The Vogue of Russophobia In Imperialist Propaganda An Anti-Chauvinist Communist Response

It is now popular in the west to blame Russia for everything. The villains of Hollywood are once again very often Russian. If Americans are not being terrorized by Russian mobsters, typical is the movie “Gravity” where Russia blows up a satellite and thereby winds up killing Hollywood heartthrob George Clooney. The fictional accounts of evil Russians don’t just stop in Hollywood either, anti-Russian lies are constantly blared in the west’s mainstream media. Likewise, the pathological liars who run western governments are also in their great majority Russophobic chauvinists who have imposed an economic blockade on Russia and who blame Russia (and China) for almost everything.

The U.S. has devastated Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Ukraine (as well as Afghanistan with CIA operations that started under Carter and put the Taliban in power). Yet, Russia is to blame for everything.

The U.S. has carried out genocide against Russians in Ukraine, Kurds in Turkey, Palestinians in Israel, black Africans in Libya, Christians, Kurds, Shi’ites, and Alawites in Syria, Chinese and Timorese in Indonesia, Native Americans in Guatemala and Chile, Serbs in Croatia and Kosovo, and Native Americans in the United States. Yet, Russia is to blame, even to blame for saving tiny South Ossetia from U.S. sponsored aggression and genocide by Georgia.

The United States backs the most oppressive government on Earth in Saudi Arabia that executes homosexuals, political dissidents, and those who renounce the Koran while fighting alongside the United States in trying to end secular government in Syria, fighting against the pro-democracy movement in Bahrain, and bombing the hell out of the Yemeni people for toppling a U.S. and Saudi backed dictatorship that terrorized and impoverished the people of Yemen for decades. Yet, Russia’s anti-homosexual laws (as inexcusable as they are) are somehow a much bigger issue than U.S. friend Saudi Arabia executing homosexuals. Russia is now fighting against ISIS in Syria, a rebel army created in large part through U.S. aid to the radical Islamists of the so-called Free Syrian Army as well as through the destabilization of Iraq and the U.S. imposition of a Shi’ite death squad government on the people of Iraq. Russia is helping the Syrian and Kurdish people fix what the United States has broken in Syria by fighting ISIS, yet somehow Russia is to blame.

Even liberals, who are supposedly anti-chauvinist and pro-democratic, often tend to show great hatred for the Russian speaking minority of Ukraine. The Russian speaking minority voted in their vast majority to break away from Ukraine after a U.S. sponsored coup overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine. That coup was riddled with open Nazis who hate Russians and began policies of murder of political opponents and genocide against the oppressed Russian speaking minority after coming to power. Yet, the western propagandists, by labeling these anti-fascist fighters as “pro-Russian”, were already well on their way to rallying western Russophobic chauvinism in favor of ethnic cleansing aimed at the oppressed Russian speaking people of Ukraine.

Russia is no longer socialist, but Russia is not imperialist either. After Yeltsin’s capitalist counterrevolution, life expectancy in the former USSR dropped by 10 years within 10 years. Under Yeltsin, Russia became the lap dog of the imperialists and carried out a devastating IMF shock therapy of privatization and austerity.

For the western imperialists, capitalist counterrevolution in the USSR was still not enough. U.S. foreign policy advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s plan was to break Russia up into three countries that could more easily be controlled by the United States. Moves towards achieving this are the U.S. and EU economic blockades and western attempts to overthrow governments friendly to Russia that are willing to trade with Russia. This includes the successful U.S. attempts at overthrowing the governments of Georgia, Honduras, Libya, and Ukraine and unsuccessful attempts by the U.S. to overthrow the governments of Syria, Belarus, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, South Ossetia, Bolivia, and Venezuela. Russia’s attempts to defend these countries from U.S. imperialist attacks cannot be seen as imperialism, but instead an attempt to defend Russia from U.S. attempts at isolation, economic blockade, regime change, and dismemberment.

