A phobia is defined as “an anxiety disorder characterized by an extreme and irrational fear of simple things and social situations” (worldwebnet.princeton.edu), an “intense and persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, animals or people. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive and unreasonable desire to avoid the feared stimulus…” (en.wikipedia.org). There are many other sources, but all agree a phobia is a mental disorder that, taken to an extreme, manifests itself in irrational behaviour. Russophobia, then, is an extreme and irrational fear of Russia and all things Russian. What you will find at La Russophobe is a psychiatrist’s wet dream. An excellent example of this poor disturbed creature’s mental illness is her depiction of the “glorious Russian flag”. A helpful illustration on the homepage of this blog depicts the Russian flag is it appears to well-adjusted, non-crazy adults.
Note: This blog was originally driven mostly by reaction to the deliberate mischaracterizations and falsehoods published at La Russophobe. That blog still exists in archive form, although it is no longer updated, and its author has moved operations to a new blog, “Dying Russia”. This blog rarely deals with the nonsense published there any more, having shifted to a more international focus.
Russophobia as exhibited at La Russophobe is therefore not a true phobia at all, but the name was likely chosen because “La Russoloather ” had too many syllables for a rhythmic cadence. Russophobia as exhibited at La Russophobe is nothing more than mean and small-minded hatred of a large demographic – and everything associated with it – based on the actions or perceived actions of a few. It’s surprising how often something is passed off as a “phobia” when it’s actually a hatred or strong dislike. Those who are exhorted by the site to hop aboard the good ship “Russophobia” should therefore understand what they’re being asked to sign on for.
The Kremlin Stooge 
Dear Mark,
As Anatoly Karlin wrote your blog is indeed the new La Russophobe Exposed, and is in fact a far better site.
Suspected members or contributors to the La Russophobe ‘we’:
1) Catherine Fitzpatrick – Minding Russia
Pros: Same New York location, same screeching moralistic style, and formerly worked for Ford and Soros funded foundations (historically, all too frequent cutouts for U.S. government activities in USSR and CIS) while writing for RFE/RL. Claims Paul Goble as a friend, which would explain why LR republishes him almost more than any other single writer. Writers ranging from U of H (colleague of Craig Pirrong aka Streetwise Professor? Why so many Russophobes in Houston?) Professor Paul R. Gregory to Georgetown Law Professor Ethan S. Burger all pretend to have no knowledge of who LR is while giving her lots of content. At the very least these fellows must have an inkling of LR’s real identity. The LR = Fitzpatrick theory would also go a long way towards explaining why Oleg Kozlovsky published on LR despite the site’s documented anti-Russian racism. The same foundations that fund Catherine also fund Mr. Kozlovsky’s trips to New York and D.C.
Cons: Why risk public reputation to maintain her Google-bombing alter ego? Moonlighting for more money to live in Manhattan? And how to square LR’s often laughably ignorant statements about American politics (i.e. Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, libertarians and paleocons respectively who are often guests on mainstream networks = former KKK leader David Duke) and GMT posting schedule which suggest more a Berezovsky-linked Brit than an American?
2) Jamestown Foundation
Pros: aka Prometheanism R Us! Exposed in the eXile as a place for any self-proclaimed journalist with a grudge against the Russian Empire to set up shop. Began in the 1980s as an old folks home for U.S. agencies to park their KGB/GRU defectors who needed some income and an outlet for their ramblings. Was directly criticized by the Russian government for promoting Chechen separatism. Linked to American Council for Peace in Chechnya. Probably not going to be happy if Russians start speaking to pro-Texan or Alaskan separatist groups in retaliation.
Cons: Difficult to see what the cons might be for Jamestown in throwing a few bucks LR’s way.
3) Orion Strategies Group/Randy Scheunemann pro-Georgia lobby
Pros: LR has cooperated with this set in the past, promoting the website RevokeTheGames.com, which was registered by a company linked to West Coast conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt who frequently hosts neocon talking heads like Max Boot and Center for Security Policy chief Frank Gaffney on his show (Garry Kasparov also appeared on the CSP’s page).
Cons: The Georgia lobby has plenty of other websites such as georgiadaily.com to promote their message, and may have moved on.
Where did Anatoly Karlin say that? I couldn’t find it, although it’s certainly flattering, as he’s an extremely bright and influential author. This is a fascinating post, because I wasn’t aware of any political dimension at all – I thought it was just some nut who was using a blog to work out her pathological hatreds. I’ll definitely look into it with interest. Now I feel dumb, but educate me – what are RFE/RL? I’ve seen those abbreviations before in a context that makes me feel they should be immediately familiar, but as acronyms, they aren’t.
