- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- globalnews@lemmy.zip
From January 1, 2026, Latvia is set to prohibit the teaching of Russian as a second foreign language in schools.
Starting the same date, Russian-language TV and radio broadcasting will be banned in state media. Additionally, the VAT on sales of Russian-language books will increase to 21%.
These measures aim to reduce the presence of the Russian language and strengthen the role of the Latvian language in society.
Russian is the native language for 36% of Latvians.[1]
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I’m sure liberals will start calling this out as an act of cultural genocide any day now
This is exactly the stuff they falsely claimed was happening in Xinjiang
Latvia: openly bans Russian language instruction
: omg le epic based!!! destroy the subhuman orc language!!!China: Satellite picture of hotel
: CULTURAL GENOCIDE NINETEEN ATE FOURTY JORJOR WELL ANIMAL AGRICULTURE 
Extremely common Baltic Nazi moment
Democracy is when you remove peoples citizenship, right to vote, pensions, ban their schooling, ban their language, ban their media, and tax them separately.
It was only bad when the Umayyad Caliphate did it.
Wasn’t the Jizya usually lower than the tax paid by Muslims?
I do remember reading that conversion of non-Arabs wasn’t seen as a universal good by Muslim rulers, at least during the days of the early Muslim empire: the fear being that you could convert your way out of a reliable income source.
The Baltics have gotten very pretentious ever since NATO elevated them to aryan.
The yapping little lapdogs of the EU
Irrelevant nazi dog country barking fashy shit as usual.
Latvia triumphs over Russian disinformation that knowledge is good
“Here’s how Ukraine can win:”
Okay they will switch to English/German as their secondary language then. Now what?
Are you gonna ban that too? lol
Maybe if your country embodied some kind of different ideology it wouldn’t need superficial shit like language to stand apart.
Like they do realize that this is them admitting the grand liberal democratic world order as it was is done, right? That they are turning into a kleptocracy like Russia but with more corporate technofascism?
That they are turning into a kleptocracy like Russia but with more corporate technofascism?
But it’s good when they do it because they are proud of how much western boot they lick while doing it.
The Baltic states are rounding errors, and minor rural cities in China have more than their entire populations. It’s insane we treat them seriosuly.
Let every state in the EU be treated like any other state in a federation. None of them are real countries. They’re provinces.
social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism
Is it even a social democracy?
When their children need to look for work in Russia they’re gonna regret this. I don’t know the culture of Latvia, but I would guess this is mostly spectacular bourgeois grandstanding to distract from vast wealth inequality and false scarcity and is probably not a sincere desire of the Latvian working class.
@RedSturgeon@hexbear.net, could you comment?
In 2012 70% voted against including Russian as a 2nd language in the constitution. There’s clearly been some form of dislike towards it within the society, even if it’s not explicitly shown. And the support for Nationalism has only grown since then.
I think a lot of the population has bought into Nationalism, including the lumpenproletariat. They might be okay with people speaking their own language at home or casually, but that’s about it. It’s hard to tell, people probably have noticed I’m quite the paranoid type and local culture has a lot to do with it, a lot of people are stone cold on the inside with a shiny exterior. It’s difficult to judge by appearance.
Perhaps it might be interesting to look at the history of other countries with language disputes. See what sort of methods a discriminated group can use to protect itself. Like surely there must have been feuds over french and english languages in Canada, for instance, right?
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Sarcasm or racism?
It’s definitely the second one.
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Are you trying to inply that suppressing the culture of an ethnic minority comprising a little over a third of your population is either anti-colonialist, or positive?
The Soviets actually respected regional cultures. Schools, broadcasts, literature, and signage were all in local languages. Lenin literally carved out the state of the Ukraine from Russia for this reason. Accusations of colonialism against the Soviets are based in projection and anti-communism, i.e. “they forced us to be communists”.
For all of the faults of the modern Russian Federation, I’m not aware of them putting any restrictions on their thirty-five officially recognized languages, nor any others. Perhaps you could enlighten us on how Latvia’s ethnic repression qualifies as based anti-colonial action.
Everything going on here is the exact same thing that China is accused of doing in Xinjang. Why bother draping this criticism in the language of revolution when you can just say that you support this because you think Russians are genetically evil and everyone you care about will cheer? You would’ve easily supported Japanese interment camps if you were alive back then.
Tagline material.
