The New Russophobia 2

From the "You Can't Make This Shit Up" department...

The Daily Mail (England) wrote:

Russian Gays Now Fleeing to ISIS!

The Daily Mail: all the fiction that's fit to print. No need to read beyond the headline. It might hurt your brain.

Actual headline in "major" UK paper: Russian President Vladimir Putin 'to blame' for Giant Hogweed invading UK

The photos of injured children, cowering from the dastardly and villainous efforts of the Roosky President, is touching.

another Western MSM yarn about Russia and/or its President wrote:

Despite decades of research biologists are yet to find an effective weapon agains the invasive species, whose poisonous sap recently hospitalised a dog walker and a ten-year-old girl.

But they believe a rust fungus found in Georgia, where the weed originally comes from, may hold the answer to stopping the plant which can cause severe burns, blisters and even blindness.

In the early 2000s scientists went to Georgia but their efforts were hampered by conflict with Russia, where Putin had just become president for the first time...

You can't make this shit up. I mean, they DO but, for prima facie evidence of the bat-shit crazy Russophobia in Western MSM, these yarns just get juicier and juicier. What next? Aliens with the face of Putin, amed with anal probes, skulking around schoolyards? Sapping our vital bodily fluids by promoting the floridation of water? It's straight out of Jack D. Ripper.

In response to consumer demand, New Russophobia is now gluten free.

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more dangerous because the west has become bolder and more reckless in its belligerence and power-plays.

But less dangerous because New Russophobia has 12% more antioxidants.

Dear Guardian editors: this is why no one believes you anymore

A remarkable article showing the endless delicious scoops of neo-Stalinist alternative realities, compliments of ... the Western "liberal" MSM. Mmm mmm good!

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While this is just the latest on the conveyor-belt of state-promoted Stalinist ‘alternative realities’, which now constitutes the vast majority of your (ahem) political analysis, I feel the need to make a few observations, more out of pity than anger.

You must be wondering why, after over a year of a continued propaganda campaign that has seen you defending neo-nazis, racist massacres, and the wholesale terrorising of innocent civilians, you are still largely failing to get the message across, even to your core traditional readership. I can sense a rising panic, bafflement and bewilderment in you. And it makes me want to reach out. To bridge the gulf and explain why you are so totally failing to convince anybody of anything.

It’s not just because you cosy up with nazis (sorry, ‘nationalists’), while queasily obscuring their crimes and ideologies. It’s not just because you fail to see that your go-to Russia correspondents such as Shaun Walker and Luke Harding come over either as racist Russophobes or idiot-shills, on a par with, if rather more intelligent than your other poorly chosen protegé, the tragi-comic Eliot Higgins.

Delicious.

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Let’s recap. The US neocon plan of financially annexing Ukraine and drawing Russia into a proxy war with NATO seems to be dead. And let’s hope it stays that way, because while it lived it was so hardline even Kissinger repudiated it. So insane it almost sparked a nuclear war. So incompetent it dragged Europe to the point of financial ruin, the fallout of which we are still experiencing and will continue to experience for the foreseeable future.

Don’t forget, dear Graun, we have spent the last 18 months watching our political leaders in Europe and the US demonstrate they are equally divided between lunatics, morons and moronic lunatics. We’ve seen the likes of Cameron, Merkel and Hollande trundle their people to the edge of Armageddon, just because Nuland et al told them to, blinking in the headlights of the oncoming juggernaut, passive, helpless and completely idiotic.

We’ve discovered (if we didn’t already know) the US State Department is run by a hard core of dangerously insane halfwits who have zero understanding of realpolitik or anything else. We’ve been forced to realise these people don’t grasp their own (profound) limitations, can’t comprehend that Ukraine is not Tunisia, not Egypt, not even Georgia. We’ve had to face the incredible fact that these guys actually believed they could have another of their ridiculous ‘color revolutions’ in Russia’s strategic, political and emotional heartland, use the usual rent-a-mob to throw Russia’s Black Sea Fleet out of Crimea, and not ignite a thermonuclear war.

