Russian conductor Valery Gergiev performs on stage with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra on 18 September 2020 (AFP)
Campaigns to boycott Japanese cars and electronics were widespread, with some accusing the Japanese of committing an “ economic Pearl Harbor” and warning that the “Yellow Peril” was back (here, it should be remembered that Japanese Americans and Japanese residents of the US were shipped to concentration camps during World War II and had their property confiscated by the US government). In the 1970s and 1980s, US jingoism was at an all-time high, with incessant racist attacks on Japan for allegedly undermining the US economy. This is in addition to the fact that German Americans and German residents of the US were placed in concentration camps (called “internment camps” in official lingo) during WWI and WWII. Americans even renamed sauerkraut “liberty cabbage”. An American campaign was launched against beer as a German beverage, purporting that it was “unpatriotic” to drink it. In the US, Americans shot Dachshunds in large numbers, stoned them, and stomped on them in the streets during World War I on account of their German pedigree.
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.Īdd 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. Having grown up in Jordan under an autocratic regime, I learned, like many Jordanians, to believe very little that the government or media said. 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. The political credulity of the majority of the populations of the US and Western Europe has always been shocking to me.
The Russophobic campaign straddles the entire western political spectrum, and it is fully endorsed by western liberals and cultural elites. Western liberal 'democratic' regimes foster utter conformity and subservience to the 'Ministry of Truth' In the US, video game giant EA Sports removed Russian teams from its FIFA video game series. 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. 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.Īs 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.Īnd 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”.
#LIBERAS ARE ORWELLIAN FULL#
Western Russophobic hysteria is now in full force.