There is a German joke about our two largest migrant populations (Turks and Russians, or rather "Russo-Germans") I just had to think of when I read the article below in my favorite newspaper today.

A Russian in a disco has a T-shirt with an imprint on it: "Turks have three problems"

He's approached by a Turk who, already pretty pissed at him, immediately gets into his face.

"What are you saying about Turks?!" he asks.

"Your first problem is that guys are too nosy" the Russian retorts.

"You want a problem, huh?! You want me to bash your face in?!" the Turks, really riled up, throws at him.

"Your second problem is that you guys are too aggressive" the Russian says.

"Let's get ouside and I'll show you, asshole!" the Turk yells at him.

The Russian just nods and leaves the disco. Once outside, the Turk immediately brandishes a knife. The Russian reacts slightly amused.

"Your third problem - you guys always bring knives to a gunfight."

Okay, I digress.

Opposed to the really appalling way the Cologne incident (I guess you are all aware of it by now) was handled by our progressive/liberal/left-leaning media, the more conservative papers have stood out like a sore thumb - neither have they engaged in all that embarassing embellishing and whitewashing since last summer, nor have they tried to sweep it under the rug for the first few days of the new year or to downplay the events.

And well, today it printed an interesting article about one Russian perspective on these events I thought I'd share with you. Clumsy translation inc.

Crisis of Masculinity

Well, why don't they beat each other up?

Two female Russian authors comment on the event in Cologne. Russia, such is their verdict, the whole thing would have turned out differently. At fault are European men.

I wasn't just a few women who had been groped on New Year's Eve in Cologne, explained the fierce Russian publicist Julia Latynina, but actually it was Angela Merkel, even Europe itself - to test how far it's possible to go. And this certainly not for the first time. Latynina, a fearless critic of Russian president Putin, but also of what could be called Western toothlessness, reminds that already in the years before a migrant crowd has sexually harrassed female passerbys at a music festival in Stockholm, and the police didn't punish that behavior, but tried to sweep it under the rug. In the eyes of another Russian amazon, the author Maria Golowaniwskaja, the current events in Cologne show a crisis of European masculinity.

Among the victims of that night apparently there haven't been any "beaten-up male physiognomies", Golowaniwskaja observed. The inhabitant of a country where civil liberties have to be fought for on a daily basis is deeply disturbed by this. Apparently not only the police has failed in Cologne, but also the male companions of the victims of the harrassment have vanished from the scene, the gruff Russian speculates. Or is it a victory of feminism that women are responsible for everything, including defending themselves against rapists, she asks rhetorically.

European men are too tame

Indeed the news from the Russian New Year's Eve festivities show that their male problems are diametrically opposed to those of Europe. In one part of Moscow a Speznaz-elite cop lost his life during the heroic - and successful - attempt to save a dog from an approaching train. In Belgorod a doctor beat a patient who supposedly harrassed a nurse to death. Russia, where life is hard and laws aren't well-respected, creates its own barbarians, knows Golowaniwskaja. Unlike countries with a humanitarian ideology, humane laws, humane prisons, which attract foreign barbarians like flies are attracted to honey.

In the European people's garden, where the inhabitans are proud of their docility that has been drilled into them over decades, the men are tame and well-groomed, even the state has mostly discarded its masculine functions, i.e. the exertion of power, such is the analysis of the Moscovite. Meanwhile she doesn't delude herself about her uncouth compatriots. She's aware that Russians are hardly resistant against outbursts of fury at home, but assaults on women like in Cologne they would have answered with a big fight which would not have passed without victims among the assailants.

The brutal "gentleman" from the hospital is in Belgorod the user is wished rueful strength for his impending imprisonment by users of Russian social networks, but also praised for getting into a fight for a woman. Homemade barbarians offer the perk to the inhabitans of a cultural space that the latter can relate to what is driving them, Golowaniswskaja reminds. A barbarian coming from the outside on the other hand is unpredictable and as a consequence has the upper hand.