Blame Russia: The Lie Holding the West Together | Prof. Yakov Rabkin

The West’s contemporary politics are held together less by shared ideals than by shared enemies. The conversation with Prof. Yakov Rabkin lays out a provocative throughline: Russophobia today plays the role anti-Semitism once did — an emotionally charged, often-irrational myth that rallies populations, silences inconvenient questions about economic policy, and legitimizes militarization. Far from being a spontaneous mass prejudice, this form of othering is deeply woven into the fabric of European colonial imagination, economic crisis, and elite strategy. Understanding how these threads connect helps explain why public debate narrows at moments of crisis, why diplomacy is being displaced by deterrence, and how cultural stereotypes become instruments of policy. ## Nazi racism and colonial thinking The genealogy of contemporary Russophobia is inseparable from nineteenth- and twentieth-century European racial thought. As Rabkin emphasizes, the Nazis did not invent the trope of the Asiatic, savage other when they labeled Slavs “untermenschen”; they recycled a broader colonial logic that had long justified conquest and dispossession. The Nazi project — as he points out — fused anti-Semitic and Russophobic narratives into a single rationale for extermination and land seizure: Slavs and Jews were cast as both internally degenerate and externally threatening, requiring violent removal to make room for “civilization.” This was not an anomaly of German thought alone. The pattern of presenting foreign peoples as inferior to legitimize land appropriation echoes older European projects of imperial expansion — from settler colonialism in the Americas to atrocities in Southwest Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. The continuity is instructive. Genocidal logic rested on portraying targeted populations as both contemptible and cataclysmically dangerous — simultaneously infantilized and apocalyptic. That contradiction is precisely what makes such propaganda so emotionally potent: it sanctions cruelty while insisting on existential threat. Rabkin’s reminder that millions of Slavic civilians were deliberately killed in World War II alongside the Jewish genocide underscores that historical memory is selective and politically molded. The colonial imagination normalized racial hierarchies and justified mass violence; its residues continue to shape which victims are recognized and which are marginalized. ## Racism, essentialism and inequality 00: 19:29 Demodernization and private anger Racism, in Rabkin’s analysis, is rooted in essentialism: the practice of attributing fixed traits to groups and explaining complex social dynamics through those traits rather than structural causes. Whether the prejudice is directed at Jews, Russians, Blacks, or Muslims, it serves the same social function — to transform anger about economic and political arrangements into hatred of scapegoated others. The speaker’s concept of “demodernization” frames this turn: as postwar promises of progress and equitable modernization fray, societies revert to pre-modern explanations — mystical gurus, moralized failure, and personalized remedies — that depoliticize inequality. Demodernization is not merely cultural nostalgia; it is a political process whereby public problems become privatized. When economic distress is narrated as individual failure rather than systemic theft, class consciousness dissolves. The result is a privatization of anger: citizens are encouraged to look inward for solutions and to accept massive wealth disparities as inevitable. In this context, racism and other hatreds are politically useful. They redirect blame away from those who profit from inequality. As Rabkin notes, when 17 people hold as much wealth as half the planet, the social fabric cannot sustain genuine democratic accountability; instead, elites manufacture external enemies to keep attention off the domestic distribution of power and resources. ## Why elites need enemies The instrumental logic of enemy-making is simple and old: elites facing domestic unrest can deflect dissent by promoting fear of an external foe. The conversation stresses that militarization offers a convenient remedy for systemic discontent. When political and economic systems fail to deliver, investing in war — or the rhetoric of war — can temporarily unify a population around a manufactured crisis. Historically familiar patterns recur: inflating threats, expanding military budgets, and galvanizing national identity at the expense of addressing structural grievances. Rabkin points out that this is not a conspiracy theory but a recurrent policy pattern. John Stuart Mill’s nineteenth-century critique of manufactured “Russophobia” is offered as historical precedent: governments have long exploited fear of foreign powers to rationalize disproportionate military spending. The Cold War left institutional memories and cultural grooves that make