38 quotes
During the whole Ngozi Fulani affair, it was covered like it was a terrorist attack when you sort of think there's probably much bigger core issues affecting way more people.
The message I was given was clear: there is only one acceptable way of telling jokes and, if you don’t conform to it, then you should expect your career to die.
It was all very, very Soviet.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
One of the things people don't say enough about free speech is "Yes, it causes harm but the harm is worth it." And we don't make that argument because it's too honest and complicated and unpleasant.
The only way to deal with the problem of racism is to treat people on the content of their character and nothing else, and the fact that woke culture seeks to overturn that is a new form of racism that we must all oppose.
This is why so few Russians are rarely, if ever, progressive liberals. They are too busy dealing with the harsh realities of life, such as having to pay the rent or feed their children on a shoestring budget, to partake in self-righteousness and identity politics.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
But it’s not only comics who are self-censoring: increasing numbers of audience members are filing complaints against venues for allowing acts to ‘upset’ them. Years ago, such people would’ve been laughed out of town and told to grow up, but these days they’re taken seriously.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
If there is one thing my Soviet childhood taught me, it’s that subscribing to someone else’s ideology will always inevitably mean having to suspend your own judgment about right and wrong to appease your tribe. I refuse to do so.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
My point is that the overwhelming majority of the things that are now described as ‘racism’, ‘xenophobia’ and ‘bigotry’ are simply a product of the fact that we now see everything through the prism of race. I was lucky to be denied the opportunity to do so.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists.
In his best-selling book Love for Imperfect Things, Zen Buddhist teacher Haemin Sunim proves that things don’t need to be faultless in order for them to be good or adored. They can be cherished and retain their inherent value in spite of their failings, much like human beings themselves.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
If you’ve ever wondered why comedians—the very people who are supposed to push boundaries and challenge dogma—would embrace the cozy conformity of wokeness, then allow me to explain: it’s fundamentally about power. It’s not about making people laugh any more, it’s about securing the reins of cultural power, which to a large degree they have already done.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
Ultimately, they know that for a stable society to exist, there must be a common language that everyone uses to communicate on the same basis of understanding. This is no good to radicals who thrive on conflict, because without societal infighting they cannot offer their agenda in the guise of a solution. This is why they stoke division through words and meaning.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
Other than a handful of lunatics who advocate the idea of open borders, most of us understand that there is a sensible level of immigration which, when exceeded, becomes disruptive to existing communities. This, in turn, does everyone a disservice, including the immigrants themselves.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
Hand in hand with this new linguistic spin on diversity comes ‘inclusion’, which is another word that has been bastardised in recent years. Spaces, we are told, must now be made more inclusive in order for them to be healthy. However, on entering such a space, you’ll soon discover that some people are more included than others.
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
In fact, those responsible for setting up particularly ‘inclusive’ spaces frequently ask certain people to leave in order to ensure ‘safety’.
Safety, you see, also has a new meaning based primarily around not having to be confronted with different opinions and beliefs (as opposed to physical threat, which is the sole ‘safety’ issue everyone cared about until five minutes ago).
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
[About the importance of saying what you think]: We come from generations of people who were killed for their beliefs. Well, I'm not going to dishonor them.
Are they really trying to tell me to pack my things and fuck off back to Russia?
From everything I am told, and everything I see on social media, I can only deduce that I would be better off elsewhere. Weirdly, none of the people who tell you how evil, bigoted, racist and sexist the West is ever move to any of the other ‘much better’ countries—but maybe they want me to?
An Immigrant's Love Letter to the West (2022)
What we have witnessed over the last two weeks—with enormous pro-Hamas rallies in cities like London, Paris, and Washington, D.C.—has the potential to change the immigration debate in a decisive way. It is much harder to pretend that allowing people to enter our country illegally is a moral good when you watch some of them celebrate mass murder in the streets of your capital cities.