Raging Russophobia in America

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)

I was an adolescent when the Cold War began. I remember the “father of (Soviet Russia) containment” George Kennan and Winston Churchill’s 1946 Fulton, MO “Iron Curtain” speech – later writing about what they both had to say.

In 1947, the Truman Doctrine pledged “support (for) free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

America’s National Security State and NATO began during his tenure. Weeks before Truman launched aggression on the Korean peninsula, using a South Korean proxy, falsely blamed on the North, the Joint State-Defense Department Committee National Security Memorandum No. 68 (NSC-68) began US containment of Soviet Russia.

It disturbingly called the country an enemy “unlike previous aspirants to hegemony…animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own (wishing to) impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.”

Nazi Germany and imperial Japan horrors seemed erased from the public consciousness. The above claim was at a time America was the only global superpower. Soviet Russia was devastated by WW II – needing many years to regain normality.

It didn’t threaten America or the West back then. Nor does the Russian Federation threaten anyone now.

McCarthyism today is back on steroids. Its original incarnation represented baseless slander, unscrupulous fear-mongering, and political lynchings.

Its hearings were political witch-hunts, targeting innocent victims, ruining careers, vilifying targeted subjects as “card-carrying communists,” others called “loyalty risks” – hysteria created for McCarthy’s political gain.

It proved his undoing. He fell from grace – never uncovering a communist threat to America, only the illusion.

During televised June 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings, I watched Army lawyer Joe Welch successfully challenge the disreputable Wisconsin senator.

Exposing his “cruelty (and) recklessness” led to his undoing. His popularity plunged overnight. Senate censure followed during Eisenhower’s tenure.

Notable Senate members at the time included Harry Byrd, William Fulbright, Wayne Morse, Estes Kefauver, Margaret Chase Smith, Paul Douglas, Hubert Humphrey, Everett Dirksen, and Jack Kennedy, among others.

Frank Church was elected in 1956, later chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He co-sponsored a foreign aid bill amendment, halting all funding for war in Southeast Asia he wanted ended.

The likes of the above figures in Washington are long gone, bipartisan neocon extremists replacing them.

Raging Russophobia today is at a greater fever pitch than any earlier post-WW II period in my memory.

I followed it all during my formal working years, long before I began writing as a second career in retirement.

Near unanimous congressional Russophobic rage is the shame the nation, along with the vast majority of House and Senate members supporting endless US wars of aggression.

Media scoundrels cheerlead this appalling agenda instead of responsibly denouncing it – to their shame and disgrace.

NYT and Washington Post editors are perhaps the most despicable of a wretched lot – journalism the way it should be suppressed in their commentaries.

In its latest edition, Times editors invented what they called a “dark bond between President Trump and Vladimir Putin,” claiming it “reached a new level” in Helsinki.

They shamefully accused Trump of “snuggling up to his Russian counterpart…fawning over Mr. Putin,” calling Russia’s democratically elected president a “strongman” – a bald-faced lie!

WaPo editors were just as disgraceful – despicably calling on Congress to “pass a resolution,” turning truth on its head calling Russia a “gangster regime,” urging legislation imposing tougher sanctions, along with a separate measure to perpetuate Mueller’s witch-hunt probe as long as he wishes it continued.

Is impeaching Trump and removing him from office for daring to hold summit talks with Putin coming next?

Responsible US senators and congressmen of a bygone time may be rolling over in their graves because of the deplorable state of US governance today – the most despicable and dangerous in my lifetime.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html