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

Mettan, Guy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0997896523 ISBN 13: 9780997896527

Publisher: Clarity Press, Inc., 2017

Synopsis

Why do the USA, UK and Europe so hate Russia? How it is 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. “By hating Russia, one hurts oneself. Swiss journalist Guy Mettan pieces together the reasons of detestation of the Kremlin and of a rhetoric that goes back to Napoleonic times despite the long list of aggressions perpetrated in the meantime by the West. And he explains why pushing Moscow toward Asia is a very serious error.” —Panorama, Italy “Like Saddam Hussein’s mythical weapons of massive destruction in 2003, Peter the Great’s fake will has been used to justify the aggressions and invasions that the Europeans, and now the Americans, still carry out against Russia.” —Libération, France

About this title

About the Author

GUY METTAN is a journalist and Swiss politician. Former director and editor-in-chief of the main Geneva newspaper Tribune de Genève, 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 in English.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

from the Foreword:From the very first weeks of my journalistic internship at Journal de Genève, 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...

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarity Press, Inc.
• Publication date: 2017
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0997896523
• ISBN 13: 9780997896527
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 390