Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria
Why do the USA, UK and Europe so hate Russia? How is it that Western antipathy, once thought due to anti-Communism, could be so easily revived over a crisis in distant Ukraine, against a Russia no longer communist? Why does the West accuse Russia of empire-building, when 15 states once part of the defunct Warsaw Pact are now part of NATO, and NATO troops now flank the Russian border?
These are only some of the questions Creating Russophobia iinvestigates. Mettan begins by showing the strength of the prejudice against Russia through the Western response to a series of events: the Uberlingen mid-air collision, the Beslan hostage-taking, the Ossetia War, the Sochi Olympics and the crisis in Ukraine. He then delves into the historical, religious, ideological and geopolitical roots of the detestation of Russia in various European nations over thirteen centuries since Charlemagne competed with Byzantium for the title of heir to the Roman Empire. Mettan examines the geopolitical machinations expressed in those times through the medium of religion, leading to the great Christian schism between Germanic Rome and Byzantium and the European Crusades against Russian Orthodoxy. This history of taboos, prejudices and propaganda directed against the Orthodox Church provides the mythic foundations that shaped Western disdain for contemporary Russia. From the religious and imperial rivalry created by Charlemagne and the papacy to the genesis of French, English, German and then American Russophobia, the West has been engaged in more or less violent hostilities against Russia for a thousand years. Contemporary Russophobia is manufactured through the construction of an anti-Russian discourse in the media and the diplomatic world, and the fabrication and demonization of The Bad Guy, now personified by Vladimir Putin. Both feature in the meta-narrative, the mythical framework of the ferocious Russian bear ruled with a rod of iron by a vicious president. A synthetic reading of all these elements is presented in the light of recent events and in particular of the Ukrainian crisis and the recent American elections, showing how all the resources of the West's soft power have been mobilized to impose the tale of bad Russia dreaming of global conquest.
1125809152
Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria
Why do the USA, UK and Europe so hate Russia? How is it that Western antipathy, once thought due to anti-Communism, could be so easily revived over a crisis in distant Ukraine, against a Russia no longer communist? Why does the West accuse Russia of empire-building, when 15 states once part of the defunct Warsaw Pact are now part of NATO, and NATO troops now flank the Russian border?
These are only some of the questions Creating Russophobia iinvestigates. Mettan begins by showing the strength of the prejudice against Russia through the Western response to a series of events: the Uberlingen mid-air collision, the Beslan hostage-taking, the Ossetia War, the Sochi Olympics and the crisis in Ukraine. He then delves into the historical, religious, ideological and geopolitical roots of the detestation of Russia in various European nations over thirteen centuries since Charlemagne competed with Byzantium for the title of heir to the Roman Empire. Mettan examines the geopolitical machinations expressed in those times through the medium of religion, leading to the great Christian schism between Germanic Rome and Byzantium and the European Crusades against Russian Orthodoxy. This history of taboos, prejudices and propaganda directed against the Orthodox Church provides the mythic foundations that shaped Western disdain for contemporary Russia. From the religious and imperial rivalry created by Charlemagne and the papacy to the genesis of French, English, German and then American Russophobia, the West has been engaged in more or less violent hostilities against Russia for a thousand years. Contemporary Russophobia is manufactured through the construction of an anti-Russian discourse in the media and the diplomatic world, and the fabrication and demonization of The Bad Guy, now personified by Vladimir Putin. Both feature in the meta-narrative, the mythical framework of the ferocious Russian bear ruled with a rod of iron by a vicious president. A synthetic reading of all these elements is presented in the light of recent events and in particular of the Ukrainian crisis and the recent American elections, showing how all the resources of the West's soft power have been mobilized to impose the tale of bad Russia dreaming of global conquest.
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Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria

Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria

by Guy Mettan
Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria

Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria

by Guy Mettan

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Overview

Why do the USA, UK and Europe so hate Russia? How is it that Western antipathy, once thought due to anti-Communism, could be so easily revived over a crisis in distant Ukraine, against a Russia no longer communist? Why does the West accuse Russia of empire-building, when 15 states once part of the defunct Warsaw Pact are now part of NATO, and NATO troops now flank the Russian border?
These are only some of the questions Creating Russophobia iinvestigates. Mettan begins by showing the strength of the prejudice against Russia through the Western response to a series of events: the Uberlingen mid-air collision, the Beslan hostage-taking, the Ossetia War, the Sochi Olympics and the crisis in Ukraine. He then delves into the historical, religious, ideological and geopolitical roots of the detestation of Russia in various European nations over thirteen centuries since Charlemagne competed with Byzantium for the title of heir to the Roman Empire. Mettan examines the geopolitical machinations expressed in those times through the medium of religion, leading to the great Christian schism between Germanic Rome and Byzantium and the European Crusades against Russian Orthodoxy. This history of taboos, prejudices and propaganda directed against the Orthodox Church provides the mythic foundations that shaped Western disdain for contemporary Russia. From the religious and imperial rivalry created by Charlemagne and the papacy to the genesis of French, English, German and then American Russophobia, the West has been engaged in more or less violent hostilities against Russia for a thousand years. Contemporary Russophobia is manufactured through the construction of an anti-Russian discourse in the media and the diplomatic world, and the fabrication and demonization of The Bad Guy, now personified by Vladimir Putin. Both feature in the meta-narrative, the mythical framework of the ferocious Russian bear ruled with a rod of iron by a vicious president. A synthetic reading of all these elements is presented in the light of recent events and in particular of the Ukrainian crisis and the recent American elections, showing how all the resources of the West's soft power have been mobilized to impose the tale of bad Russia dreaming of global conquest.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780997896527
Publisher: Clarity Press, Incorporated
Publication date: 06/15/2017
Pages: 440
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Guy Mettan is a journalist and Swiss politician. Former director and editor-in-chief of the main Geneva newspaper Tribune de Geneve, he is presently the executive director of the Geneva Press Club and columnist for various Swiss newspapers. Member the Geneva Parliament since 2001, he was the speaker of the Parliament in 2010. Author of several books on Switzerland and international Geneva, he wrote a successful book on western russophobia published by Editions des Syrtes in 2015. There are now French, Italian, Russian, Serbian and Swedish editions of this title, in addition to this one.

Read an Excerpt

from the Foreword:

From the very first weeks of my journalistic internship at Journal de Geneve, a once prestigious but now defunct liberal newspaper, I learnt the meaning of the double standards western media and western statesmen apply when they pass judgment on countries or political regimes they do not like. I had hardly settled down at my desk when a meeting of the World Anticommunist League was held in Geneva sometime during the spring of 1980. Balmy weather was forecast that weekend and none of the resident pen pushers were eager to go and cover the meeting. So I was sent. Gathered together there was the darnedest posse of dictators and butchers of the planet: Augusto Pinochet emissaries, Argentinian generals, and Korean, Taiwanese, and other representatives of then proliferating Asian dictatorships. The brows of these dignitaries, ill at ease in their civilian garb, eyes hidden behind dark glasses as in B movies, seemed to me to be still bearing the imprints of their just discarded kepis. I went back to the paper, faithfully summed up what I had seen and what had been said, without any supervision, of course, as it was Sunday.
What a commotion on Monday morning! I was summoned to the office of the editor in chief to face anofficial warning. I had made the mistake of not knowing that one of the newspaper's main shareholders was the Swiss representative of the League and that discrimination was of the essence. Not all dictatorships were alike. Some were good, those of pro-western generals, and some bad, those in Russia and Eastern Europe. You did not say "these are dictators who imprison their opponents and torture their political prisoners" but "these are defenders of the Free World which they protect against the communist infection." Lesson number one, which I was never to forget.
A few years later, on November 19, 1985, the first Reagan-Gorbachev summit took place in Geneva. It was the first time since the Vietnam War, the intrusion of the Red Army into Afghanistan, the Euro missile crisis, and the launch of Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative in March 1983, that the leaders of East and West were meeting. It was also the first time the Kremlin came up with a youngish leader flanked by an attractive spouse who rapidly made the covers of the tabloids and quickly fell for that illusory glory. It was on my 29th birthday and I still remember vividly the huge hope but also the feeling of inconsistency that meeting had fostered in me...

