Comparison of the fictional concept of Russophobia with anti-Semitism is incorrect, baseless, and manipulative. Russian propaganda emphasizes the allegedly irrational component of Russophobia and compares it to anti-Semitism, although in reality quite realistic fears are raised, in particular, by the neo-imperial policy of aggression, war against Ukraine, Russian threats of nuclear weapons to the world, etc.
Irrational hostility to Jews, attributing fictitious crimes to them (poisoning wells or kidnapping children to use their blood) has nothing to do with the world community’s condemnation of Russia’s real war crimes in Georgia, Syria, and Ukraine.
Promoting alleged Western Russophobia, Russia’s political leadership is trying to justify Russia’s chauvinism, an ideology of Russian national supremacy over other peoples that seeks to justify its desire to dominate other nations and use them for its own geopolitical purposes. This explains one of the justifications for Russia’s war against Ukraine as the rescue of the “younger brother”, who, according to the “older brother”, must determine its domestic and foreign policy solely on his (i.e. Russian) instructions and with his consent.
The Kremlin’s criticism of Russophobia in Europe and the United States was heard long before Russia’s war against Ukraine, but it was rather a “best-defence-is-a-good-offence” strategy. Not only does Russia fail to recognize the chauvinism of its domestic and foreign policy, but it also actively promotes the condemnation of Western values, which, according to the Kremlin, are reduced to the rights of LGBT people and the organization of “colour revolutions” in order to overthrow dictatorial regimes.
To truly counter Russophobia, Russia must critically reconsider its role in World War II (which is virtually prohibited by current Russian law) and condemn the crimes of the Soviet regime (which is also impossible, especially after the liquidation of Memorial, an NGO that investigated political repressions in the USSR) both in the USSR and in the former socialist countries, as well as to abandon its chauvinistic domestic and foreign policies.