Russia especially easy to recast as perennial threat. In the twenty-first century, the economic and political crises of advanced democracies create a strong incentive for ruling classes to reactivate these grooves. Thus, the persistence of Russophobic rhetoric across decades reflects both historical continuity and a contemporary elite strategy: keep the people looking outward so they won’t look up. ## Stereotypes, diplomacy and deterrence Stereotypes do more than inflame public sentiment; they constrain policy. When a state is widely represented as inherently belligerent, unpredictable, or backward, the range of acceptable responses narrows. Diplomatic engagement requires recognizing the adversary’s agency, interests, and rationality; stereotypes reduce an opponent to caricature, making negotiation seem naïve or dangerous. Rabkin observes that the current discourse increasingly privileges deterrence over diplomacy because it is easier to justify hardened military postures when the other side has been turned into a monstrous type. This dynamic has political consequences beyond rhetoric. If an actor is believed incapable of rational compromise, investment in coercive strategies becomes the default. That choice reshapes budgets, institutions, and public expectations: more money for armaments, less for social welfare; more surveillance, less deliberation; more secrecy, less accountability. The discourse of existential threat also raises the threshold for dissent at home, placing critics within the frame of “softness” or even collusion. The stereotyping of Russia thus operates as a policy tool that both manufactures consent for militarization and erodes the channels through which peaceful conflict resolution might have been pursued. ## Anti-Semitism, Israel and public debate The conversation juxtaposes the politics of Russophobia with how anti-Semitic tropes have been weaponized in debates over Israel and Zionism. Rabkin, who has written on Israel, highlights the ease with which collective identities and historical grievances are mobilized to silence dissent. Anti-Semitic stereotypes can be invoked to delegitimize criticism of Israeli policy by conflating political critique with bigotry. Conversely, accusations of anti-Semitism can themselves become mechanisms to shut down debate — a rhetorical shield that protects certain policy choices from scrutiny. What emerges is an observation about the fragility of public discourse: meaningful criticism of state actions requires space to distinguish between legitimate political contestation and hateful generalizations. When collective images of friend and foe harden, nuance disappears. This runs both ways — communities targeted by prejudice suffer silencing, while political actors exploit claims of bigotry to immunize themselves from accountability. The net effect is impoverished debate: complex histories and policies are compressed into moral binaries that serve domestic political imperatives rather than democratic deliberation. ## Empire, culture and ra

Blame Russia: The Lie Holding the West Together | Prof. Yakov Rabkin If all else fails, go to war with Russia. It's an age old European strategy to keep their own population from revolting against their economic slave-masters. And sure enough, the 21st century is no exception. The elites would rather have a nuclear war with Russia than admit that their economic policies at home are ruining the continent. For this, one only needs to reactivate age-old Russophobic tropes. And here we go. Like Anti-semitism is wielded against the enemy within, Russophobia has a very specific political purpose to rally people up against the external enemy. That dynamic is now in full swing.. Dr. Yakov Rabkin, emeritus professor of history at the University of Montreal, discusses the links between Russophobia, anti-Semitism, racism, and war. He explains how stereotypes turn groups into simple enemies, block public debate, and support militarization. The conversation also covers colonial ideas, economic inequality, “demodernization,” Israel and Zionism, and why diplomacy is being replaced by deterrence. Links: Yakov Rabkin website: https://yakovrabkin.ca/ Yakov Rabkin on Academia.edu: https://independent.academia.edu/YRabkin Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Merch: https://neutralitystudies.com /shop Donation: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Timestamps: 00:00:00 Russophobia and anti- Semitism 00:07:11 Nazi racism and colonial thinking 00:13:25 Racism, essentialism and inequality 00: 19:29 Demodernization and private anger 00:24:46 Why elites need enemies 00:35:04 Stereotypes, diplomacy and deterrence 00:46:51 Anti-Semitism, Israel and public debate 00:54:09 Empire, culture and racism #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies, today again with the always brilliant Dr. Jakob Rapkin, an emeritus professor of history at the University of Montreal. Jakob, welcome back. #Yakov Rabkin Thank you. #Pascal Jakob, we