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RACE HATRED & VICE VERSA – WHAT RUSSIANS DON’T FEEL TOWARDS AMERICANS & EUROPEANS

By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with [1]

Russians blame Americans, not Ukrainians, for the war, according to a new countrywide poll – and not Americans personally, but the US Government and US officials. Race hatred of Russians of the kind broadcast by the Anglo-American, European and Ukrainian media, is not reciprocated by the Russians towards their accusers.

Russian anger at the US is rising sharply, with no evidence that western media allegations of Russian crimes against humanity and war atrocities are believed by the growing majority of the Russian audience. The reverse appears to be happening – the more virulent the western media, the more disbelieving the Russian reaction.

The independent Moscow pollster Levada Centre has reported [2] a survey it conducted in face-to- face interviews across the country in the last week of March.   “There was a sharp deterioration in attitudes towards Western countries. An increase in negative assessments of the US and the EU has been recorded. The attitude towards Ukraine has hardly changed in March. The attitude towards China has significantly improved.”

RUSSIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE USA

KEY: black=positive. Peaks: Mar 1997, 72%; Sept 2001, 70%; July 2005, 66%; Nov 2011, 64%.  blue=negative. Peaks: Apr 2003, 66%; Sept 2008, 67%; July 2014, 74%; Jan 2015, 81%; Mar 2022, 72%. Source: https://www.levada.ru/ [2]

Levada has been measuring pro-American sentiment since April 1990, when the positive attitude was 75%. It then rose to 80% in November 1991. That was the all-time high. As Russians went into opposition to President Boris Yeltsin, the Clinton Administration backing him also dropped in the popular Russian assessment. Between April 1993, when the Russian parliament openly defied Yeltsin, until March 1997, after the parliament had been destroyed and a new constitution rigged, Levada avoided measuring attitude towards the US. Two years later, in May 1999 the positive feeling the pollster recorded had dropped to 32%.  Two weeks ago, the measure had fallen further to 17% — and it is still falling.

Russians with the least education and the shortest memories are the only segment of the population who think relatively well of the US. According to Levada, young Russians between 18 and 24 register 26% positive sentiment; 25% among those in the 25 to 39-year age group. These percentages are even higher among the under-24 year olds in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

“We don’t make specific polls according to the social classes,” says Stepan Goncharov (right) a sociologist at Levada who has been associated with US think tanks in Washington and Chicago.  “We look at age and place of living — the cities and rural areas.  Of course,  citizens with a middle or higher income have a more positive attitude [towards the US].”

The Russian feelings Goncharov believes
the poll is measuring are not personal,
national, ethnic, or racial. They are political.
“The Russian attitudes towards the US, the European Union (EU),  and NATO depend on the media agenda and their coverage of the situation in Ukraine. But in the foreseeable future, say a month or more, the attitude will either be as it is now, or get worse. The type of media source is also important, because television creates a worse attitude in comparison to the internet.”

The positive and negative sentiment Goncharov has been polling is “not towards the US and NATO but towards foreigners in general, especially Europeans. This is because of possible contacts between people — by work or by travel and tourism, and also by education. Russians don’t have a negative attitude towards the people of the US and EU, but towards their governments and policies.”

The latest survey reveals that NATO is as inimical as the US in Russian perception – 78% negative, 10% positive. This hostility has been more or less stable for several years. It is not the same for Europeans, although hostility towards the EU bureaucracy in Brussels is growing.  

RUSSIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE EUROPEAN UNION

KEY: black=positive, currently at 21%, this dropped to 19% after EU sanctions began in the wake of the allegation that Russia had shot down MH17 in July 2014. Blue=negative, currently 67%. The all-time high was 71% in January 2015. Source: https://www.levada.ru/ [2]

Russians under 24 years old remain more positive towards the EU – at 35% — than they report feeling towards the US and NATO.

RUSSIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE UKRAINE

KEY: black=positive, currently 30%; the historical high was 74% in September 2012. Blue=negative. It is currently at 57%, which is comparable to the levels recorded in 2015-2018. Source: https://www.levada.ru/ [2]

RUSSIAN ATTITUDE TOWARDS CHINA

KEY: black=positive, currently 81%,  roughly equal to the level of 2015. Blue=negative, at 8% at present, this measure has never been lower. Source: https://www.levada.ru/ [2]

Russians are well aware of Russophobia or race hatred in the foreign media, but for the time being the popular Russian media report this as Ukrainian in origin from Kiev and Lvov, and from the Ukrainians as they move into Poland and Germany. German government officials have also been identified in the Moscow press as the source of traditional fascist views but not German people.

Race hatred as state policy financed and promoted by the European governments and think tanks has not been explicitly targeted in the mainstream Russian media yet.

REVIVAL OF GERMAN RACE HATRED FOR RUSSIANS, FINANCED BY THE EU, NATO, AND US

“We should not forget even if Russians look European, they are not European. In a cultural sense they think differently about violence, or death. Instead, life can end early with death..Russian life expectancy is quite low, you know. That’s why they treat death differently, that people simply die.” Source: https://twitter.com/ [3]

This excerpt from a popular German television talk show is the most explicit advocacy of race hatred for Russians by a German whose funding is official. The speaker is Florence Gaub [4]. She used to be an employee of the NATO Defence College;  she is now paid to be the deputy director of  the  European Union for Security Studies (EUISS [5]), a think tank funded directly by the EU.   

Gaub also makes her living on the side with a Ukraine support front called the Alpbach Foundation [6].   This was created in Austria in 2005. The foundation does not publish its sources of  money but they appear to originate from the Austrian Erste banking group whose former chief executive, Andreas Treichl, directs Alpbach. Alpbach and Treichl are also connected directly to the Soros, Bilderberg and Trilateral organizations.