The new Russophobia

Western media blames Russia ... for Ebola!

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The United States considers Russia an enemy, and there is no mystery about why its malicious anti-Russia campaign is being waged. It's because Russia is becoming an even more influential nation. The US considers it important - perhaps vital - that it be prevented from developing as a nation and thus that it must subjected to whatever intrigues can be dreamed up to portray it as an enemy of the free world.

As we have seen from the balanced and entirely truthful columns of the Washington Post, one of the latest maneuvers was an attempt to link Russia with the spread of Ebola, the virus that might become a global epidemic.

Deconstructing Russophobia

Six key points in a good article that outlines the HISTORY of Russophobia.

Vladimir Golstein wrote:

• Russia is the ideal scapegoat seeking to blame others for their own problems
• Russia has no significant lobby in Western societies
• Cultural prejudice goes back for 1000 years
• English russophobia has been virulent for centuries - going back to imperial competition
• Resentment against pogroms of Jewish immigrants in the West contributed and contibutes to a cultural stereotype of Russia
• Russia has to learn to effectively argue against this ongoing prejudice in the court of world public opinion

"If one looks at those who shape public opinion in the US, it will be very hard to find someone who is not the descendant of one of the groups that harbor their (one time real, but currently anachronistic) grudges against Russia: be it Jews, or Eastern Europeans, or Oxbridge educated Brits.   

Consequently, when one of those pundits rails against a particular Russian action, nobody really cares if it’s true or false .... "

That expression is a rephrasing of a quote (falsely) attributed to Al Capone by comedian Irwin Corey in the latter's routine ...

"You Can Get Much Further with a Kind Word and a Gun than with a Kind Word Alone."

I think there is a very similar Russian expression, not sure if it is borrowed from Corey or not. It's not clear to me whether this was a misquote, or a joke by Putin from the Russian language link at New Republic.

The New Republic is that publication associated with William F. Buckley wasn't it? That certainly is a good example of a virulent Russophobic "news" source. Was that your intention?

nicky wrote:

I posted this story as yet another example of how Russia is sinking into pure fascism under Putin.

Start your own thread then, and stop trolling this one.

This thread is about recent pathological Russophobia in the mass media and your contribution is simply derailing the thread, as is probably your intention, possibly to silence those who disagree with your views.

PS Don't forget lesson 4 above. If you can't think of anything to add, just remember to compare the elected Russian President to Hitler. That always helps. Just not in this thread. Thanks and have a nice day.

Let's see - derailing the thread, personal attacks.

How about a nice racist comment from you about Russians to just "round things out" - maybe, like Ukrainian fascists describing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, you could compare them to insects that need to be "cleansed" or exterminated ?

Perhaps you ARE providing a service here. Only not in the way that you've intended. lol.

ygtbk wrote:

ikosmos, you may have started the thread, but you don't own it and you're not a mod. You might consider backing off.

What do you call the actions of someone who refuses to address the topic of the thread, if not trolling?

My "position" is that the subject of the thread should be addressed, otherwise it's just trolling. If you share the view that Putin is Hitler, and Russians should be physically exterminated, etc, then by all means start such a thread and "debate" the issue.

Explain to me how uncritically re-gurgitating the same Russophobic prejudices exposed here constitutes "disagreeing" and not trolling the thread?

ah, a refresher.... (a bit old, a few months, but still worth reviewing..)

Springtime for Russophobia ...

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In comparing Putin with Hitler, the most genocidal Russophobe to walk the earth, the limits of absurdity stretch still further. Since he resolutely opposes the Western oligarchy mastering Russia and all of Eurasia, a dream shared by a certain twentieth-century Reichskanzler, Putin is by some wonder of logic akin to Hitler. Here’s a helpful checklist to demonstrate the similarities:

• Stands against international capital stripping the people of their national wealth. What is this guy, a Nazi?
• Asserts traditional identity of Russia and native cultures within Russia; supports pro-natal policies and strengthening the role of the Orthodox Church in society. Well, that sounds just like something Hitler would do.
• Upholds the stabilizing role of Russia as a sovereign Eurasian power with its own natural sphere of interests. Hitler, Hitler, Hitler.

Yup.

"In decadent madness the Pax Americana seeks to subjugate Russia, yet its advance is the same rush toward ignominy of Napoleon’s Grande Armée or Hitler’s fearsome Wehrmacht. Atlanticist elites dread not only Russian power, but the liberating potential of an ancient Russian ideal articulated by legendary thinkers like Fyodor Dostoevsky: traditional faith instead of sectarian extremism or materialist fanaticism; national and ethnic solidarity instead of either toxic chauvinism or corrosive cosmopolitanism; and a just sovereignty instead of our pleasure-dome police state. Rediscovery of these principles can move entire peoples toward nobility and sanctity, affording them true freedom and a fighting chance to crush the cult of Mammon."