Table of Contents

Foreword: Russophobia or Russo-madness? 11

Learning from Sarajevo 13

Ditching Solzhenitsyn, Defender of Russia 15

The Yeltsin Pillage 16

Breaching the Wall of Historical Prejudice 17

Part I The Power of Prejudice

Chapter 1 Understanding Russia 23

Neither Same nor Other 26

Forgive and Forget for France and Germany; Not for Russia 29

Putin-Versteher? Verboten! 30

Navigating the Russophiles 31

"I love Russia but not Putin" 32

Russophobia is a State of Mind 33

Congress Kicks In Against Russia 35

Self-hating Russians? 36

Chapter 2 The Pavlovian Russophobic Reflex 39

The Überlingen Crash (2002) 41

The Beslan Hostage-Taking (2004) 44

115 Atlanticists Against Putin 50

What Really Happened in Beslan 53

The Second Ossetia War (2008) 58

The Sochi Olympic Games (2014) 64

Chapter 3 Media Blinders on Ukraine 72

The Anti-Russian Vulgate 74

No Questions for Victoria Nuland 76

Crimeans Reaffirm Their 1991 Referendum 80

Malaysian Flight MH17 81

Alternative Views on NATO Expansion 82

One-Track Media Thinking 86

Unanswered Questions 88

The Unbearable Notion of a Worthy Critical Other 97

Part II A Short History of Russophobia

Chapter 4 A War of Religion since Charlemagne 100

Byzantium, City of Light, Beats Rome in Ruins 104

Religion as Eighth-Century Soft Power 106

Constantinople, Not Rome, Was Ascendant 107

The Filioque Quarrel Created by Charlemagne 109

The Theory of the Two Swords, Papal and Imperial 111

The Fraudulent Donation of Constantine and the Fight for Papal Supremacy 113

Westerners Reappraise the Trinity 115

Democratic Easterners versus Absolutist Westerners 116

Two Diverted Crusades: 1204 and 2003 118

A Schism Made in the West 120

The Invention of Caesaropopery and Byzantinism 121

The European Crusades against Russian Orthodoxy 122

The Czar and the Roman Germanic Emperor 124

The Gothic Churches Divide Europe in Two 127

A Thousand-Year Conflict Still Virulent 131

Historical Ingratitude towards Byzantium and Russia 132

Lies Pervade Western Historiography 135

Chapter 5 French Russophobia and the Myth of Eastern Despotism 137

Peter the Great's Forged Testament and the Myth of Expansionism 139

The First Travelers Launch the Notion of Russian Barbarity 142

Can There Be a Tyranny with Consenting Subjects? 145

Reconceptualizing Despotism 148

From the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns to the Notion of Progress 149

Leibniz and Voltaire as Adepts of Russian Enlightened Despotism 151

Montesquieu and the Absence of Russian Counter-Powers 153

French Clichés versus Japanese Objectivity 155

The First Liberal Theories and Oriental Despotism 157

Tocqueviile and the Bible of Russophobia according to Custine 159

The Rise of Socialism and the Russian Commune 162

Individual Freedom versus the Russian Commune 165

Final Synthesis: Amendable Russia and Redeemable Backwardness 166

The Theory of the Cultural Gradient 171

Chapter 6 English Russophobia: The Obsession with Empire 176

Suddenly after 1815, Russia Becomes a Threat 178

The Evolution of English Russophobia 181

Greek Independence and the Polish Revolt 184

The British Press Enflames Public Opinion 186

Arming the Circassians 188

The Great Game and the Struggle for Asia 189

The Orient Issue as Catalyst for the Crimean War 192

The Fragility of the British Empire 193

Dracula, an Imperialist and Russophobic Novel 196

"An Elephant Does Not Fight with a Whale" 199

Chapter 7 German Russophobia: From Lebensraum to Historical Amnesia 205

The Romantic Vision of Germanity 207

Hegel and the Prussian State 209

Germanity Takes Root in Geography and History 211

Cosmopolitan Russia: The Model to Avoid 213

Russophobia Indoctrination through Schoolbooks 214

Friedrich Meinecke and the "Slavs' Bestiality" 216

Implementation of Ostforschung 219

Lebensraum and Racism 221

1966: No Change in German Schoolbooks 222

Nazism = Communism 224

Pinning Communist Crimes Only on Russia 227

Who Defeated the Nazis? 228

Deluging the Memory Market 231

The Artful Deceptions of History- and Historiography 233

The German-Soviet Pact against Munich 235

2014: Lebensraum in the East 237

Chapter 8 American Russophobia: The Dictatorship of Freedom 241

The United States as a Maritime Power 244

Dominating the Heartland (Russia) to Dominate the World 245

Soviet Russia's Containment by Military Bases 248

Ideological Containment 249

The 1975 Helsinki Agreements 251

Freedom versus Totalitarianism and the Left 253

Goodbye Anti-Communism: Welcome Back, Russophobia 254

Brzezinski: Recycling Russian Expansionism and Dismembering Russia 256

Nye: Soft Power and the "Smart" Anti-Russian Axis 260

Cinema, Think Tanks and NGOs in the Service of Power 262

The Anti-Russian Lobby 265

Here We Go Again: Despotism and Expansionism 268

Defending Oligarchs to Defame Russia 273

Part III Cognitive Manipulation

Chapter 9 Semantics and Anti-Russian Newspeak 277

Word Choice and Semantic Distortion 280

Selection of Sources 284

Framing and Factual Distortion 289

The "Us" and "Them" Dichotomy 296

Strategies for a Counter-Discourse 304

The New Avatar of Soft Power: the Theory of the Shepherd 306

Chapter 10 The Myth of the Fierce Bear 310

Plugging Loopholes in the Narrative 312

Demonizing Putin 313

American Historiography Entrenches Russophobic Memes 322

The Weight of Geography 329

Opposing Russia to Accelerate European Integration 332

Conclusion: Co-existence, Multipolarity, and Peace 334

Bibliography 343

Endnotes 348

Index 382

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