We have seen Ukraine torn apart and die economically, spiritually, politically and militarily, all in pursuit of serving this fatuous, self-defeating, sub-intelligent agenda.

There is some good stuff about how the Guardian has been trying to "change the narrative" (as all liars do) once their repulsive and despicable lies are exposed to the light of day.

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For example, here’s some extracts from the Guardian’s archive concerning the start of that “conflict in Donbass” you now want us to believe was kicked off by Putin riding in to Donetsk on the back of a tank…

The Guardian from 2014 April: “…After pro-Russian protesters demanding referenda on greater autonomy from Kiev stormed government buildings in the eastern regional capitals of Donetsk, Kharkiv and Luhansk over the weekend, rumours of a military response by the Ukrainian authorities have run rampant…"

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You see how sleazy and manipulative your agenda immediately appears when you pretend these things didn’t happen, while at the same time your archive proves you know full well they did? You see how morally and intellectually bankrupt you seem when you opt for simplistic summations that are basically lies? You see how scummily cavalier you seem to be about truth, reality and human lives?

This is why people don’t believe you any more.

Fuck you and die, Guardian.  Stinking liberals.

I'm not a liberal. Nor am I a neo-Stalinist.

The Guardian has completely disgraced itself. Anti Guardian media have sprouted, exposing the stream of vomit that is supposed to pass for "objective" news from that outlet. They don't bother to fact check, any claim will do, as long as it's luridly Russophobic enough, and they truly are an object of mockery and ridicule.

Remember how Western MSM used to gloat over the Stupidity of Soviet media gaffes and self contradictory claims? Now it is the turn of Russian, and independent, media to mock Western idiocy. And believe me ... the Russians can remember the other stuff too. Alas, the Guardian and MSM generally, cannot. They are a caricature of themselves.

Scott Taylor has a piece in the Winnipeg Free Press recently. Even MSM reporters are getting sick of the bullshit. But pathological Russophobia has no cure. However, it's still worth exposing it to the light of day, and reason, because, like the exposure of a fictional vampire or troll to daylight, others not hopelessly infected still have a chance to free themselves from this romance with hate and death.

Yes, it's probably worthwhile to point that out every few pages. Not that it will stop the barrage. 

I love that the attacks on the Guardian use near-identical language to the right-wing attacks on the Guardian of so many years' standing, complete with Grauniad references. Putin fanboys, in their rhetorical devices, sound more and more like Thatcher fanboys. 

NDPP wrote:

swallow wrote:

 ...sound more and more like Thatcher fanboys. 

Oh look there's one now...

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/08/18/thomas-mulcair-margaret-thatcher...

Not his finest moment, eh? 

It's good to see others finally taking Russophobia seriously.

For those not in the know, Russophobia is like Homophobia, but against the government of Vladimir Putin.

Yawners.  Some of the responses here are about as typically boring, uninspired and myopic as one might encounter just about anywhere else.  Over the decades western corporate media have never ceased their continuous propaganda campaign against all things Russian.  When it wasn't the 'commies' they were making movies about, it was about Russian gangsters, who were always depicted as being particularly dangerous and inhuman, right up there with Chinese 'triad' gangs.  It's similar to when the propagandists in Hollywood always depicted Arabs as terrorists in the movies, and South and Central Americas as drug barons and mules.  Obviously the technique works quite well.  Putin serves as the ogre for people's well trained thoughts.  Every nation not in lockstep needs to be represented by one for this shit to keep working like it does.

But that isn't all that lives there, except that you'd never know it.  If you don't see the thread that connects the demonizing of leaders, and by extension, whole societies that present western style gangster corporatism with geopolitical rivalry, and, in the case of Libya and Syria, the bodies of refugees washing up on shore from attempting to flee the ensuing violence, that's nobody's fault but your own.  Russia is now a temporary home to what, upwards of a million refugees from Eastern Ukraine?  Thankfully the rivers aren't that wide in places.  I would say Putin's regime is no less despicable than what we have in Ottawa, but the way the propaganda works, a leaders is merely the proxy for whatever violence and desperation that the general population of a region under threat get subjected to.  The demonization of leaders and thus the societies they represent makes way for the levels of unmitigated suffering we see being meted out to innocent people.  What we're witnessing among some social democratic leaning supporters is the descent of political consciousness to the status of a coma.  It's no wonder about the state of politics in this country as a result.