Some very interesting stuff here – thanks very much for sending it!
RFE/RL stands for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Thanks; I guess I probably should have known that. Radio Free Europe, anyway, since I’ve used them for citations in the past. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Radio Liberty. Are these conservative-supported websites?
I have something of a grudge against RFE/RL because they libeled the Serbs in the run-up to the Kosovo War, and during the aftermath.
“I thought it was just some nut who was using a blog to work out her pathological hatreds.” There is a political element, but there’s also something mentally unbalanced there too, particularly given the gratitutious insults left on various blogs, beyond whatever would be necessary to generate clicks on LR’s page. Regardless, someone has been paying for this rubbish for the last four years.
I think you’re right, in the sense that here is a person who thrives on hate and being hated. You’re also probably right that she does this for a living, as she seemed available to comment any time of day. Anyway, it sure is fun mocking her in a format that won’t let her simply delete what’s said, or reply with a fusillade of all-caps foaming self-righteous garbage.
I am convinced that the same people who have bankrolled the destruction of the Serbian nation and people ever since the early 1990s are continuing to support various mouthpieces in the blogosphere and elsewhere.
How did the Serb-hating and Russia-hating “neocons” get to be so prominent? Not because they said or did anything with any intrinsic merit, but because they supported the interests of the transnational progressives and of Islamic expansionism, while masquerading as conservatives.
I’m afraid I never understood that conflict very well. My neighbour at a previous address was Croatian, and he didn’t seem to care much for the Serbs. I asked him about it once, because my impression was that Serbs and Croats look the same, speak the same language, etc…, so why the inability to get along? Apparently the language – at least as written – is completely different, with much more cyrillic in the Serbian. His strong dislike seemed based on personal experience, and that’s fair enough. But so many of these hatreds seem based on incidents that took place years and years ago. It seems unreasonable to me, but it might not if I’d been born into that environment.
In some ways we never progress much beyond the playground, at least in terms of our impression of what techniques are effective to get us what we want. There were always those who never fought themselves, but were adept at stirring up conflict between others – now allying themselves with one, now with the other, and urging them “I wouldn’t stand for that; what are you going to do?” until there was a fight. Those people will always be with us, always manipulating others for their own gain.
I think piece by piece either “Fitzpatrick” or “Jamestown” is going to start appearing next to “La Russophobe” in the Google searches. Then let Mrs. Fitzpatrick deny that she has anything to do with LR, or let it build up as a mirror image of Phobie’s own Google bombing. Certainly the upstanding citizens at Jamestown don’t want to be viewed as connected with this sort of thing even if they are.
Perhaps you have a point there- that she’s only useful to the organizations who back her as long as she remains anonymous. I don’t know that anyone’s ever asked her if she is La Russophobe, or that she’d deny it if they did. Maybe when she says it’s a “team blog”, she means she and all her other personalities. Anyway, she strikes me as the kind of person who’d do it for free even if all support were withdrawn. She’s really full of hate and contempt. Nobody could keep on jacking it up like that, day after day, if it was just something they did to make a few extra bucks.
Check out the Alexa page for LR and see how much of ‘her’ traffic comes from people looking for porn. But then again, ‘she’ would just insist this proves how degenerate Russia/Russians are.
1 free teen sex video 4.45%
2 free sex picture 1.07%
3 marina litvinovich 0.92%
4 buy one get one free 0.38%
5 russian prostitute 0.33%
6 “axis globe” think tank 0.31%
7 w/ caucasus emirate not on fto list 0.30%
8 om russia you dont refuse vodka 0.30%
9 lvov hookers 0.30%
10 expose wordpress ratings dont work 0.30%
Search Query 1 Month Decline The change in percentage of search traffic to larussophobe.wordpress.com for each query.
1 russian spy nude 0.80%
2 novaya kavkasia 0.46%
3 la russophobe 0.45%
4 freaky show bayer 0.39%
5 menocide str 0.32%
6 prostitutes costs in russia 0.30%
7 bare russia 0.27%
8 russia today propaganda 0.26%
9 peter lavelle 0.26%
10 andits bandits 0.21%
is Russophobia as bad as Islamophobia?
I think so, although obviously one is a country and its culture and the other is a religion. There’s nothing wrong with critiquing a country’s faults provided you do it in a constructive way, and don’t just flail on them for problems your own country experiences in at least equal measure. You must be even more careful criticizing a religion, because much of it is taken on faith and difficult to prove or disprove, although potentially millions believe it without question.
why do you link to la russophobe? That blog strikes me as crossing the line from legitamate political criticism to straight up racism and prejudice agianst ethnic Russians.