A pleasure dome police state. Sound familiar? Look in the mirror, Western idiots.

A Communist Member of the Russian Parliament (Duma) recently suggested breaking diplomatic relations with the Lithuanian regime over their President's incendiary remarks. The Lithuanian President basically called Russia a "terrorist state" in a radio interview. Pathological Russophobia is well know in the Baltic states; there are real efforts there to disenenfranchise ethnic Russians, obliterate memorials and records of the Soviet defeat of the Nazis, and glorify the latter and those who collaborated with them.

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“We’re facing a situation in which some of our neighbors are becoming a terrorist country,” she said.

These words immediately drew criticism from the Russian Foreign Ministry, which issued a special statement claiming that Grybauskaitė had outperformed even the most notorious nationalist radicals in Kiev.

“All that she says is not helping, but only complicates the search of solutions to the Ukrainian crisis,” spokesman Aleksandr Lukashevich said in the document published on the ministry’s official website.

“Political wisdom is determined not by an obsessive desire to provoke conflicts and insult neighbors, but by the ability to find constructive solutions based on the real situation that has established itself in Ukraine, and for which foreign politicians should share the blame.

“It would be better if the Lithuanian President stopped suffering from complexes over her Soviet past that apparently make her feel ‘holier than the Pope’,” Lukashevich added.

One of the commentators remarked ...

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It's just that more money was spent on russophobia in former Soviet states then in western Europe. The idea was that russophobia should be natural to the people of the West so it didn't take much effort to maintain. As a result they poured so much effort into russophobia in eastern Europe even Hitler would ask them to calm down. The media would also push the absurd idea that people should be ashamed of being born in USSR or happily spending life in that country.

"... they poured so much effort into Russophobia in eastern Europe (that) even Hitler would ask them to calm down."

Couldn't have said it better myself. LOL.

Peter Lavelle: Why is Russian Media so Popular? - Because Western Media has Failed

Peter Lavelle wrote:

We in alternative media (or non-western media) are often called propaganda merely because we say something different....

The tragedy being played out in Ukraine is very important for us in alternative media. This story is very clear-cut and those who have done wrong (and continue to do so) are obvious. There is plenty of conclusive evidence that Washington and Brussels backed an illegal coup against a democratically elected government in Ukraine. The West is in complete denial, and its official narrative that there was a people’s revolution is itself propaganda.

The media are even worse. The violent events that ended the constitutional order in Kiev included snipers killing over 90 people. Western media took little interest in the story when it began to appear that those pulling the triggers were associated with anti-government forces. A massacre occurred in the city of Odessa. An ample amount of video available on YouTube shows the culprits were fascistic elements aligned with the coup government. Western media has taken little interest in the story.

Then there is MH-17....

And so on. A good read from Peter Lavelle, showing the commonalities between alternative media in our own part of the world and non-Western media elsewhere.

"We in the alternative media don’t always get stories right. But why should one be called a propagandist for simply asking questions that challenge those in power? Traditionally, this has been the core mission for journalism to exist.

The West’s echo chamber has forfeited its moral right in this regard. It is time the echo chamber made some more space for the rest of us."

bekayne wrote:

"corrosive cosmopolitanism"? So you agree with Mark Hackard?

This is the contrast the author uses: "national and ethnic solidarity instead of either toxic chauvinism or corrosive cosmopolitanism". However, if you cannot understand the notion of solidarity then you are not on the political left anymore, are you?

How is it that Russian conservatives can be more left wing than denizens of a site like the discussion board of rabble. ca? Is Russophobia so bad now that those on the political left are misled into imitating the political right?

The Porcelain Cup Award for the Worst Russophobic propaganda.

1. Amanda Foreman of The Sunday Times for her fictional piece on "loathsome misogyny" in Russia;

2. Liisa Tuhkanen of Reuters for replacing numerous legitimate polls showing enormous support for President Putin with the "poll" of the two "church porn" protestors from Pussy Riot;

3. A cartoon by Tom Toles depicting a Russian economic "collapse" and a solid Ukraine (when the opposite is true);

There are plenty more in the comments section.

The Western elites - in Canada, the USA in particular - are so full of frothing hatred for Russia ... that their regimes in Ottawa and Washington voted AGAINST a recent UN Resolution which was aimed at

"Combating glorification of Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance"

As the Saker puts it, it's not so much that these regimes actually like Nazis, but rather that they want to protect the brutal Ukrainian junta.

The Saker wrote:

There is one good thing about all this: it shows clearly and unequivocally how much the western elites truly hate Russia and that this hate clearly trumps any other considerations or values.