I contend that what you're engaging in is part of, or at least an effect of, illegitimate western propaganda that always asks us to look over there, instead of at our own false representatives and their so called 'values.'

That article says that Russophobia is not "new" but was invented in Britain during the Crimean War. Fair enough. 

How does this "phobia" differ from standard demonization of the other in order to provoke nationalist hysteria? In what way is Russia somehow more demonized than, say, Arabs, or Iran, or China? What, in other words, is unique to Russia, supporting a claim that Russia is uniquely demonized in the West these days? 

In what way is critcism of a leader automatically criticism of their entire society? Doesn't that make rabble.ca an anti-Canada hat3e site, given its consesnsus dislike of M Harper? 

swallow wrote:

In what way is Russia somehow more demonized than, say, Arabs, or Iran, or China?

Well, the leader of Russia comes under attack in the media a lot more often than the leader of Saudi Arabia, whoever that is.

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In what way is critcism of a leader automatically criticism of their entire society?

Criticism of Russia is "Russophobic" the same way that criticism of Israel is Anti-Semitic.

There was a kind of "Russophobia" during the Colld War years, with threatening Russkies as villains in spy dramas, but at the same time Russians and other Soviet and Central/Eastern Europeans were portrayed as people like "us" (the peoples of the capitalist West) under the boot of a totalitarian rule. Most of these people were white (the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asian Republics were looked at otherwise, if at all) and a great many of their countrymen had emigrated to Western societies and were generally well-integrated by then.

Nowadays, I don't think there is nearly the hatred and fear of Russians that there is of "Muslims", "Arabs", "Iranians" or other Middle Eastern and North African peoples, or the pervasive prejudice against Black or "Asiatic" peoples.

There is, of course, an ideological blindness to the unequal exchange, military aggression and other manifestations of imperialism on the part of Western powers.

But accusations of "Russophobia" can also we a way of besmirching people in the West who have always been anti-imperialist and fought for social progress and democracy, due to the fact that they are also critical of the Russian government, homophobia and misogyny. No, of course that isn't the whole story of a major people of the world and major world culture, of Russian society or government. But I'm bloody sick of the insinuations that all critics of the authoritarian and retrograde (homophobia, xenophobia against "darker" Soviet peoples, foreign students etc, retreat to religious Orthodoxy) aspects of that government are somehow fans of Stephen Harper, of US or EU imperialism, and secretly contriving to bring about "régime change" (when the real "regime change" was the fall of the Soviet Union).

I actually do know left-wing trade unionists and other LEFT critics of Putin's rule, IN Russia and other former Soviet Republics. They want to be heard, and it is certainly not because they are "counter-revolutionary" or hate their native land.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

... the piece completely downplays the fact the revolution was a game changer in relations, and virtually all modern anti-Russian sentiment springs from that.

Fact is, before 1914 there was a far greater traditional rivalry between England and France, and considering relations between them and other European powers, prejudices from the century before last, don't carry as much weight as some scholars claim.

Fact is, your claim is garbage. Pathological Russophobia predates the 20th century by a great deal.There's plenty of evidence.

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The term ‘Russophobia’ was probably first coined by the famous Russian poet Fyodor Tyutchev who wrote in a 1867 letter to his daughter:

It is possible to provide an analysis of the modern phenomenon which becomes increasingly pathological. It is Russophobia of some Russian people who are highly respected by the way.

Russophobia: The Discreet Charm of Cultural Racism & the Legacy of Hate.

Interesting to read a torrent of hate that claims it isn't, that Russophobia doesn't exist, and then ... provides evidence why the claim is true. Bwa ha ha ha. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

Next.