recently met in Russia, where we were at a conference about Russophobia, and you made a very important observation — that the stereotype of Russophobia we talked about has a lot of resemblance to the stereotype of anti-Semitism. You yourself wrote a lot about the topic of Israel, about the way Israel uses and abuses a couple of stereotypes, and we should probably discuss this one. What are these resemblances between the two stereotypes? -- 1 of 18 -- #Yakov Rabkin Well, if you permit, I'll start with a joke. It happens in Berlin in 1938, after the pogrom of Kristallnacht, and two Jews meet in a street in Berlin. One of them notices that the other one has a copy of the Völkischer Beobachter, the notoriously anti-Semitic newspaper. He says, "How can you read this?" He says, with a lot of indignation. The other replies, "Look, it gives me solace. It's so bad around here, and I open this newspaper — we are the most powerful, we control the world. It really is very pleasant." And this joke really illustrates the same thing about Russophobia. So, on the one hand, Russia is a retarded, underdeveloped, cruel entity. On the other hand, it can't win in Ukraine; it's losing the war. But on the other hand, militarized because it's about to invade Lisbon. So you have these incompatible messages that are broadcast in the case of anti-Semitism and Russophobia. And they don't seem to disturb a lot of people because they are essentially irrational. They work on your emotions. Therefore, your rational analysis, which really is not particularly complicated, would say, well, you can't have an army that is so retarded and uses chips from washing machines for the military and at the same time is about to invade the entire Europe. And no one asks the question, why? What's the purpose? And I think this characterizes the times that we are living in. While anti- Semitism has been discredited after the Second World War, Russophobia wasn't. And both of them originate, well, I would say in the 19th century. Definitely, the two terms, Russophobia and antisemitism, emerged in the 19th century. In one case, it was a Jewish Viennese intellectual who introduced the term “antisemitic prejudice.” And Russophobia was introduced by a Russian intellectual and writer, poet Tyutchev, pretty much at the same time, in a letter to his daughter. He wrote that there is a certain—if you allow me, I think I'll quote it directly from the letter because it's interesting. It's quite interesting that he was writing in a private letter. He was saying to his daughter in 1867, a contemporary phenomenon which takes a more and more... #Yakov Rabkin Pathological character. It's Russophobia in certain otherwise honorable Russians. I quoted it in the original French because that's how the intellectuals in the mid-19th century communicated with each other. And it is very telling that Russophobia was first coined as a term in Russia, with respect to Russians who hate themselves, so to speak. Again, we are talking about another 19th-century term, which is more often used with respect to Jews—self-hate. So you have those two phenomena, Russophobia and anti-Semitism, emerging. Of course, the word Russophobia in English appeared earlier. What I found is that it was John Stuart Mill who criticized the government at the time for unnecessarily inflating the British military budget to counter an exaggerated threat from the Russian Empire. Does it sound familiar? #Pascal -- 2 of 18 -- Copy-paste? Two hundred years and nothing changed. Yes. #Yakov Rabkin So, Mill stated, I quote, "The real cause, however, is one which would not have been convenient to evoke. The ministers are smitten with the epidemic disease of Russophobia." #Pascal You know, we've discussed this a lot, and it is really fascinating that you have, again and again, these stereotypes coming up, right? Of what the Russian is, the Russian and the Jew. These are quite important figures—straw man stereotypes—in order to ratchet up political favor on the other side to then counter that, right? That's also what the joke you quoted alludes to, right? So you need to create something that is at the same time ridiculous but scary. What other kinds of parallels are there, and do you think that this contemporaneous nature of the two stereotypes is coincidental, or do they actually go together? Because, like, Russia, the lands of Russia and the Slavic lands were, of course, also largely populated with quite a big proportion of Jews compared to, let's say, Western Europe at the time. #Yakov Rabkin Well, definitely. And if we look at the hatred of the Jews, anti-Semitism and Russophobia, they merged in the minds of the Nazis. #Pascal Hmm. #Yakov Rabkin Because they were fighting against Judeo-Bolsheviks. For them, Bolsheviks were Russian, and the way they presented Russians—and of course, they rarely used the term “Soviet.” They used “Russian” when they were invading the Soviet Union. They considered the Russians as Mongols, Asiatic hordes, and