RUSSOPHOBIA IN BRITAIN: IMPERIAL RIVALRY OR RACISM?

The Greek league on The Duran had a fascinating live talk earlier today with Dr Marcus Papadopoulos, a British political commentator, historian and analyst who specializes in Russia, the former Soviet Union, the former Yugoslavia, and British politics. He holds a PhD in Russian/Soviet history from  the University of London, and has authored several books, including "Arise, Rossiya" and "Whitehall in Stalin's Russia: British assessments of the Red Army, 1934-1945". Papadopoulos is the founder and former editor of Politics First, a non-partisan publication for the UK Parliament.

June 10, 2025 The Duran: Britain's drive for war with Russia with Dr. Marcus Papadopoulos. 

You may or may not be aware of my special interest in the phenomenon of Russophobia in the Western world. The opposite of love is not hatred; it is indifference.

Whenever hatred appears, something is going on psychologically. I have developed my own theory on the subject, going back to 'the Dark Ages' (which are called that for a reason). 

The theory is well beyond the confines of provable data, so we will probably never know if it is true that the hatred goes back to the time when the Germanic tribes overran Rome, taking over the remnants of the Western Roman Empire. 

The Eastern Roman Empire took a thousand years longer to destroy, but eventually they weakened it so much, that it succumbed to the Ottoman hordes. 

Having relegated heartland Greece to a impoverished eparchy at the edge of the continent and framing it as its harmless, pagan 'cradle of civilization', Russia remained as the sole heir to carry forward the banner of Rome 3. 

Papadopoulos takes his time to explain the root of Russophobia, but in the end he is getting there. Via putting it down to the rivalry between the British and the Russian Empires at the time of the Crimean War of 1853, he finally reaches root territory.

In the end Papadopoulos acknowledges that the British ruling elite is looking down on Slavs as disorganized barbarians, seeing themselves as a vastly superior race. So in the end we get to the most basic form of racism. But it is my belief that still does not go deep enough. 

What is really at the bottom of the animosity, is the inferiority complex of the Germanic tribes (of which the Anglo-Saxons were but one) towards the East. From my manuscript:

"By the time of its demise, Rome had enjoyed eight hundred years of civilization, while Greece could look back on two thousand years of not one, but a succession of civilizations. 

"It does not need a trained psychologist to understand the mentality of the conquering Germanic tribes that had taken over Western Rome.

"It is like revolutionaries taking over a royal or presidential palace. They start feasting on the champagne and caviar. If there is still a functioning palace at the other side of town, it does not take a genius to figure out how that would sit with the upstarts. Apparently an inferiority complex can last millennia."

"One wonders if the historical basis of the hatred of Russia isn't somehow related to these events at the root of Western hatred. Of course the Russians played a marginal role at the time, except as the source of the imperial Varangian Guard. But Russia is sometimes referred to as the third Rome for good reasons. 

"Culturally, the Eastern Roman Empire was Greek. But ever since the modern country of Greece was founded after the revolution of 1821 against Ottoman rule, Greece in Western minds is being associated with classical pagan Greece. Not with the Eastern Empire.

"It takes no great imagination to see how Russia makes a perfect surrogate for psychological projection."

- More on The Duran, Russia, UK, Anglo Saxony/Five Eyes, EU, NATO, the blob, Mike Benz =