The Winter Olympics without Russia is like a sushi festival without Japanese chefs. It’s like a World Series without American players. It’s like a history exam without any mention of the Roman or British Empires.

It’s a travesty.

Thankfully the other nations that inhabit the Arctic climes are represented at the Winter Games, such as the Swedes, Finns, Norwegians, Canadians, and Americans. But the absence of the world’s largest country, and the owner of the most Arctic real estate on Earth — Siberia, anyone? — leaves much to be desired of this year’s quadrennial celebration of winter athletics.

I detest made-up words such as Islamophobia and homophobia, because they are both vapid and misleading. I almost detest the term ‘Russophobia’ for the same reason. However, in the case of Russophobia, the term conveys a truth. Is the rest of the world afraid of Russia? Yes, that is actually true. The real power behind the term, though, is not that the world is afraid of Russia, but that the world is both afraid of Russia and hates Russia. Media outlets such as RT.com use this term to engender sympathy for the Russian government and Russian folk. It’s effective, though hiding behind sympathy is not a great thing in and of itself. It’s how our society got to where it is today, after all. But there is a truth in the term. Much of the rest of the world genuinely hates Russia. The question is why. The answer is simple. It’s because Russia governs itself, as a state and as a folk nation, contrary to the wishes of that part of the world which hates it, i.e. the postmodern West.

Given the close ties between Putin’s Russia and the emerging Chinese superpower, it would be hard to argue that the entire rest of the world hates Russia. It’s just the liberal, postmodern, degenerate West that hates Russia. Not even all of the inhabitants of the West hate Russia. Many Western conservatives and traditionalists are friendly to Russia, ourselves included. But the powers-that-be in our fallen nations hate Russia because it embodies what we wish we could be again: a nation of, by, and for white, Christian, patriarchal people. It doesn’t do it perfectly of course, but it approximates the ideal so much that since Putin started Russia on its trajectory towards respectability on the world stage in the early 2000s, the Western establishment has persistently sought to smear and subvert Russia.

Thankfully with the rise of the Visegrád states, there are other actors on the world stage that illustrate what a self-aware, revitalized Christendom would be like. The Poles and Hungarians are forming a European Dixie amidst the Jacobin, godless European Union. But Russia’s size, military and political might, and legendary history make it the second-most fearsome state to the Western establishment. If Russia truly shook off the shackles of the anti-white, anti-Christian, feminist, LGBTQ establishment and asserted itself on the world stage, the future history of our race and faith would assuredly be brighter than it is today. We have seen some signs of that for nearly two decades, but much is left to be desired.

The doping scandal that the International Olympic Committee claims Russia conducted during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, was the excuse that the Western establishment needed to humble the mighty Russian bear. Still, the rest of the world knows that a Winter Games without the Russians will go down in the record books with asterisks next to it. The best of the world’s athletes will not have all competed in this Olympiad. The athletes of the other nations deserve to face the best, and that includes some Russians. While individual Russian athletes may compete in the Games under another flag, many Russian teams and individuals will not, and that will deprive the Games of their fullness in the same way that the 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics were asterisked by the absence of first the American, and then the Soviet, national teams.

The Games are beautiful and worthy of admiration because they illustrate what man can do in the body that God has given him in His work of creation. Without the Spirit of Christ, though, the Olympics perennially lack the fullness of what man can do on the field of sport. Without the presence of the Russian team in this year’s Winter Olympics, this year’s Games will fall even shorter than in other years.

The quadrennial Games are not the focus of the Olympic Movement. They are merely its worship ceremony. The Olympics have always been a humanistic movement. Sadly the world’s foremost athletic competitions have been used to shame and subvert pro-white, pro-Christian nations before, such as apartheid-era South Africa. This action against the Russians is therefore not without evil precedent.

Lord willing, some day the Western establishment as embodied in the IOC will try to find a way to humble yet another nation when it stands up to embody traditional Christendom. Lord willing, the IOC will tremble when the first-most fearsome state on the planet asserts itself on behalf of Christ and its folk against the globalist establishment. Here’s to the day when not only Russia, but the United States of America, takes on the IOC and wins.