July 14, 2016
Review of the book “Russie-Occident – une guerre de mille ans: La russophobie de Charlemagne à la Crise Ukrainienne” (“The West vs Russia – a thousand year long war: russophobia from Charlemange to the Ukrainian Crisis”) by Guy Mettan, Editions des Syrtes, Genève, Suisse, 2015 (www.editions-syrtes.fr).
Initially, I planed to write a ‘regular’ review of this book, but by the time I finished reading it I realize that nothing short of a standing ovation would do justice to this absolutely remarkable book. Guy Mettan produced a masterpiece which ought to be on the “must read” list of every person interested in Russia. So let me tell you why this book is amazing.
For one thing, this is one of the best and clearest study of russophobia I have ever read. Second, it is one of the few studies of this topic written by a non-Russian (Guy Mettan is a Swiss author, reporter, editor and political figure). Last but not least, the book is very short, less than 500 pages, which for such a complex topic is truly remarkable.
Mettan uses a very systematic, step by step, approach. He begins by giving a few examples of the incredibly anti-Russian way a few well-known incident have been covered in the western press: the crash of Überlingen, the Beslan hostage crisis, the2nd war in Ossetia and the Olympic Games in Sochi. Mettan could have used another 500 or so examples, but with these four he makes an irrefutable case that the western media does not even try to report honestly from Russia and that all the western elites care about is Russia bashing. Mettan then uses the Ukrainian crisis as his strongest proof and lists numerous examples of, shall we say, deliberate western blindness. By the time you are done with the first part of this book you will see that russophobia is simply not a deniable phenomenon.
But Mettan does not stop there, however. He goes one step further at looks at the history of the various russophobias (plural).
Here is were Mettan is at his best and where has the courage and intellectual precision to look as far back as the 9th century to look into the first and most important cause of all the russophobias in the West: the schism resulting from the attempted coup by the Franks in the West to first usurp the power inside the Western Roman Empire, here they succeeded, and then take control of the Eastern Roman Empire (incorrectly called “Byzantine Empire” in western parlance), here they failed.
Mettan speaks of the “soft power” (in English) of religion in the VIIIth century and compares the position of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation against the “Byzantine Empire” to the NATO stance against Russia today. And while this kind of insight will definitely earn Mettan many sneers, he is absolutely correct: as soon as the Frankish controlled Papacy broke away from the rest of the Christian world it became obsessed with subjugating, converting and destroying the Orthodox world. You cannot understand modern Russia and her position in the world unless you understand the 1000 year old Papist hatred for the original Christian world.
Logically, Mettan begins by analyzing the cultural and philosophical roots of this earliest form of proto-russophobia, the Papist hatred for the original Christian world, but he soon switches to more recent forms of russophobia. They are the French russophobia, the English russophobia, the German russophobia and the American russophobia. Each of these empires hated Russia, much for the same reasons, but also in a different way and for unique reasons. And Mettan therefore logically concludes that the current American russophobia is really a combination of the other European russophobias.
But here I have to mention the biggest failure of Mettan’s otherwise absolutely magnificent book: Mettan completely overlooks one of the most formidable and, indeed, vicious russophobias out there: the Jewish russophobia.
Now maybe Mettan decided not to tackle this one due to the severity of the social, political and even criminal persecution any critique of anything Jewish exposes himself to in Europe (not everybody is willing, or capable, of being an Alain Soral). Or not mentioning Jews was the condition to find an publisher for the book. I don’t know. But one thing I will never believe is that a person with the truly superb understanding of history and of the modern world like Mettan would be simple unaware of the phenonenon of Jewish russophobia. That is, quite simply, impossible.
