SC142-9

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46736.htm

Russophobia – Symptom of US Implosion

There was a time when Russophobia served as an effective form of population control – used by the American ruling class in particular to command the general US population into patriotic loyalty. Not any longer. Now, Russophobia is a sign of weakness, of desperate implosion among the US ruling class from their own rotten, internal decay.

This propaganda technique worked adequately well during the Cold War decades when the former Soviet Union could be easily demonized as «godless communism» and an «evil empire». Such stereotypes, no matter how false, could be sustained largely because of the monopoly control of Western media by governments and official regulators.

The Soviet Union passed away more than a quarter of a century ago, but Russophobia among the US political class is more virulent than ever.

This week it was evident from Congressional hearings in Washington into alleged Russian interference in US politics that large sections of American government and establishment media are fixated by Russophobia and a belief that Russia is a malign foreign adversary.

However, the power of the Russophobia propaganda technique over the wider population seems to have greatly diminished from its Cold War heyday. This is partly due to more diverse global communications which challenge the previous Western monopoly for controlling narrative and perception. Contemporary Russophobia – demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin or Russian military forces – does not have the same potency for scaring the Western public. Indeed, due to greater diversity in global news media sources, it is fair to say that «official» Western depictions of Russia as an enemy, for example allegedly about to invade Europe or allegedly interfering in electoral politics, are met with a healthy skepticism – if not ridicule by many Western citizens.

What is increasingly apparent here is a gaping chasm between the political class and the wider public on the matter of Russophobia. This is true for Western countries generally, but especially in the US. The political class – the lawmakers in Washington and the mainstream news media – are frenzied by claims that Russia interfered in the US presidential elections and that Russia has some kind of sinister leverage on the presidency of Donald Trump.

But this frenzy of Russophobia is not reflected among the wider public of ordinary American citizens. Rabid accusations that Russia hacked the computers of Trump’s Democrat rival Hillary Clinton to spread damaging information about her; that this alleged sabotage of American democracy was an «act of war»; that President Trump is guilty of «treason» by «colluding» with a «Russian influence campaign» – all of these sensational claims seem to be only a preoccupation of the privileged political class. Most ordinary Americans, concerned about making a living in a crumbling society, either don’t buy the claims or view them as idle chatter.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week dismissed the Congressional hearings into alleged Russian interference in US politics. He aptly said that US lawmakers and the corporate media have become «entangled» in their own fabrications. «They are trying to find evidence for conclusions that they have already made», said Peskov.

Other suitable imagery is that the US political class are tilting at windmills, chasing their own tails, or running from their own shadows. There seems to be a collective delusional mindset.

Unable to accept the reality that the governing structure of the US has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, that the people rebelled by electing an outsider in the form of business mogul-turned-politician Donald Trump, that the collapse of American traditional politics is due to the atrophy of its bankrupt capitalist economy over several decades – the ruling class have fabricated their own excuse for demise by blaming it all on Russia.

The American ruling class cannot accept, or come to terms, with the fact of systemic failure in their own political system. The election of Trump is a symptom of this failure and the widespread disillusionment among voters towards the two-party train wreck of Republicans and Democrats. That is why the specter of Russian interference in the US political system had to be conjured up, by necessity, as a way of «explaining» the abject failure and the ensuing popular revolt.

Russophobia was rehabilitated from the Cold War closet by the American political establishment to distract from the glaring internal collapse of American politics.

The corrosive, self-destruction seems to know no bounds. James Comey, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told Congress this week that the White House is being probed for illicit contacts with Russia. This dramatic notice served by Comey was greeted with general approval by political opponents of the Trump administration, as well as by news media outlets.

The New York Times said the FBI was in effect holding a «criminal investigation at the doorstep of the White House».

Other news outlets are openly airing discussions on the probability of President Trump being impeached from office.

The toxic political atmosphere of Russophobia in Washington is unprecedented. The Trump administration is being crippled at every turn from conducting normal political business under a toxic cloud of suspicion that it is guilty of treason from colluding with Russia.

President Trump has run afoul with Republicans in Congress over his planned healthcare reforms because many Republicans are taking issue instead over the vaunted Russian probe.

When Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reported to be skipping a NATO summit next month but was planning to visit Moscow later in the same month, the itinerary was interpreted as a sign of untoward Russian influence.

