Sad but true. (TikTok screencap)
I’m a Russian, hold my beer.
Do people actually hold that against you? The worst I’ve had as an american was explaining that most Americans don’t support Trump, Elon is a Nazi (they didn’t get the memo in east asia), and then contextualizing whatever other weird impressions they have.
Not really. To be open, I don’t live in Russia for over a decade. There were minor incidents even before the big war, like people abruptly stopping speaking to me upon hearing my nationality, or asking why I support (I don’t) Putin or why I don’t stop him. One guy explained to me very matter-of-factly that all Russians are intrinsically evil and deserve supervision because of it… Didn’t know how to answer that one. Very rarely I was thrown insults in the streets. But other than a very few incidents, all people I know outside of Russia were always welcoming and supportive. Recently, I received more threats and hate speech from my pro-putin compatriots than I ever received anywhere else in the world.
You shouldn’t. People are more likely to be interested in who you are as a person than your country’s politics. You might get some negative bias, true. But you can work pass that.
I’m from the country of Orban, and I do feel shame sometimes saying that. But I have rarely experienced anything more than some cold looks.
The everyday folks who support a dictator tend no to travels abroad. People outside your country are not exposed to them :)
US ex pat living in Europe: 100% agree. I’ve actually not had a single person be mean or negative about where I’m from. Either jokes about how it’s going or more likely, curiosity about how things actually are.
It’s just like if you meet a Russian who left. I would hope you’d have the nuance to think “oh, they escaped, fantastic for them and I’m so sorry about their country” not “oh they must love Putin”
I met a Russian student studying abroad who was very intent on staying out of Russia as much as possible because he’s aware of how messed up things are. Had very a good sense of humor. His jokes about Putin and the Russian government would be enough to get people there thrown in jail.
It’s just like if you meet a Russian who left. I would hope you’d have the nuance to think “oh, they escaped, fantastic for them and I’m so sorry about their country” not “oh they must love Putin”
Unfortunately, as a Polish person, reality proved to me over and over and over again that in this particular scenario, the latter is just most often the case.
Russian people in general have special love for strong men in power. Make no mistake, they somehow even managed to turn Marxist ideas into authoritarianism and it made a massive damage to the international perception of the idea of communism. To this day general populace im my post-communist country, when you say socialism, they see Stalin.
Eh, really depends. Some immigrants keep supporting right-wing and authoritarian leaders in their home countries, regardless of where they’re from. There are many immigrant Russians who don’t support Putin, but there are some who do. Just like there are MAGA Latinos. Same as many Balkan people who move to Austria, Germany, etc. who still support right-wing leaders whose economy- and people-ruinning policies forced them to move for work in the first place.
People are dumb, tribalistic animals.
Depends?
I was born in mainland China, my parents are sort of sympathetic to PRC (but they are not communists), as in, they want to see Taiwan be reunified and opposed the Hongkong Protests. Simultaneously, they are also somewhat sympathetic to trump and their shitty policies, and they are anti-immigration despite us being immigrants, and they hate homeless people and neurodivergent people.
Meanwhile, I grew up in the US (arrive before I turned 10), I oppose the CCP, support Taiwan’s democracy and Hongkong protests, oppose trump.
My wife openly says she left Hungary because of the dictatorship, nobody has ever reacted to her negatively for it.
The impression I get from most Hungarians I’ve met is that if you can speak another language then getting out is the smart move.
The everyday folks who support a dictator tend no to travels abroad.
I remember seeing videos of mainland Chinese people going to western countries to counterprotest against the HongKong Protestors. As a Chinese American, I cringed at that so much.
I am Canadian. People in Europe would always ask if I was American after hearing me speak, and their faces would always lighten up when I told them I was Canadian.
In Spain it was the worst. I would sometimes overhear service staff tell each other I was American and proceed to get awful service. It got to the point that I started going in to random stores to try to (unsuccessfully) find something with a Canadian flag on it.
I will try my best to be obviously Canadian next time.
I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but anytime abroad I tell people I’m from Jersey. First and foremost I identify as. New Jerseyan. “American” and “Canadian” are so incredibly broad. Are you from Vancouver? Toronto? Are you a Newfie or from Edmonton? Shit, are you Quebecois? The same applies in the US, I don’t for a second begin to think of any of the regions as being remotely similar. Northeast, Atlantic, Midwest, West Coast, all very different places with very different people. I didn’t include the South because they’re the worst.
So yeah, I’ve kinda always just led with that. Maybe us people from Jersey are just like that though, I dunno. I won’t lie, sometimes it leads me to saying things like “I’m an hour outside of New York.” I leave off “city” because New York State may as well not even exist, it’s essentially a barren wasteland of former mining towns that are in a depressed death spiral of long, gray winters and trips to the finger lakes.
anytime abroad I tell people I’m from Jersey
You tell me you’re from Jersey, I’ll ask you about a tiny island in the english channel.
This is why most Americans say they are Canadian, when traveling.
They can try, but you can always hear an American tourist before you see them.
Most American tourists definitely don’t do this.
