Slovak celebrity photo shoot in Romani settlement for ELLE magazine prompts racism
Slovak recording artists Dara Rolins and Patrik "Rytmus" Vrbovský are featured on the cover of the August issue of the Czech-language edition of ELLE, and the magazine’s photo shoot of them in an impoverished Romani settlement has been analyzed primarily by the tabloid press in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Several online readers have added their racist commentaries to those articles and to the online video made of the photo shoot.
Dara Rolins was asked to guest-edit the August issue. She and her partner Rytmus had themselves photographed in an impoverished Romani settlement wearing expensive jewelry and luxury clothing.
Rytmus wrote the following to accompany one of the photos: "This will always remind me of the saying ‘the thorny path to the stars’. I will always remember how I was doubted and racially insulted. Today that little gypsy without a future is seeing his dreams come true. It’s all the same whether you’re a gypsy, Chinese, or a gadjo with a red sunburn and nice blonde hair. Skinhead doubts and insults can’t do anything. Through willpower you can do everything!"
The photographs posted to Dara Rolins’ Facebook page sparked an enormous wave of reaction online and many racist commentaries were immediately posted there. She responded to the attacks last Wednesday and Rytmus added his own response on Saturday. News server Romea.cz publishes their responses here in full translation.
Patrik "Rytmus" Vrbovský: SEND THEM TO THE GAS CHAMBERS AND THROW IN A GRENADE?
Hmm? Beautiful. Wishing death on gypsy children? Seriously? I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy. I’m writing this to you from the perspective of a white non-racist, as I am half-white on my mother’s side.
I have yet to hear of a gypsy who wants to murder white children or shove them into the gas chambers for 10 minutes. Be careful, this isn’t a joke anymore, these are serious matters. I remind you once more that I am writing this to you from the perspective of an unprejudiced white guy who lives a balanced life and has nothing against white people, because my mother is white.
I am doing my best to understand what the standards are for this intolerance, because what startles me is something very basic. From the time the modern Slovak state was created until today, our state coffers have been pilfered and our white brothers have packed away such obscene billions that there is nothing left for the pensions of all you white racists – and yet you want to throw grenades at the gypsies and put their children in the gas chambers. Your brothers robbed you of the money you earned and forced you to commit suicide or to flee this state. I won’t analyze the privatization process, the rigged tenders, or the friends arranging contracts for one another in the MILLIONS OF EURO here. What else? Our white brother VAT collectors have robbed this state (us) of hundreds of millions that you are going to have pay back for them – and yet you want to put gypsies IN GAS CHAMBERS and throw GRENADES at their children.
This theft is totally fucked up compared to the welfare the racists are always jawing about. What else? From the start of the 1990s until about 2011 there was a mafia officiating here and their leading figures were white. Our white guys murdered off our white entrepreneurs because they wanted to go into business and live their dreams. Blackmailers, prostitution, racketeering, selling drugs to your white children on a massive scale, etc., etc., but the mainly you want to throw GRENADES and put innocent children in GAS CHAMBERS.
The Nazi murder of Daniel Tupý is still not solved. Three of our white students, our white brothers from Liptovský Mikuláš, sliced up a defenseless 47-year-old taxi driver. That doesn’t bother you racists, you just want to throw grenades at gypsy children.
Also a certain Juraj H (Nerem) kept his daughter’s body in his apartment in Ružinov long after she was dead. Why have I never seen any of you addressing that in these online discussions? Why can your (our) white brothers do that without anyone racially insulting them? Why isn’t anyone calling for grenades to be thrown at their children or for them to be put in the gas chambers for 30 minutes? Is this a double standard?
Yes, I recognize that some gypsies do shameful things, but in comparson with the atrocities committed by our white brothers in Slovakia, they do not deserve the disgusting, superficial judgments of you racists. I haven’t even listed evrything I could here.
I already know now that my unborn child will be sent to prison for some fucked-up reason because of the narrow-mindedness of these racists with their inferiority complexes. Why? Darker eyes? Darker skin? Please, learn to make distinctions and to judge only those who actually deserve condemnation.
Dara Rolins: Murderers, thieves and thugs are everywhere, including among whites
I must respond to the online reactions to yesterday’s video, which was shot in a gypsy settlement… Some of the commentaries took my breath away, and I erased some of the responses from my Facebook profile that were too exaggerated for my taste. Evil begets evil.
Naturally I understand that each of us has – that you all have – a right to an opinion, including opinions that I don’t identify with, and vice versa. It’s clear the gypsy topic is, was, and always will be controversial. However, what am I to make of these hints that everyone only deserves the same thing as everyone else, the opinions that we’ve overdone it this time by promoting luxury in a setting of poverty, these comments about the need to feel sorry not for gypsy children, but for our own? I feel sorry for ALL children who suffer, irrespective of their skin color. Hello, this is life! This is what it looks like! You don’t like it? Real life is also cruel, like this, thanks to fate, thanks to them, and thanks to us.
We entered their world in peace and were accepted with smiles. No one felt the need to show their inferiority or superiority or to demonstrate how lucky and wealthy we are compared to them – and are we really?
Everything is relative. Maybe they had stuffed-up noses, but I have never seen so many happy, laughing children together in one place as I saw there. They didn’t choose where to be born, did they?
That is true, but it’s also true that they can choose how they will live, and where. On the other side of that very same settlement live Romani people who are educated, employed, and integrated.
Murderers, thieves and thugs are everywhere, including among whites. What kind are there more of, who is worse? I believe we are all either good or evil.
I am not anyone’s advocate. I personally hate violence and I condemn thieves and trash, all the people who are lazy and who only know how to do one thing – how to rob the honest and the weak. I am bothered just as much by the categorical, general "truth" that white people are better than black ones.
Is there poverty in this word? Disease? Injustice, violence? Yes, there is, among blacks just as among whites, and between blacks and whites, as well as differences of all kinds. Sodom and Gomorrah. These photos from a gypsy ghetto don’t doubt this, and we aren’t taking attention away from it in order to produce some sort of effect. We are just acknowledging it, showing the world the objective truth. Yes, these differences exist. Yes, some have more, others have less. Some people laugh in a place where others would weep. Your perspective is up to you.
It’s up to each one of us whether to be offended by this or not. These are just photographs of one day in reality. We were invited into their world. I don’t want to be cynical, but it seems useless to me, in that context, to make too much of this at any cost.
VIDEO
Zdroj:
http://www.elle.cz/elle-tv/celebrity/videoreport-dara-rolins-rytmus-pro-elle