I completely agree. However, when I started this blog I didn’t have any ambitions beyond countering that “racism and prejudice against ethnic Russians” with supported arguments. In order to convince readers that I had done a good job at that, it would be necessary for them to read the subject material first.
What a disgusting piece of Google witch-hunting and outrageous tripe.
I have nothing to do with La Russophobe. I didn’t even hear of it for some time. I have no idea who runs it.
As for all this speculative nonsense about my various jobs and affiliations, I am a freelancer and contractor. I’m not “funded by foundations,” I have worked for them as a consultant or writer. I worked for Ford back in the 1990s, they’ve long since closed their office in Moscow. I also worked for Soros in Moscow and New York and now I write for eurasianet.org I’m an open book. I’m not “on mission”. Are you?
My business in Second Life doesn’t “fund my life in Manhattan” as it hardly makes any significant income at all and merely pays my Internet bills. I live a frugal life even being in New York. Do you, where you live? You may make twice what I do at your jobs.
I don’t know Oleg Kozlovsky.
It’s awfully odd that you people can’t stand any criticism of the Kremlin and have to go out of your way to make outrageous smears on people to stop such criticism. Very creepy.
It doesn’t matter to me who you are, or who LaRussophobe is. I don’t mean that in a contemptuous manner – I just mean you are entitled to feel any way you like about Russia and Russians. But anything you theorize (or I do) that is unsupported by references is just opinion, and there’s a fine line between opinion and prejudice.
I’m not personally opposed to “criticism of the Kremlin”, provided it’s constructive and not just knee-jerk hatred – I know it’s not perfect, and maybe not even very good as governments go. But I don’t have to live under that system, and I see no point in anyone who is in that position criticizing someone else’s government gratuitously. Western governments are often not a very good example themselves, but you don’t see Russian blogs afire to point out their every little fault. And most blogs that are Russophobic in nature don’t even pretend their motivation is concern for the suffering of Russians, that they just want to see Russians have a better life. It’s just simple hate of Russia and everything in it, and jubilation at its occasional discomfiture.
I don’t subscribe to any “outrageous smears” against you (unless you really are LaRussophobe, who is a foaming idiot), and I have not noticed that anything said in this blog has had any effect at all on “stopping criticism”.
Much of what passes for scholarship on Russia — especially on your side of the aisle — is in fact prejudice based on the clinging to a certain model of state power.
Any requirement that criticism be “constructive” is already an oppression of intellectual freedom. One man’s “constructivism” is another man’s “sychophancy”. Usually when I hear someone calling on a critic to be “constructive,’ he’s merely engaged in a power play to try to control the discourse through the civility game. It’s disgusting. For neuralgic defenders of Russian state power, no amount of “constructive” is ever enough, as they will always be asked to abandon reason and support the Kremlin “not with the mind”.
I’m not required to be constructive to be valid, and there are certain things about Russia that it’s more than fine to be “hateful” about, like the thuggishness pervading society to its highest levels.
I also don’t require a bow to all four corners of the compass, nor genuflection in the temple of political correctness, nor myopic obsession about the problems of my own country, to be able to say something critical about Russia.
Maybe the reason you don’t see Russian blogs afire to point out the problems of Western governments is because they appreciate the basic rights their systems enable. It’s ok to say that without being accused of being in Sarah Palin’s pocket.
I don’t feel any glee at Russians’ misfortune. And BTW, there was a Moscow correspondent who wrote a book about his experience in the Soviet era, and described an incident where he went to try to cover a fire, an ordinary reporter’s job. And a Soviet man stopped him and said he didn’t want foreigners “to laugh at our misfortune.” This paranoia and insecurity runs very, very deep in some Russians and it has spread through a contact high to certain Kremlin apologists.
Indeed you did smear me. Not by speculating — falsely — that I’m associated with La Russophobe, but snottily implying that I’m some well-funded Manhattanite dependent on foundations, some sordid Google-bomber (I’m actually the target of Google-bombers who keep hate pages about me high on my names in search), and worst of all, that I’m somehow some crypto-government agent. Ugh. What a moronic hysteria, to write that independent foundations are “historically, all too frequent cutouts for U.S. government activities in USSR and CIS” and imply that anybody who works for them or is funded by them is involved in some evil conspiray as stalking horses for American intelligence.
I’ve never found anything of the sort in any of these foundations and I think you should be challenged to find actual documented examples rather than spouting conspiracy theory and reading Wikipedia. The story of the Ford Foundation and the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was CIA-funded, is one in which the Ford Foundation later picks up the tab of an organization previously funded by intelligence — and that’s a good thing. There are numerous books written on this subject. Ford is hardly a “cutout” for the U.S. government.