Imperialism, as defined in a Marxist fashion, has to do with the exploitation of the world through direct foreign investment and the defense of that exploitation through military and other coercive means. Russia in fact has extremely small amounts of direct foreign capitalist investment anywhere as compared to the EU and the United States. This includes the countries Russia defends from imperialist attack. Belarus, Cuba, and North Korea, for example, primarily have planned socialist economies and extremely small amounts of direct foreign investment from anywhere. The inability of the imperialists to profit from the resources and labor of these countries is completely unacceptable to the U.S. and EU imperialists who have Belarus and North Korea under economic blockade and the U.S. imperialists who continue to have Cuba under economic blockade as well. This state of economic warfare by the western imperialists is established in order to try to force capitalist counterrevolutions that would devastate Belarus, Cuba, and North Korea economically much as most of the USSR was devastated with Yeltsin’s capitalist counterrevolution. Yet, Russia is fine with the people of Cuba, Belarus, and North Korea choosing their own governments and economic systems. This is because Russia has extremely different motives than the imperialists. Russia (and China, too) needs trading partners, not countries to exploit labor and resources through privatization and direct foreign investment. If Russia’s capitalists were more wealthy, Russia would naturally have evolved into a competing imperialist power, but this presently is not the case. Instead, Russia is an important anti-imperialist power backed into a corner of self-defense by western imperialist aggression.

The pro-imperialist Democrat and Republican Parties, including right social democrat and supporter of Israeli genocide Bernie Sanders, are all united in blaming Russia.

A mistake of many people on the left today, even some claiming to be socialist, is believing the plethora of imperialist lies being told about Russia and not properly exploring the truth about Russia because they simply dismiss Russia as being another competing imperialist power. Russia can better be understood as a capitalist country (with some small vestiges of socialism) that, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has been forced by U.S. imperialism onto a path of defiance against imperialist bullying.

Communists like myself argue that a Russian nationalist like Putin only has some of the answers Russia needs, and that Russia in fact needs to return to the road of communism laid out by Lenin and Trotsky in the October 1917 Russian Revolution. That revolution brought tremendous advances in the rights of oppressed nationalities, women, and homosexuals and, through socialist economics, turned one of the poorest countries in the world into an industrial powerhouse capable of defeating two major imperialist invasions (including the Nazis) and rebuilding to provide everyone with a job, free healthcare, and free education. Putin has not returned Russia to this needed communist path laid out by Lenin and Trotsky, so it would be a mistake for socialists to become overly enthusiastic in support of Putin. Yet, as anti-imperialists who see the fight against U.S. imperialist hegemony as vital to the fight for socialism, we stand with Russia and Russia’s allies against imperialist bullying.

In sum, this is what the public should support:

• End Imperialist Economic Sanctions Against Russia, Syria, Iran, Belarus, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela!
• End U.S. Sponsored Genocide Against Kurds in Turkey, Palestinians in Israel, and Russians in Ukraine!
• Victory to Russian, Syrian, Kurdish, Hezbollah, and Iranian Forces Fighting Against the genocidal terrorists of ISIS, the Islamic Front, the “Free Syrian Army”, and Jabhat al-Nusra!
• For an End To U.S. and EU imperialism Through Egalitarian Socialist Revolutions in the Imperialist Centers of The U.S. and EU!

-Steven Argue for the Revolutionary Tendency
The Revolutionary Tendency
http://www.facebook.com/RevolutionaryTendency

[box] Photo: Syrian rally on Oct. 13th in support of Russian intervention in Syria to defeat the United States’ Frankenstein monster of ISIS. ISIS was created largely through U.S. aid to the Syrian “opposition” (i.e. genocidal religious fanatics opposed to Assad’s pro-woman and secular government.) The placard on the right reads, “yes to Russian-Syrian cooperation.” Anti-Assad rebels fired on the Russian Embassy during this rally in front of the Russian embassy. just as it was likely the same or similar forces that set-off bombs at a pro-Kurdish demonstration against the Turkish government that was held in Turkey. [Photo provided by the Syrian news agency SANA.]  [/box] …