Opinion

Opinion: Orientalism reanimated or colonial thinking in Western analysts’ comments on Ukraine

Over the last few months, pro-Russian commentators in many Western countries have been portraying the Ukrainian events using a mix of stereotypes that scarily resemble the rhetoric once typical of racist and imperialist ways of thinking. As a result of such stereotypes, Ukrainians (but also Georgians, Moldovans, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians) have fallen victims to a new form of Orientalism, a distorted way of thinking that people in the West exhibit all too often when talking about other parts of the world. […]