We obviously have a far different understanding of constructive criticism. You say any restriction placed on criticism is a restriction on its freedom. In that context, gratuitous mockery by sites such as LaRussophobe are not in any way over the top, and headlines that imply a discovered incident of cannibalism is attributable to all Russians and acceptable by all Russians is perfectly fair. Is that the way you roll?
I say criticism that is not objective is not criticism at all, but prejudice. Russia is constantly criticized by the western press for being overly dependent on oil in its economy. Contrast that with the glowing praise for your Saudi allies, who really do have nothing but oil. Nobody minds statements like, “Russia relies too heavily on oil for economic growth – Russia has great potential in steel production and aggregates for concrete, which are in high demand for construction, and should dedicate more effort and financing to those ends”. It is criticism that offers an alternate path which might well be beneficial if followed. Criticism free from restraint is, “You’re a stupid idiot”. No reason for the judgment, no implication that the person criticized will ever be anything other than a stupid idiot and no suggestions for improvement offered.
You certainly don’t have to acknowledge the problems of your own country if it fetters you in any way from criticizing the way Russia is run. It just looks a little baseless and comical when you rag on and on about how Russia is running a 4% deficit (as the current article discusses, in a claim by an AEI author) when your own national deficit is between 50% and 85% of GDP. That’s entirely America’s own affair, but you make it fair game as soon as you imply somebody who has a much lesser problem of the same nature is reckless and irresponsible.
Indeed I did not say any of the things you have just accused me of saying, and I don’t even know what Google-bombing is. Those allegations were made by another commenter, and my criticisms are of LaRussophobe. If you’re not her, I’m not talking about you.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, which went on the air in July 1950, is an excellent example of an organization that was funded directly from the CIA budget and was (and to an extent, still is) a propaganda instrument.
“Much was at stake in the struggle between liberalism and communism; many believed the future of the world itself. Strategic planners determined that the United States must strike at the heart of Soviet power if the West was to emerge from the Cold War victoriously. As the most significant instruments capable of penetrating the Iron Curtain, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were crucially important actors in this conflict and, ultimately, would play an invaluable role in Soviet communism’s ultimate demise.”
Nobody’s arguing it would have been a better world if the Soviet Union had emerged victorious and Communism spread across the world – even Russia now acknowledges Communism was a failed experiement. But the Soviet Union collapsed years ago. What’s the continued requirement for RFE/RL now? They’re no longer funded by the CIA, since sometime in the 70’s if I recall correctly, but they’re still agitating against Russia non-stop. Why? Is Russia a threat to the United States or western values? Western analysts keep saying it’s not.
This article points out that RFE continues to operate under the guidance of the CIA although it is no longer directly funded by the organization, and RFE’s role in urging the Hungarians to rise up against the Soviets, only to be crushed when western support did not materialize.
You will not find me a great quoter of Wikipedia, although that’s a frequent accusation by people who often provide no citations at all for their own allegations.
I realize your entire raison d’etre is to polemicize with La Russophobe, but I don’t feel that same obsessive fascination with it that you do and forget to read it for months at a time.
Even so, I don’t find La Russophobe “gratuitous mockery” — I find what *you* do gratuitous mockery. La Russophobe is a perfectly legitimate satirical site that deliberately adopts at times an outrageous tone precisely as an antidote to all the outrageous sycophancy and fellow-travelling all over this field. It’s a perfectly fine methodology in a field cluttered with pro-Russian opportunists and thug enablers. I don’t have to “roll” in any certain way to accept this perfectly legitimate format among Russian blogs. As your sidebar indicates, the field now is very cluttered with post 9/11 aggressive male 30-something Kremlin supporters, so if there is a female (and team) who keeps up the battle for the truth in a tide of Russian-sponsored lies, that’s more than fine.
Criticism doesn’t have to be “objective” to be legitimate and valid. That sounds like a Marxist theory if there ever one, and amounting to Lysenkoism — what is scientific objectivity?! Are you claiming to possess it?!
Russia is in fact too dependent on oil and Putin has gained from oil sales and that’s all legitimate to say — without also having to balance the saddlebags and denounce those who give the Saudis a pass. The U.S. adopts pragmatic positions in its interests. These don’t always reflect the universal values of human rights. But isn’t this what your big friend A Good Treaty counsels?! It’s not my position, and I’m not guilty of giving the Saudis a pass myself.
People who adopt a cravenly pro-Kremlin position *are* stupid if they are ignoring all the obvious problems of Russia. And it’s ok to say so.
