth and power. Same methods. Same tactical moves. Same words. Religion is being steadily replaced by this new divisive value system with cultural atheism, which is nothing new to this old girl who grew up on them in the USSR. “All people are brothers,” they said at public meetings, and went on to teach their kids to hate, for instance, Jews or other national minorities. Jews, actually, were hate for being “that other religion” most people could not even bring themselves up to speak of out loud. No religious practice was allowed for decades. We were JINOs – Jews In Name Only. Never stopped anti-Semites from anti-Semitting! We, the less than 1% of world population, the ever-persecuted vulnerable, yet defiant keepers of Hanukkah!
I am now moving on to the reason for this post – I am being cajoled into abstaining from truth by certain leaders of certain groups, who may be reading some of my social media posts, may not be comprehending the essence of my lifelong pursuits, may not even have used Google to learn that “useful idiot” is not to be interpreted as a literal “idiot”, yet they definitely are telling me and others under their care, that truth will be punished. “Play nice and fit in”, “don’t be an asshole,” “you will become an unwanted individual” and similar wisdoms are being dispensed in private rooms to hundreds just as BLM, George Floyd and anti-Trump ideology are being elevated to the Book of Genesis status and all invited guest are expected to uniformly praise the very socialist ideology I abhor and fight against. Whist I can.
Whilst I have the power of written word in me I will practice to the maximum extent I am able to The Privilege of Freedom I was granted with my US citizenship.
I will not heed the misguided suggestions to submit to mass hysteria of socialism from my “guides”. They are not my masters. They do not know or do not care to think and discover that crematoria were filled with submissive escapism just like that in mid-twentieth century.
I will not heed the submission to the will of media-influenced and brainwashed holders of power any more than I would listen to my writing community peers who have succumbed to pressures of leftists-dominated publishing industry or bought into the narrative of “our version of socialism will work”. NYET! I hate to disillusion you, my comrades in ink, socialism always works for just a few privileged ones – and if you sell your soul, you can be one of them.
I’ll stay true to my truth-seeking soul. I will not alter what I write about, whom I write to and for, or my form of expressing/communicating with my audience, because I will not be bowing to the demands of this anarchist and socialist mobs. You may do as you please. I will not! No accomplishment of mine will hold any value, if I arrive at it through submission to false idols. That includes Islamists and I am not afraid of using this word, because I know full well the difference between Islamists and Americans who are practicing Moslems without a terrorist or world domination intent. I despise Europeans that have submitted and lost their once magnificent countries to religious domination, socialist and new world order control.
I may not have been raised to be a proud Jewish woman. I came into this knowledge and realization slowly, painfully at times, and with great personal sacrifices. But I will die a proud Jewish woman, free in my mind and heart of any malfeasance, especially as an author. I pray this time is far off and those who are now obstructing my path will have already learned why they were wrong in their attempts to block me.