What makes the spectacle of political infighting so unprecedented is that there is such little evidence to back up allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. It is preponderantly based on innuendo and anonymous leaks to the media, which are then recycled as «evidence».

Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said earlier this week that he has seen no actual evidence among classified documents indicating any collusion between the Trump campaign team and the Russian government.

Even former senior intelligence officials, James Clapper and Michael Morell who are no friends of Trump, have lately admitted in media interviews that there is no such evidence.

Yet, FBI chief James Comey told Congress that his agency was pursuing a potentially criminal investigation into the Trump administration, while at the same time not confirming or denying the existence of any evidence.

And, as already noted, this declaration of open-ended snooping by Comey on the White House was met with avid approval by political opponents of Trump, both on Capitol Hill and in the corporate media.

Let’s just assume for a moment that the whole Trump-Russia collusion story is indeed fake. That it is groundless, a figment of imagination. There are solid reasons to believe that is the case. But let’s just assume here that it is fake for the sake of argument.

That then means that the Washington seat of government and the US presidency are tearing themselves apart in a futile civil war.

The real war here is a power struggle within the US in the context of ruling parties no longer having legitimacy to govern.

This is an American implosion. An historic Made-in-America meltdown. And Russophobia is but a symptom of the internal decay at the heart of US politics.

....

Comment under the article,

neoconned · 2 days ago

I agree that the Russophobia is a symptom of the ongoing economic collapse of the USA. All one has to do is tune out the MSM and open one's eyes to the reality all around you. The truth is in the math. As one commented above about the malls closing - this is a reality in the US. You can see it with your own 2 eyes! Retail is a deadman walking. Sears, JC Penney, Macy's and other "anchor stores" are all closing hundreds if not thousands of outlets. Blame it on Amazon, the internet, Putin, etc., but the reality is another big lie - the unemployment #s. With 98 million able bodied workers who cannot find a job the reality is 23% unemployment which translates into a lot of broke people who cannot afford to go shopping any more and who have to squat in those closed down malls like dawn of the dead. And what about the 11% default ratio in the 1.3 trillion dollar student loan bubble? That's the same ratio as the subprime mortgage crisis that crashed the economy in 2008 - 1.3 trillion in garbage mortgages and 11% default ratio. But the masters of the universe after shifting their gambling losses in housing to the public with their TARP bailout had the collateral sitting there, so they had their hedge fund buddies buy up all the foreclosed real estate and keep it off the market to create "scarcity" and drive up housing prices again. And guess what they created rental backed securities which flopped because being a landlord isn't as easy as you think, and once again subprime mortgages are here again. And the subprime lending in the auto industry is now imploding as well. Why subprime? Because there are no prime borrowers anymore - everyone is out of work living hand to mouth with credit scores under 500. You don't see bread lines like during the great depression, but we have been in a depression since 2008 - only they have covered it up with SNAP benefit cards, fake news, fake statistics, and distractions like the fake wars on terror based on false flag attacks on 9-11. It all goes back to 9-11. Capitalism was teetering on the brink back then with the dotcom bubble bursting and all the wizards of wall street could come up with was more bubbles in the bubble economy that is the West. So now our infrastructure is crumbling, healthcare is a disaster, education is being undermined, and Trump is sabre rattling against N. Korea, China, Iran, Syria, and of course Russia even though he campaigned on a slogan of making peace with Russia, Well the neocons will have none of that! They have spent the last 30 plus years entrenching themselves in the deep state to pursue an agenda of global hegemony and israel first policies in the ME. So there will be hard times ahead. The real estate market is going to collapse again as will the stock market regardless of the manipulations of the plunge protection team. If you don't think it is coming and don't think the banks will be bailing in all your money so you can't even shop online anymore then just keep listening to the talking heads - the presstitutes on the MSM and be lulled into a sense of complacency. Don't go buy gold, or silver, or cloudcoins or bitcoins. Don't prep. Don't have an exit strategy from the empire. Take your soma and drink your victory gin as the mushroom clouds blossom on the horizon. Perhaps that is a fitting end to the empire. Blow up space ship Earth and eliminate all life on the planet because if the 1% cannot have it all then it's just not worth having anything.