I’ve spent many years in this field, and I’ve seen organizations go through contortions to be balanced and to engage in equal-opportunity bashing of East and West, home and abroad (I worked for Human Rights Watch for 10 years) — and seen how meaningless it really is when you don’t go to where the real violations are and pretend everything is morally equivalent. And I’ve seen the Russian government itself change and send former dissidents to head delegations at the UN, and later career diplomats who were still liberals — and change again to revert to what can only be described as bullies.
I don’t see any moral equivalency that you see between America and Russia, and running a huge deficit with a country three times the population now isn’t something I feel somehow bars us from criticizing Russia’s supposed 4 percent deficit — but then, I”m not one of those “ragging on and on” about this because I don’t tend to write about economic issues. I think it’s ok to ask whether in fact any country is reckless regardless of the percentage.
We all know that RFE/RL was funded directly by the CIA, until Clifford Case blew the whistle on this in hearings in Congress in the 1970s. And you can also use your same Google skills to find out that it was restructured and turned into an independent broadcasting body funded by Congress which made it more transparent and accountable. So by the time I come to work there as a contractor in the year 2002, I’m hardly guilty of “working for a CIA front” nor is anyone else there. I never encountered any “CIA agents” while there nor had anyone tap me on the shoulder and tell me what to write. I don’t think you can make the contention it is a propaganda instrument, as the web site and broadcasts carry critics of US policy as well as supporters. If you can find an article on the English-language website (to make it easy for you) or anywhere else that you can cite as “propagandistic,” please do. I read the web site every day and still contribute occasionally, and I don’t see it. If anything, I’ve had a sharp critique recently of the RFE/RL pieces on Internet policy that are overly-represent vehement critics of the Administration like Evgeny Morozov and Jillian York.
If RFE/RL could be said to play a role in communism’s ultimate demise — and it surely wasn’t the only factor — I can only be happy. Communism was reprehensible and responsible for the imprisonment and mass murder and misery of millions. I’m happy to have played a small role in the past to oppose it, and I don’t find a problem with the West emerging victorious from the Cold War. “Cold” is what the West needed to be in dealing with a mass murderer of epic proportions such as the world has never seen; “Cold” was better than hot; losing was not an option if you value freedom.
Do you have a problem with Soviet communism’s ultimate demise? You claim not to. But your horrid snideness about it begs the question.
And…guess what. The Soviet Union didn’t really collapse. Many frozen conflicts still remain, Russian interference in the former republics remains as a major issue, many aspects of Soviet culture and politics remain. Nothing really collapses in a day. The media is still controlled, and that’s why outside broadcasting is required. And yes, the Russian government continues to be a threat to its own people, its neighbors, and the world. Whether it’s turning off gas pipelines abruptly or failing to stop or punish violence against civil society activists or sabotaging OSCE, it continues to be a menace. It’s well documented. That doesn’t mean there are no other — or greater — menaces in the world; it doesn’t mean our own country is absolved of blame. It means Russia is not the magical kingdom you imagine.
It’s a facile sound byte that even Wikipedia does better with to claim that RFE/RL incited Hungarians to rise up, then didn’t bring support to them. Read the scholarship on this period and you will find that this simplistic claim is not supportable.
As for your notion that RFE/RL is still agitating against Russia, if anything, I’ve found that it tends to tack somewhat with the winds of the pro-Russian positions of both Republican and Democratic administrations and certainly not feature the sort of La Russophobe articles that so agitate you. So again, find me a “Russian-bashing” piece. If there is coverage of murders and maimings of journalists, that’s covering the news, not being “anti-Russian”. Even the article on the lefty opendemocracy.net you cite at least admits the news “were renowned for being studiously objective”. Reading through that dispeptic, typically left-wing bashing of not only the American station but (disgustingly) the brave Czech dissidents of the past, I don’t actually see that it backs up the claim that the CIA remained in control any more than you do, citing it.
The author merely states his opinion without substantiation, “Even after that date the ‘Company’ retained a measure of control over RFE’s policies. “. Can he document this? Can he cite some tell-tale policies or stories that show pawprints of CIA agents? Can you? In fact, there is far more caution and care in avoiding the actuality or appearance of such interference than you seem to give RFE/RL credit for, but in any event, my purpose in responding here is to challenge your false and malicious claim that I am somehow associated with the CIA because I wrote articles for this service. I most definitely am not.
