It appears that the Anglosphere establishment has abdicated reason and common decency in favor of raw hate and fear-mongering. We have not seen anything like it before, even in the darkest days of the Cold War.
The roots of Russophobia’s emotional appeal to the left seem clear: It comes as a huge mental relief to the ultrasensitive liberal mind to be able to hate an outside group with impunity, and even to appear virtuous in the process. Of course, the object of that animus is a Christian and European nation that stubbornly refuses to be postmodernized, or become gripped by self-hate and morbid introspection; a nation not ashamed of its past and unwilling to surrender its future to alien multitudes; a nation where nobody obsesses over transgender bathrooms, microaggressions, and other “issues” indicative of a society’s moral and intellectual decrepitude.
The liberals’ ideological and emotional Russophobia has blended seamlessly with the bread-and-butter geopolitical hostility to Russia shared by the intelligence and national-security apparatus, all over the military-industrial complex, and in the congressional duopoly. The result is a surreal narrative, embodied in "the Skrypal case," which mixes supposedly unprovoked “Russian aggression” in Ukraine, hostile intent in the Baltics, serial war crimes in Syria, political destabilization in Western Europe, and gross interference in America’s “democratic process.” The result is an altogether fictitious “existential threat,” which has made Trump’s intended détente with Moscow impossible. He may have been serious about turning over a new leaf, but the Swamp counterpressure proved just too great. A solid rejection front emerged, left and right, conservative and liberal, which extends even into Trump's own team and finally inhibited him from making moves that could have appeared too friendly to Putin.
The Russophobes’ narrative is unrelated to Russia’s actual policies. It reflects a deep odium of the elite class toward Russia-as-such. This narrative has two key pillars. In terms of geopolitics, we see the striving of maritime empires—Britain before World War II, and the United States after—to “contain” and if possible control the Eurasian heartland, the core of which is of course Russia. Equally important is the already noted cultural antipathy, the desire not merely to influence Russian policies and behavior but to effect an irreversible transformation of Russia’s identity.
Comments