Jakobson: Security without fried onions
Commentator Mari-Liis Jakobson writes that a meat advertisement and the ensuing debate have turned fried onions into a battle cry, blurring lines between enemy soldiers and Russian-speaking residents.
In a recent commentary, Mari-Liis Jakobson laments that a single advertisement for grilling meat has given rise to a new symbol. Fried onions, she writes, are no longer just a tasty food – they have become a battle cry.
The ad in question shows two men wearing T-shirts with Ukrainian flag patches, standing contentedly by a grill while columns of smoke resembling frontline news footage rise in the background. The slogan reads: "The right grill makes a bitter onion sweet." After the ad was published, social media criticism erupted, and journalists and columnists quickly joined the debate.
Jakobson recalls learning the symbolic meaning of "onion" as a child: Orthodox church domes are onion-shaped, and since most Russians are Orthodox Christians, Russians are sometimes jokingly called onions. While the symbol is stereotypical and marks Russians as "the other," she notes it has never carried the violent connotations of terms like "orc" or "vatnik."
Drawing on social semiotics, Jakobson explains that meanings of symbols are not fixed but are constantly created in public discussion. She regrets that this advertisement and the ensuing debate have created a new symbol. She also criticizes the claim that such imagery is inevitable because of the war in Ukraine, arguing that the war explains why the image resonates but not why it should be considered responsible.
Jakobson refers to an academic article in Nationalities Papers by researchers Jennie Schulze and Juris Pupcenoks, which identifies three approaches to the Russian-speaking minority in Estonia and Latvia: securitizing exclusion, securitizing inclusion, and inclusion not justified by security threats. Since Russia's full-scale invasion, the first approach has become more prominent, and the authors warn that security benefits must be weighed against costs to social cohesion.
While a meat advertisement is not national security policy, Jakobson argues it participates in the same field of meaning, further blurring the line between soldiers of an aggressor state, war supporters, and Russian-speaking residents of Estonia. She calls for debates on difficult issues – limiting hostile influence operations, Estonian-language education, and addressing institutions that support the war – to be conducted with as little baggage from hostile imagery as possible.