Whatever may be the case, Mettan does not mention Jews at all. Even when he lists the US neocons, he does not mention the fact that the vast majority of them are Jews. This is clearly a huge “oversight”, a gaping hole in the otherwise superb scholarship of this book, and one can only hope that in future editions this book will include the vast corpus of studies of Jewish russophobia by such authors as Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, Igor Shafarevich, Andrei Dikii, Mikhail Nazarov, Oleg Platonov and many other authors. For the time being, and as a direct result of this “oversight” the russophobia of Trotskysts, for example, is never mentioned.
[Sidebar: I don’t want to be too hard on Mettan, not only is his book absolutely superb, but it is hard for me to fully appreciate the risks any European author (and editor) would take by daring to criticize anything Jewish. Besides, it is not like the info about this cannot be found on the Internet – it can and rather easily. Even Solzhenitsyn’s book “200 years together” has now been partially translated into English, so slowly but surely the wall of censorship is coming down. But at the same time, the vicious persecution of Alain Soral or of the many historians who dared to question the official narrative of the so-called “Holocaust” is also a telling example of what can happen to somebody daring to cross the invisible but well-known line of crimethink: at the very least, any suchcrimethinker becomes a “non-person” and loses his/her career. Others have had to live in exile or face constant lawsuits and even jail terms.]
Mettan concludes his book by a most interesting analysis of what he called a “russophobia how-to” in which he looks at how words are used, how topics are framed, how certain issues are simply never addressed and questions never asked. It is frankly a most discouraging and yet also most interesting read. Reading Mettan’s conclusions I was left wondering if this 1000 year old river of hate would ever dry up. On one hand, as long as the West is under the influence of messianic ideologies, imperial delusions and racist views of the “other” I am not very optimistic (messianism, imperialism and racisms are all western creations). But on the other hand, russophobias were always the product of Empire, be it the Papacy, or the modern Anglo-Zionist Empire. “Normal” countries really have not need for any russophobic ideology or worldview. And since the current US Anglo-Zionist Empire is probably the last western Empire of any kind, there is good hope that imperialism, as a phenomenon, will finally bite the dust. If that ever happens, and I believe that it will, russophobia will finally end up in the same trash heaps of history as all the other ideologies whose sole purpose was to rationalize and explain away western wars of conquest.
I will conclude this review by saying that Mettan’s book absolutely needs to be translated into English and published in the English-speaking world. For the lucky ones who can read French, the book is already available on the French Amazon (https://www.amazon.fr/Russie-Occident-une-guerre-mille-ans/dp/2940523185/) and elsewhere. But since it is the English-speaking world which is now used by the trans-national class of 1%er parasites running the Anglo-Zionist Empire it is absolutely crucial that the English speaking people be given access to this book (at least in the form of a free to copy PDF file).
There is absolutely no objective reason whatsoever for Russia and Europe to be enemies. All the hatred and wars between these two civilizational realms are the product of lies carefully crafted by the common enemies of the people of Russia and the people of Europe. These people also happen to be the enemies of Islam, of Latin America, of China and of any other culture or nation daring to refuse to be subjugated by the trans-national turbocapitalist financial system often referred to as the New World Order (NWO). This is becoming so evident that one is tempted to further simplify the well-known Marxist slogan and say “people of the word – unite!”. I would say that while such a goal is really still far away, there are also some signs that more and more people are beginning to realize this.
Guy Mettan’s book is a formidable deconstruction of the imperialist mindset and as such it is truly a “must read”. It is short, very well written and deserves to printed in million of copies. Alas, this is clearly not going to happen, at least not as long as the media is controlled by the Empire. Still, I hope that Mettan finds a good editor in the USA and that once his book appears in print, he will also release a free PDF versions in French, Russian, Spanish and English.
When the first English translation of the book is made and printed, I will definitely let you all know on the blog. In the meantime, I want to thank Guy Mettan for his formidable contribution to the understanding of this important phenomenon and express my hopes that as many people as possible read his superb book.
PS: please also read the excellent review of this book by Ivo Rens:http://arretsurinfo.ch/guy-mettans-book-on-russophobia-an-important-contribution-to-the-demystification-of-international-relations/.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
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