GreyAtlas’s Reviews > Creating Russophobia: From the Great Religious Schism to Anti-Putin Hysteria > Status Update

And being wrong, for Western culture which believes so strongly
in the universality of its values and in the superiority of its political
and moral order—that is intolerable

The making of the evil leader is an indispensable
precondition for demonizing the country itself. How to demonize
Russia (Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Cuba, Syria) if her leader has not
been demonized first? A country at the heart of the “axis of evil”
should not have a friendly, competent and charismatic president

The main mission of memory
occultation is to wipe out any traces of the positive historical role
of Russia in Europe and thus clear the deck for the postmodern
mythology of a united Atlanticist Europe centered around a Warsaw,
Berlin-Brussels-Paris-London-Washington axis

The media are not interested in news giving a
positive image of Russia and contradicting the prejudices
they peddle.

Objective: calling into question Russia’s historical identity
Message: Russia is defeated/revisionist State
Activities: promotion of Russia’s imperialist
instincts; revitalization of attitudes and
symbolism Cold War; promotion of anti-
Russian campaigns by the Baltic
Examples: articles on Russian neo-imperialism;
attacks against Putin as an enemy of the
US, Medal of the Cold War
by Clinton and McCain

Insofar as Western democracies must take domestic and
global public opinion into account, they typically seek to prove
that they are not the aggressor before launching a war. Or invent
false pretexts to justify same, like the so-called mass destruction
weapons of Saddam Hussain to justify Iraq invasion in 2003.

In 2004, and then after Dmitri Medvedev’s election in
2008, anti-Putin and anti-Medvedev articles blossomed all over
the American press, comparing Putin to Mussolini, Pinochet,
Stalin, and even Hitler

“Regional empires” such as the United States find themselves,
like private-sector multinationals, in competition to enlarge their
shares of the market at the expense of the other competitors. And in
that merciless competition, Russia is an easy prey.

Russia, therefore, is now back at geopolitical
square one: a poor power trying to modernize in
the real world after the failure of its caricature
modernization in the surreal world of Soviet
socialism

In 1946, President Harry Truman set up a temporary
commission whose mandate was to investigate the loyalty of federal
officers.