Far from being “lost,” as Martin Brown claims, the Hungarian broadcast tapes were preserved and are available:
http://www.rferl.org/content/off_mic_ross_johnson_hungarian_revolution/2209996.html
If you’re not citing from Wikipedia on these events, then don’t sound like you are. There is plenty of y of scholarship on this period:
http://www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?event_id=201388&fuseaction=events.event_summary
Click to access happ.OP-3.pdf
Boy – you’re tough to please. And you certainly seem to have gotten a lock on this notion that I claimed you work for the CIA. I never said that, anywhere. You’re confusing me with someone else. If the CIA were actually involved still with RFE/RL, I imagine it would be well known, because it’s an extremely sloppy organization and not the trackless phantom the media and comic books would have you believe. Nor is it averse to running interference for dictators when it suits U.S. national interests, although you likely see it as “pragmatism”.
I said Communism was unsustainable and that I was not a fan of it. But that’s not good enough for you; somehow that was “snide”. You seem to have to hate those you oppose; perhaps it makes you feel more righteous.
And stop talking as if everyone except you is in their mid-30’s. When you “began working in this field” – whatever that is – in 1979, I had already been in the Navy two years and Russia was our biggest and most powerful enemy; not only ideologically, but militarily. I imagine we’re much of an age.
“La Russophobe is a perfectly legitimate satirical site that deliberately adopts at times an outrageous tone precisely as an antidote to all the outrageous sycophancy and fellow-travelling all over this field. It’s a perfectly fine methodology in a field cluttered with pro-Russian opportunists and thug enablers.”
There’s an easy test to see whether LR is ‘legitimate’ – just switch ‘Russia’ with ‘Israel’ , Russian with ‘Israelis/Jews’ and see if it looks antisemitic. In my opinion it totally does. LR is hatespeech.
No argument here. But you’d probably be surprised (I was) at how difficult it is to get something classified as “hate speech” in the United States. Basically, rule-of-thumb kind of thing, it has to deliberately and unambiguously incite violence. For example, “Somebody should get that boy and roast his Jew ass” would not qualify (not sufficiently specific, expressive of a vague wish rather than a defined plan), where, “I want you and Darren to go around to his house tomorrow night after it gets dark, get him and roast his Jew ass” might make the cut.
“La Russophobe is a perfectly legitimate satirical site that deliberately adopts at times an outrageous tone precisely as an antidote to all the outrageous sycophancy and fellow-travelling all over this field.”
****
Sheer crock.
From the beginning, I’ve been responding to the remarks made in the first comments by “The New LR Exposed” — whoever that is.
I’m not “confusing” you. I wasn’t speaking to you in the first place, but to the first commenter. You jumped in. Then I replied.
I don’t talk as if “everyone” is in their mid-30s, but there’s a gaggle of male 30-something bloggers harassing anyone who criticizes their Kremlin, and that needs to be called out.
Oh; my apologies – but that entry is quite old, and The New LR Exposed never reappeared. I don’t know who it is, either. I’m not seeing your comments on my “Russophobia” page, but in my WordPress comment monitor – that’s why it looked as if you were speaking to me. But I doubt you’ll get a reply from him, or her. Still, by all means call him or her out. Speaking for myself, I have not harassed you, and I celebrate your right to criticize the Kremlin as you see fit. We had one brief exchange on your blog, followed by one brief one here (before this), and I didn’t bother you at all after that.
What a surprise to see you here, “Milker”!!
More lies from you, as usual.
man i love you…………
Catherine Fitzpatrick was kinda nasty but one thing i noticed…..La Russophobe goes on about “putin’s failed regime” when she(or they, or a gender confused racist, using Russia, Russians, Putin, and Kremlin interchangeably) blatantly ignores and omits facts, such as Putin’s achievements of halving poverty, multiplying salaries, etc.
I know its hard, but i firmly believe, as a junior historian, that we should express our viewpoints in a constructive way that attacks not the person(you should know exactly what i mean….), but the person’s flawed, irrational, outrageous, or inflammatory opinionated viewpoints. I at least attempt to be nice…..making it very clear time and time again that I want to be friendly with my opposing keyboard warrior =D…i even add friendly gestures and compliments to show that he/she is not my enemy, but rather their false beliefs, which they hold on to so dearly. But the sad thing is that they never see it that way….and i forever remain(in their minds) a dark, propaganda artist in the pay of KGB diehards….
I tried to read La Russophobe’s articles….but i couldnt stomach it…..the sheer level of immaturity and pure hatred killed me………..and to top it off, i don’t even have to “hate” them or whatnot….I just have to say “well actually there was this one sentence(out of say, 10 paragraphs) that is not exactly true”, and I will have been bombarded by one illogical reply to my view, and about a hundred personal attacks and insults….
That shows us that these people aren’t worth 2 minutes.
