What to Make of This?

Found the above Latuff drawing at Pepe Escobar’s Telegram along with some new information and knew something needed to be done to advance the image and information. I found the following text there and tried to find the original writer. What I found was the complete text at a site called Gagrule.net attributed to Jeffery Sachs entitled “I want to take it back to the 1840s, to the real roots of hegemony, which is Great Britain” and implies being an excerpt from an interview:

“I want to take it back to the 1840s, to the real roots of hegemony, which is Great Britain. There was never a hegemon with such ambition and a curious view of the world. But Britain wanted to run the world in the 19th century and taught America everything it knew. Recently, I read a fascinating book by a historian named J.H. Gleason, published by Harvard University Press in 1950. It’s a fascinating book called ‘The Genesis of Russophobia in Great Britain.’ The question is, where did England’s hate of Russia come from? Because it’s actually a little surprising. Britain has HATED Russia since the 1840s and launched the Crimean War that was a war of choice in modern Parliament—a war of choice by Palmerston in the 1850s—because it hated Russia. So, this author tries to understand where this hate came from, because it was the same kind of iterative hate that we have now.

And by the way, we hated the Soviet Union because it was Communist, but we hated Russia afterwards when it wasn’t communist. It doesn’t matter. So, it’s a deeper phenomenon, and he tries to trace where this hatred came from. The fascinating point is, Russia and Britain were on the same side in the Napoleonic Wars from 1812 to 1815, from the Battle of Moscow in Russia to Napoleon’s defeat in Waterloo. They were on the same side, and in fact, for many years, the relations weren’t great, but they were kind of normal. So, this historian reads every snippet of the newspapers, what’s written, of the speeches, to try to understand where the hatred arose.

The key point is there was no reason for it. There was nothing that Russia did. Russia didn’t behave in some perfidious way. It wasn’t Russian evil; it wasn’t that the tsar was somehow off the rails. There wasn’t anything except a self-fulfilling lather built up over time because Russia was a big power and therefore an affront to British hegemony. This is the same reason why the US hates China: not for anything China actually does but because it’s big. It’s the same reason, until today, that the United States and Britain hate Russia—because it’s big.

So, the author concludes that the hate arose around 1840 because it wasn’t instantaneous, and there was no single triggering event. The British got it into their crazy heads that Russia was going to invade India through Central Asia and Afghanistan—one of the most bizarre, phony, wrongheaded ideas imaginable—but they took it quite literally. And they told themselves this: ‘We’re the imperialists. How dare Russia presume to invade India?’ when it had no intention of doing so. So, my point is, it’s possible to have hate to the point of war and now to the point of nuclear annihilation for no fundamental reason. Talk to each other.” [Emphasis Original]

I found the book’s text online and linked to it above, although I’ve yet to read it completely, but the introduction and initial paragraph are quite fascinating as the author was researching and signed his Forward in July 1949. Here’s the first chapter’s opening paragraph:

Russophobia is a paradox in the history of Great Britain. Within the United Kingdom there developed early in the nineteenth century an antipathy toward Russia which soon became the most pronounced and enduring element in the national outlook on the world abroad. The contradictory sequel of nearly three centuries of consistently friendly relations, this hostility found expression in the Crimean War. Yet that singularly inconclusive struggle is the sole conflict directly between the two nations; theirs is a record of peace unique in the bellicose annals of the European great powers. And in the three primary holocausts of modern times, in which among the major powers Great Britain alone escaped defeat, her victory thrice depended on the military collaboration of Russia. Why then did Russophobia become a persistent British sentiment?

Why indeed. And given the inferred logic of having been rescued three times by Russia, why such vehemence? I for one am curious about the author’s subsequent thoughts on the subject as the Cold War escalated. The book is volume 57 of the Harvard Historical Studies and is related to Gleason being a specialist in English History according to the bio available at Claremont University, the successor to Pomona College where he taught. It appears unlikely that any further illumination from Gleason will be forthcoming. However, there’s a very informative review here that tells us “the book was written before 1936” which I find quite odd given when Gleason signed his Forward. The book’s very rare; I couldn’t find a used copy anywhere. Aside from the text reproduction linked above, The Archive provides a reprint, not the original; so, IMO the only place to find it would be in a major university library. Reading the Review informs me of some aspects of history that I was unaware of from the 1820-1840 time period making me want to have time to study it more.

But back to Sachs’s question: Why in particular did the USA ape UK hatred for Russia? IMO, the answer lurks in US racism toward the “swarthy” immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe that arrived in great numbers beginning in the 1870s for besides their appearance, odd languages, religions, and names, they also brought revolutionary politics in a variety of forms since they were generally fleeing Imperial autocratic Empires. Labor History from roughly 1870 to 1920 that culminated with the Red Scare provides great insight into the battle between capitalists often described as Plutocrats and those who they employed, which mostly were the great mass of immigrants since most Americans farmed their own land and had their own issues with banks and railroads, so those two great classes were separated in many ways that made them easy to manipulate. The main point here is the proto-industrial class within the USA was mostly composed of immigrants, some having been influenced by the revolutions of 1848 and Paris Commune of 1871 as well as many other struggles. Business cycles at this stage in industrial capitalism were marked by Boom & Bust and rather few know of the Panic of 1873 that spawned the Long Depression of 65 months, some 20 months longer than during the 1930’s Great Depression. All of these factors contributed to a slowly simmering social ferment that boiled over in several major events—the Great Strike of 1877, many local labor wars and the Haymarket Massacre in 1886 that was interrupted by the assassination of President Garfield in 1881, the killer being somewhat representative of the era’s very messy politics.