they said they attacked the Russians so that they should not invade the pristine, cultured Europe. So the whole idea of attacking the Soviet Union was wrapped in Russophobia and, of course, anti-Semitism. And the orders that the German military received as they invaded the Soviet Union were, well, it's going to be a different war. It's not the same war that you waged in France. Here, it's a Vernichtungskrieg. That's the extermination war. And they were quite true. For once, they didn't -- 3 of 18 -- mislead anyone because, and this is very important, there were at least 10 million Slavs—Russians, Poles, others—who were killed by the Nazis, civilian Slavs. But somehow, it passes under the radar of our historical memory. We focus on the 6 million murdered Jews. #Pascal Six million. #Yakov Rabkin Yeah, six million. But we somehow forget about the others who were, well, the Gypsies. But today we are talking about Russophobia, so I'm putting emphasis on the extermination of the Slavic population. And that Slavic population had to be exterminated because they were presented as untermenschen, as an inferior kind of people. And moreover, these so-called untermenschen had to be eliminated because the fertile lands were to be colonized by German peasants, and they didn't need so much labor there. So you have to exterminate the population to make room for the onset of civilization. That's how it was presented. And I think it is very important to understand the, I would say, equal opportunity genocide that existed during the Second World War. #Pascal You're putting it into very provocative words, but equal opportunity genocide being then, of course, the genociding of everybody on these lands, right? Not just the Jews. I mean, you get rid of the others too. And in a very sad way, this is, you know, it's not that different from this idea of Lebensraum in America, of the West, of manifest destiny. That's where one is supposed to go. And over there, the result that we see is, of course, the one that was described by Hitler for the East, with a completely new population then taking over the lands and today living on those lands. So in a very sad sense, what we're seeing is just a continuation of the European approach to colonizing lands, don't we? #Yakov Rabkin True. In fact, the first genocide that the Germans committed was not even in Europe. It was in Southwest Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. Right. But that didn't register in the collective memory of Europe. #Pascal In Namibia, right? The Namibian genocide. #Yakov Rabkin -- 4 of 18 -- Very, very little. So I think that the colonial attitude, the racist attitude, is very deeply ingrained in European history. We talk about, even though today often you hear that American troops were fighting against forces of racism in Europe, well, the American army was segregated. And when, I think it was de Gaulle who asked Eisenhower at the liberation of Paris that the French units should be the first to enter Paris rather than the Americans, the answer was, okay, provided they're white. And there weren't too many white Frenchmen in the army at that time. #Pascal The racism at the core of these kinds of European projects, be it whichever it is, is quite staggering. And the thing, though, is that the memory about it today tries to portray everything as an anti-racist struggle, when in fact, if we look at the sources, as you're doing, you see, like, no, there was racism on all sides embedded in it. Do you think, though, that the racism—because one of the things that we also came to, of course, in the conference—is that Russophobia, just like anti-Semitism, is a form of racism. Do you think that these two types of racism, though, kind of stand out, or not stand out, but are different from, like, let's say, the racism against Blacks or against Asians? Or are they more or less the same? #Yakov Rabkin Well, I tend to think that racism includes different kinds of discrimination and negative attitudes and so on. And it's based on essentialism. What is essentialism? When you ascribe certain qualities, properties, certain modes of behavior to groups, and you say, well, Jews are—and then you put adjectives that you like. And the Russians are so-and-so. And the Blacks are—you know, it's the same thing. Now, the good question is, why did the murder of Jews attract so much attention, whereas the murder of other people in Europe and outside of Europe didn't? It didn't. And I think that here, I think it was Aimé Césaire, a Martinican intellectual, who wrote in 1955—and I'm paraphrasing—he said, the reason we focus so much on the Holocaust is that for the first time, mass murder of Europeans took place, whereas in previous cases in Africa, Asia, Latin America, they were killing non-Europeans and no one paid attention. #Pascal But that definition of his actually excludes the Slavs from the group of Europeans too, right? Because they are Europeans, and he forgets about those as well, as you just point