Thank you kindly, and I agree not only with your assessment of my overall loveability, but that it’s a more sensible policy to be on good terms with your adversaries to the extent it is possible. Catherine Fitzpatrick is a bit waspish and sarcastic, but I’m rather fond of sarcasm myself and appreciate its nuanced use, and she appears in other discussions (such as at A Good Treaty) to be well-educated and occasionally reasonable.
There’s no reasoning with La Russophobe, however, and I feel no obligation to observe even rudimentary politeness.
La Russophobe is no different than the neo-cons and certain members of the Western elite who hate Russia because it doesn’t acquiesce to its whims! That’s all I can say about that blogger and that I have zero respect for that person!
Catherine,
Since I do not wish to leave an ID at your site, I will say this:
Speculation that you were La Russophobe was entirely reasonable until you came out and denied it. There were sufficient differences of style to plant seeds of doubt, but not entirely to clear the notion. As it is, Cathy Young remains a mild suspect, but I think more likely this person or group of persons is tied to the Jamestown Foundation, given the constant propping of Paul Goble by La Russophobe over the last six years.
And I’ll be blunt: the foundations you’ve worked with in the past, such as Ford and Soros, have a long history of serving as CIA fronts. Barrack Obama’s grandparents, particularly his grandmother Anne Dunham, worked with the Ford foundation while in Indonesia during the 1960s — a country rich in natural resources that the CIA was highly engaged in. This is not a matter of my opinion, but that of Angello Codevilla (“The Chosen One” Claremont Review of Books, Summer 2011), a highly decorated intelligence and military veteran. Once one takes into account Obama’s CIA grandparentage, a great deal about him and his rapid rise from obscure Illinois state senator voting ‘present’ to President of the United States barely four years later in 2008 starts to make sense, in much the same way that Putin’s KGB background explains much, but not all, of his rise. The difference being of course, that everyone is free to call Putin a product of the KGB system, but all people discussing Obama’s CIA connections, and the fact that he worked for a well known CIA front company as his first job after Columbia, are verboten in mainstream media. The relationship between the Dunhams and the parents of currrent Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also explains a lot about how the most widely disrespected Treasury Secretary in American history (I believe Pirrong refers to him as ‘TurboTax Timmy!’, but never as CIA spawn Timmy) retains his job.
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1852/article_detail.asp
That’s clearly not to say that everyone who has ever worked at any think tank that’s received Ford or Soros money is even aware of said connections. It’s only to say that there are reasons that Moscow treats these NGOs with suspicion and passed laws requiring them to disclose their funding sources — and in recent years copied the U.S. Registered Foreign Agents Act that was designed to ferret out Nazi lobbyists in the 1930s.
For my pains in exposing these facts repeatedly to your ‘tweep’ Craig Pirrong aka the Streetwise Professor, I was banned from posting at his forum. I’ve been basically harassed by his ‘tweeps’ or as I prefer to call them Twitter groupies, who’ve now succeeded in kicking me off Twitter, while they hurl obscenities and fulminate against fellow Americans who do not worship the National Security State or like bankrupting foreign or monetary policies. Tonight having enough I decided to return the favor, and reported one @ReginaldQuill for abuse. In this case, he posted pictures of dead Syrian children and accused a prominent Austin talk radio host of endorsing Assad’s slaughter of such, when all we have to go on is Hillary Clinton’s good word that the killers in this case we in fact Assadists. I’ve seen too many lies and war propaganda to take at face value anything this government says regarding a country it’s already started intervening in covertly.
You have consistently ranted against Google while ignoring very strong evidence of its In-Q-Tel, that is to say, CIA funded venture capital origins. You have treated CISPA as a badly needed antidote to Internet piracy while ignoring the fact that CISPA like ‘copyright violation notices’ have already been used to harass the likes of Alexander Emerick Jones, forcing him to break up his videos into 15 minute snippets over a bogus copyright claim.
But I still believe Catherine that you are willing to listen to reason, now and then, and realize that not everyone on Twitter is what they seem. In fact, as this scandal with USA Today journalists getting smeared on social media by Pentagon paid contractors has exposed, Cointelpro is alive and well, it has merely been ‘privatized’ for the sake of appearances. And that cointelpro is obsessed as you’ve noticed with discrediting RT, Zerohedge, anyone who’s anti-war wether Occupy leftist or Ron Paul libertarian, and even Americans who merely own gold or like guns. They’re all on the neo-Cointelpro $hit list now Catherine. And whatever little pittance you’re getting to live on in Manhattan, know that the same people that dream of looting the United States like Russia in the 1990s will also take that little away from you if they’re not stopped.