These turbulent times and their events need to be seen from the Plutocrat POV for like today they had great control over the national political processes which were engaged to protect and further their interests, although the actual dynamic was rather different as there was no regulatory “branch” of the executive to control as what was known as the “Spoils System” existed until 1883 and provided for a greater meritocratic system than before, although the graft and corruption of the Spoils System still exists with presidential appointments. US Imperial aspirations have always been a factor within Plutocratic desires that actually began before and were a major reason for the Revolutionary War. The initial overseas aims were with Cuba and Central America, Nicaragua specifically prior to the Civil War. In 1852, the USA essentially invaded Japan to force it to accept American trade, and the USA also participated in the Opium War with the UK against China using Turkish opium as its medium. This short item describes the outward aspects of that activity. In order to fuel the ships of that era which saw coal-powered steam overtake sail only, coaling stations were required which meant the need to establish them at islands in the Pacific whether the natives wanted them or not; so, on that point the US followed the UK’s examples. What happened in Hawaii is the best known example. And it must be noted that during this era the US Navy followed the traders and missionaries. That US methods were much like the British should come as no surprise as there was considerable intermingling of elite families and a great deal of business investment took place meaning British financial interests sought political influence alongside their American cousins in Washington. One particular shared trait resulted—unilateral action and the arrogance and superiority that comes with it. And those traits were particularly manifested within finance on both sides of the Atlantic as the British Landlord Class and their banker allies sought to turnback the efforts of what are known as the Classical Political-Economists to eliminate their ability to seek and capture economic rents from land and monopolies/trusts and similar business formations. The most critical effort was made to overturn the idea of unearned income and to install the doctrine that all income is earned—there’s no free lunch.

One other principle existing in the West for several thousand years is all debts must be paid, so no defaults, no bankruptcies without very severe consequences like prison, although there was one exception—Loans to governments to finance wars were most often forgiven, but such loans differed from bonds. So, with Russia’s 1917 Revolution and Lenin’s victory, it wasn’t the revelation of the Secret Treaties that riled the West; it was the defaulting on all Russian bonds worth many millions of pounds and dollars, meaning that the #1 form of wealth owned by Western Elites was confiscated (Sanctioned). That wealth confiscation and the tenets of Communism espoused by Team Lenin and other European Socialists are IMO the genuine reasons for modern Russophobia that was immediately mounted atop the already existing anti-Russian sentiment caused by the phobias that powered what was known as The Great Game, which supposedly ended in 1907 with the Anglo-Russian Convention dealing with the partition of Persia/Iran. But Mackinder had already formulated his Heartland Theory of geopolitics in 1904, which had already supplanted the Great Game thus modernizing it. For the British, democracy was anathema which shows very clearly even today and the idea of peasant equality and elimination of class privileges on top of the attack on wealth was more than enough to fuel Western intervention in Russia’s Civil War and the massive attack on civil liberties within the USA known as the Red Scare and continued with the Anti-Communist Crusade.

The loss of Russia as an object of exploitation and the monies that would bring elites along with what was seen as a theft of wealth and with two philosophical chasms, one in religion the other in political-economy, I see as the primary reasons for Russophobia and for the American mania depicted in the header cartoon. IMO, the arrogant aim to establish American Primacy after WW2 and the need to defeat all challengers to that Primacy differs very little from Hitler’s megalomania and Mafia mentality. The formulation of the Plutocratic POV in what’s now called Globalist Thought was built over a long period of time, but dramatically accelerated since 1900. The Imperial Japanese formed an interesting moniker for Americans—Yankee Devil Dogs. That’s what I see depicted by Latuff. As far as I can tell, there’s no reasoning within Hitlerian or Mafia thought, just the attaining and keeping of power via coercion and nothing else—obey us or die; or if you obey, we won’t kill you—yet.

Humanity is now busily engaged in trying to oust such reasoning from all discourse by disarming the Outlaw US Empire’s primary method of exerting control via the global financial system and dollar as primary reserve currency. Two military conflicts are also happening that are directly related in Ukraine and Palestine, as well as West Asia generally—the key pivot to the modern heartland. For another POV about the past 500 years of history and what’s happening today, I highly suggest this interview with Professor Glen Diesen that’s related to his newest book, The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order. Professor Diesen has published several very important books over the last ten years and is now part of The Duran Team. His Russia’s Geoeconomic Strategy For Greater Eurasia is freely available online here and remains valid despite its age. My essays and primary documents, Diesen’s books, Dr. Hudson’s books, the Geopolitical Economic Hour with Hudson and Radhika Desai (newest episode linked), Pepe Escobar’s frequent articles (newest linked), Bernhard’s insightful articles at Moon of Alabama, and many more sources are all trying to keep us all abreast of this conflict which can also be termed a project—The Project to End WW2 Once and For All and Bring Humanity the Four Freedoms.

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