Professor Glenn Diesen of Norway recently had his video channel expunged from YouTube, and two days later it was restored at YouTube, all with no real explanation.
One video at his channel is a discussion of Richard Cobden’s 1836 pamphlet, which bore the secondary title:
In the video, I interview Professor Diesen about the long history of Anglo hatred toward Russia, a hatred which started up in the 1830s and has persisted ever since. I sought to interview Professor Diesen because he is the author of Russophobia: Propaganda in International Politics (2022). We discuss the history of Russia-hate, down to today.
Phobia means fear. Professor Diesen and I discussed whether fear of Russia is really the problem. Today’s escalations have been catastrophic and risk nuclear exchange. Perhaps there has not been enough fear of mutual destruction. Hatred of Russia, rather than fear, seems to be the problem. That said, the expression ‘Russophobia’ has a history, and we should understand that it is about a propagandistic fear.
In the 1830s, Cobden was appalled by the anti-Russian propaganda, and he fought it right up to the end of his life in 1865.
What is fascinating about Cobden’s 1836 pamphlet is that the Russia-hate propaganda then sounds so much like the Russia-hate propaganda now.
And the counterarguments that Cobden made are much like the counterarguments now made by Diesen, John Mearsheimer, Scott Ritter, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Larry Johnson, Ray McGovern, Benjamin Abelow, Alexander Mercouris, Alex Christoforou, and may others.
Near the end of the video, I ask Professor Diesen to list things that have been blamed on Russia. He doesn’t know where to begin!
He begins to make a list, and it keeps growing, and the items on the list become increasingly humorous, down to bedbugs in France.
I also asked Professor Diesen: Is it possible that the Anglo-led hatred of Russia in the nineteenth century had the effect of turning Russia away from the West, and hence away from its classical liberal heritage, and, therefore, making the Russian soil more fertile for anti-liberal ideas like Bolshevism?
Cobden’s pamphlet from 1836 shows that the Western tradition is not inherently hypocritical, expansionist, and anti-liberal. In fact, Adam Smith was anti-imperialistic.
Today’s anti-liberal expansionist Western hypocrites give the West a bad name. Whatever corner of the world a people inhabits, that people is not its rulers. Russians and Americans can be of mutual goodwill, even if their respective rulers refuse to be.
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