No subject

[anne marie devlin]

Dear Seelangers, I have just come across this angry and possibly rascist rant on a social network site.  It refers to the actions of the police at a demonstration in Moscow last May. 

Сам я там был...даже есть мои "реплики"в этом
видео....да и у меня полно его...но интересно другое..кусок омоновский
науськивал молодых космонавтов...мол вон жиды собрались ...и их нужно.... Я
тогда не сдержался....сука...это вы режим геноцыда русского народа
защищаете..во главе с ублюдком и выродком...блин...х ..ли в омон пошли...что
....работы нет??? ...и не будет при этой твари....ща бы бычков да свининку
продавали....а не здесь стояли....мои слова задели за живое нескольких
космонавтов.....

I am appealing to your collective wisdom for clarification on a number of points - both linguistic and social/political. From a linguistic perspective, I'm interested in the reference to космонавты.  It was suggested to me by a 16 year-old native speaker that this term can denote a stupid person in a position of power.  Can anyone corroborate this?  I've never come across it before. The second linguistic question concerns the use of жиды.  The same 16 year-old argued that it had nothing to do with Jewish people, but was simply a slang term for greedy.  In fact he refused to believe me when I pointed out the connection.  So my question is, does anyone know if the semantic properties of this word have changed?  In contemporary Russian has it become a synonym for greed and lost its antisemetic connotations - or is it that the antisemetic connotations have become so normalised that many young people don't see it as racist?  It seems a worrying development. My final query is about the direction the anti-government protests are taking.  Within the various on-line forums, I feel a strong sense of nationalism - bordering on xenophobia.  Apart from the differentiation here between жиды and русский народ, I have noticed frequent negative comments towards 'гости столицы' which seems to refer to anyone from the Caucaus region.  I was just wondering if anyone has any insight into the anti-government movement and extreme nationalism.  I know it appears counter-intuitive, but I came across this comment (regarding an upcoming court case) re-posted on an anti-government platform - Сейчас девушке прокурор требует реальных 3х лет. За то, что отогнала от своих друзей "братух-борцух" с интеллектом ниже любимых ими овец. Looking forward to your comments Anne Marie  		 	   		  
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