Report on a Recent Occurrence of Russian Racism Is Watered Down by Focus on Western Company Involved

The Guardian's Alec Luhn reports that

a video from a Red Bull event in Moscow showed a Barack Obama impersonator chasing a banana. … In the video, at least four shirtless men who appeared to be in blackface makeup, and one dressed as the US president, chased another dressed as a banana off the Flugtag ramp.

But, of course, racism only counts when it takes place in the United States or a Western country, or when anything related to the West is involved.

Thus, much must made of the fact that Red Bull is involved in the controversy that emerged in

a highlights video from last week’s Red Bull Flugtag competition, in which participants send whimsical “flying” machines crashing off a ramp into water.

It is only as an aside, almost, that we learn that

Photoshopped memes showing Obama with bananas and calling the US president a monkey have appeared frequently on the Russian internet, including on a site of images often used by paid pro-Kremlin trolls.