Maybe during the Cold War you were on the side of the angels, and you feel you fought the good fight against Soviet communism. But the country you defended from the USSR is long gone, it’s been occupied by a Corporatist, Fascist clique that is increasingly unmasking its true intentions for the U.S. — 30,000 drones, TSA on highways, groping of grannies and kids, and taxpayer funded propaganda to kingdome come. That isn’t the America my relatives served in the military to defend.
Sincerely,
Senor Equis
“I don’t talk as if “everyone” is in their mid-30s, but there’s a gaggle of male 30-something bloggers harassing anyone who criticizes their Kremlin, and that needs to be called out.” May I humbly suggest per the above Catherine that the fanatical attacks, including McCarthyite claims of treason, come more from the pro-National Security State Russophobes than from a few guys in their 30s who’ve been to Moscow, liked the scenery and found it a completely different country from what it is often described as in the Western media?
“In this case, he posted pictures of dead Syrian children and accused a prominent Austin talk radio host of endorsing Assad’s slaughter of such, when all we have to go on is Hillary Clinton’s good word that the killers in this case we in fact Assadists. I’ve seen too many lies and war propaganda to take at face value anything this government says regarding a country it’s already started intervening in covertly.”
****
That bit was among the lead headlines on last night’s American TV news.
Without meaning to belittle the horrific death of children, imagine the skepticisim if an adversary of the American and-or Israeli governments showed numerous corpses with a pointed finder of who is responsible. “Collateral damage” and the possibility of gathering bodies from diffeent areas for a propaganda production would be immediately considered. Yes, the knee jerk neocon to neolib reply might say that the American and Israeli governments aren’t anywhere near as brutal as some others. At the same time, scoundrels can have valid points.
Tweets seem to be popular with many, including a good number in media. I prefer more detailed ways of reaching an audience.
On getting banned, there’re some overrated charletans, who’ve taken to this method of muting. In a fair fight situation, these types melt.
Less LR and more others (dare I say like yours truly) will lead to greater intelligence. The saying of you’re what you eat can also apply to what you’re prone to watching and/or listening.
Doing what’s ethically right as opposed to what can more likely lead to greater immediate fame and fortune is an ongoing issue out there.
John McCain’s Pravda reply to President Putin’s op-ed in The New York Times has the familiar and unique style that suggests it may have been ghostwritten by LaRussophobe. All the same cliches.
Welcome, Erica! I would not be at all surprised, since she has the sort of inflammatory style McCain would interpret as that of a true American patriot. The one thing that tells me that is not the case is that she would not be able to resist bragging about it if her material were actually used by someone of McCain’s stature. She could not resist boasting on the Moscow Times about translation work she did not even do herself.
Russophobia resembles Zmey Gorynych (Slavic dragon). One of its heads is clearly cultural racism. I wrote a post about it: http://russianuniverse.org/2014/01/28/russophobia-cultural-racism/.
That’s a really good post, Sergey; perceptive, and with lots of insights and substantiation. It is shaping up to be the definitive work on the subject, I should think.
Thanks, Mark! I want my second book to be about Russian stereotypes in the West, Russophobia and Russian cultural identity (in English). My blog posts are reflecting my current research on these subjects.
Did you happen to catch Julia Ioffe’s Olympics post, in which she finally admitted to being a Russophobe after denying it for years? Who, me? I’m just a fair critic. What, you’re not even allowed to criticize Russia about anything without people pointing at you and shouting “Russophobe”??? In fact, in a comment to one of her articles when she was at True/Slant, she specifically brushed off the label and tried to don the martyr’s mantle, implying she had left good digs in New York and come to Moscow, to sacrifice herself on its cold, uncaring altar in the cause of bettering it.
Of course, you’re not meant to infer from Julia’s confession that she truly is a Russophobe – you’re meant to realize that she’s just being honest, and any red-blooded American (which Julia is, nothing of the Russian remains in her) would be appalled at the Russians’ lousy sportsmanship.
The funny part is, shortly after the occasion she chose over which to “come out” – the infamous goal by Russia against the USA which was disallowed because the net had been moved slightly by the goalie, and the furious reaction of some Russians to it – the IIHF (International Ice Hockey Federation) announced the rule would be eliminated, and its representative described the circumstances in which the Russian goal was disallowed as “nonsense”.
Yes, I read it. Moreover, I started writing a draft post titled “Russians don’t know you exist” which transformed into the first post on Western media coverage of Russia, #SochiProblems, etc. I’ll review certain points of her article pertaining to Russians in the 2nd part of it (e.g., ‘Russian schizophrenia’). Her article about Yulia Lipnitskaya was disgusting. One of the commenters said that she linked to Yulia’s VK page with teddy bear photos, etc., but then removed the link. What a…
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