Jackmanii mentioned “Jews” above, but at the moment it’s gay people in Russia (and Georgia and a few other states still close to Russia) who are being deliberately used as a target of general public anger and hatred. It’s another distraction, and the latest in a long history of Russian pogroms. While it reinforces the anti-West agenda, it is not in itself an instigator of that agenda.
Sadly, such efforts are actually supported by anti-gay evangelical groups in the US, who will happily talk about how wonderful Putin is purely because they’re aligned on the “hate the gay” axis.
Well, 2011/12 wasn’t exactly ancient days and only predates the wide spread and official acceptance of gay marriage. I agree that this isn’t the cause of the US’s unpopularity in Russia though.
I disagree. I think 90% of what is shaping Russia’s current attitude towards the US is coming from Putin and his minions. What you are saying is the equivalent of saying that the average North Koreans attitude towards the US is actually shaped by our foreign policy and has nothing to do with how they are bombarded daily with accounts of how the US is poised to attack them at any moment or how we deny that their glorious leader shot an 18 on a world class golf course the first time he played.
You are projecting your own most likely cosmopolitan and relatively enlightened view and how it’s formed onto everyone, though. YOUR issues with the US are probably pretty well founded and grounded in some sort of reasonably unbiased information you’ve collected from a number of sources and most likely not by being bombarded by constant streams of propaganda coming from state media. Right?
Simple and pathetic. They don’t seem to grasp how insecure and small it makes them all look. The delusions of grandeur over their former place as a superpower being lost and wanting it to return is causing them to want to blame someone for their state.
Russian leaders encourage this as anything that takes attention off their own actions and failures is preferable. Gay hatred, religious orthodox christian pimping, and an internet propaganda machine designed to take down the west all line up as a blame anyone but us campaign for their issues and status.
Look at this interview with an rt reporter and Kaku.
You’re kind of making my point for me, actually. My point, you’ll recall, was that non-Americans’ attitude to the US was overwhelmingly driven by their perceptions of the US’s role in the world, the US as a global citizen, the way the actions and attitudes of the US affect them and their community. So when the NK regime wants it’s citizens to hate and fear the US, it doesn’t acheive this through propaganda about domestic conditions in the US, but about the US’s aggressive intent with respect to North Korea, the US’s defamation of the NK leader, etc, etc. Because it knows that that will be much more effective than similarly mendacious propaganda about conditions inside the US.
Reading this thread makes no none the wiser as to why Russian dislike the U.S. I have learned that Americans do have an exceptional ability to believe in their own propaganda.
“Gay marriage”? “We don’t circumcise our women”.Dear God.
Putin does not want Russia to democratize. He’s a corrupt oligarch-in-chief who would reside in prison if Russia had a strong judiciary. He doesn’t want civil society and his economic plan relies heavily on resource extraction. Plotting a path to sustainable growth would mean taking on his base of Kremlin linked oligarchs. Not going to happen.
So Putin -personally- needs to either hope for high oil prices (bread) or jizz up nationalistic impulses (circuses). He does both. Putin had no interest in olive branches offered by the Obama administration, and we can understand why. He relies on external enemies to prop up his non-democracy, albeit one with greater freedom than the USSR had.
All of this sounds harsh, but let’s recall that his elections are fixed and the electronic media is firmly under government control. Putin’s stance is that the US and Russian oligarchies are broadly similar, democratic trappings are phony, and both sides do it. It’s a zero sum game, and Russia isn’t just going to dance to America’s tune. Politics isn’t beanbag. So there’s plenty of ideological cover for underlying personal and oligarchical interests.