Would you like some Freedom Fries with that?

Western rush to ban everything Russian, from cats to Dostoevsky, smacks of totalitarianism

Russophobic campaign straddles the entire western political spectrum, with the full endorsement of cultural elites

Western Russophobic hysteria is now in full force. German political culture, heir of the most totalitarian system the world has ever known, has led to the recent firing of a Russian orchestra conductor who refused to condemn Moscow’s military actions in Ukraine, and Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko.

As a German Jewish activist friend recently told me, this incident is not totally unrelated to the firing of German Jewish musicians in 1933 as well as German Christian musicians for refusing to support National Socialism, and that was before the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.

And a few weeks ago, Germany’s state-owned Deutsche Welle was busy purging Arab staff who expressed views critical of Israel - views that are identified in rabidly pro-Israel Germany as “antisemitic”.

In Italy, whose political culture is also an heir of fascism, a university course on Dostoevsky was suspended in the name of the new Russophobia - though as a result of pressure, it was later reinstated. In the US, video game giant EA Sports removed Russian teams from its FIFA video game series.

The Russophobic campaign straddles the entire western political spectrum, and it is fully endorsed by western liberals and cultural elites. The political credulity of the majority of the populations of the US and Western Europe has always been shocking to me. Ever since I arrived in the US to attend university in 1982, I could not believe how gullible my American peers of all races were in their unshakable belief that whatever their government or corporate media said, especially about other countries, was the absolute truth.

Having grown up in Jordan under an autocratic regime, I learned, like many Jordanians, to believe very little that the government or media said. I remain partial to the idea that autocratic regimes foster democratic scepticism in their populations, while western liberal “democratic” regimes foster utter conformity and subservience to the “Ministry of Truth”, as George Orwell dubbed it.

Add to that the mob mentality and mainstream rejection of contrary opinions to prevalent beliefs in most western countries, and the situation is not that different from the fascistic culture of many European countries in the interwar period.

Incessant racist attacks

This long and thoughtful article by Joseph Massad should be read at source (useful links inluded).