[quote]Яussiaи Stereotypes: I. Russian Stereotypes: Western Perception of Russia as Seen Through Russian’s Eyes. II. Representation of Russia(ns) in Western Popular Culture: Klyukvification & Russian Character Types. III. Through the Looking Glass: Western Media Coverage of Russia. 1. Ushanka Syndrome, Sochi Problems & Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. 2. Quasi-Colonial Wet Dreams: The Pussy Riot Effect, TV Screen Russians & Orientalization. 3. Fire the Narrator: Quasi-Colonial Nightmare, Russian Double Consciousness & Russocentric Optics.

Medley:

1. Russia as the Ideal Other for the West.
2. Russophobia: The Discreet Charm of Cultural Racism & the Legacy of Hate.
3. Stealth Russians, or the Western Media Blind Spot.
4. Image of a Typical Russian Man in Western Popular Culture.
5. Dostoyevsky Is the Limit?!
6. Lost in Poshlost.
7. Vatnik Reclaimed.
8. Cranberry Fields Forever (The Sounds of Positive Klyukvification).
9. Worldview of a Xenopatriot.
10. Russian Recursion.
11. ‘Pro-Russian’ as a Negative Marker.
12. Voices from Around the Globe.
13. The Afterglow after Afterparty (The Quasi-Colonial Suite).
14. The Horns Effect & the Western Grand Narrative of Russia.

Did I say it didn't exist, ikosmos?

I was just pointing out why that article was cherrypicking nonsense. Not only does it leave out some very significant facts, the biggest reason is that England's far greater rivalries (ones which resulted in far more military encounters) were with Germany and France.But no one is freaking out about criticism of those countries being nothing but our historical anti-French and German racism.

(or did I miss something in the Greece thread?)

And the point, made plenty of times (most recently by Magoo) that there is a difference between criticism of a government and racism is also completely valid.

Or maybe SJ is right. We aren't trying to get Putin's government to stop discriminating against LGBT people, invading other countries and shooting journalists in the face, we're just promoting the MSM-driven western agenda.

That article doesn't mention Canada.

It does contain some doozies like this one:

Is this the real reason why the economically bankrupt and morally decadent West hates Russia so much?

And I flagged the personal attack on a poster, of course.

The AmericanEmpire-Central Bankers cabal has always needed an enemy with which to distract the American and other western peoples and as an agency to advance their agenda. With the duplicitous war on the Assad regime and imagined war on ISIL the threats and fear mongering of Al Qaida propagated by western MSM was beginning to wear thin for those so inclined to believe in such and with Putin's rejection of the Russian nation as a western vassal state the shift to the new enemy was quickly brought into play. Harper is well known south of our border as a neo con ideologue and a self serving careerist. It follows that Harper would cut off the Canadian nose to spite the fallacy of Russia as enemy. Instead of seeking aspects of greater co-operation and trade Harper has self servingly played the part of the yapping chihuahua with the American bulldog proividing backup. Quite a disgusting display and very embarrassing while costing the Canadian economy several business deals involving aircraft production and sales. I wonder if this play to the Canadian Ukrainian community could backfire if that community comes to realize that the worst of Ukrianian society has taken power in the "old country" that they may not wish to support living in a country that still has deep disgust for Nazis of any variety, Ukrainian or otherwise. Do Canadian Ukrainians support the criminal Nazi regime that effectively controls so much in Ukraine? 

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Russia/Putin-hating zombies

Hey, lots of Putin-hating zombies love Russia! 

Luke Harding: the hack who came in from the cold.

Part One of the "Guardian Russophobes" series from the off-Guardian. The site has very helpfully provided links to Harding's idiocy for those interested in investigating further. There's also a related piece by Julian Assange.

Because freedom.

So, here a question ...

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Is Luke Harding:

• 1: “the reporter Russia hated”
• 2: an “enemy of Putin”
• 3: a borderline psychotic paranoiac, whose narcissistic delusions have been deliberately encouraged and exploited by an intelligentsia that will use any old crap it can find to further its agenda
• 4: a bit of a tosser

Maybe there will be prizes. And stuff.