British press and government are using archaic nationalism to promote hostility against Russia, the L'Ordre blog at the Fox-owned Beliefnet website asserts.
In a post titled "Russian aggression, or a war no-one cares about?", the blog notes how the origin of the word "jingoism" came to refer to a British press filled with passion over distant and irrelevant conflicts, appealing to British national pride and honor to promote involvement in such wars. It also carries suggestions of failure with it. Britain's support for the Ottoman Empire against Russia in the previous major Black Sea dispute with Russia in history was unavailing, when the Ottomans were eventually defeated by Russia and had to give up their dominance in the Black Sea.
The war in question, which occurred in 1877-78, reversed the losses sustained by Russia at the hands of a British-Ottoman alliance in the famed Crimean War only decades earlier. Describing the climate of anti-Russian sentiment in Britain as jingoism, and comparing the current crisis in Ukraine with past crises in the Black Sea when Britain sought to contain Russian expansion, the forecast at the L'Ordre blog for British involvement in Ukraine was gloomy:
Eventually, the British public will come to realize that we just aren’t as interested in Ukraine’s future as Russia and some of the other regional players in the conflict are. In the end, the people who actually have a stake in the events in Ukraine are the ones who are going to fight it out tenaciously. This judgment stands even though Britain can proudly boast of having superior soldiers to Russia. No argument about patriotism, national honor, or the balance of power can convince the public that it is worth getting British soldiers killed on a distant and irrelevant battlefield on Russia’s doorstep, in the name of forces that have nothing to do with us and not the slightest understanding of who or what we are about.The blog post also slammed The Guardian for its impassioned pro-Ukrainian coverage of Crimea and the pro-Russia insurgency in Ukraine. The publication has made no secret of cheerleading the British state and even pro-fascist militants in Ukraine, depicting Russia as a savage aggressor in desperate need of containment by British and American forces and Ukrainian nationalists.
Increasing criticism of The Guardian, once everyone's favorite liberal publication, and its policy of censoring comments questioning its reporting has led to a growing community at the website Offguardian, dedicated to continuing the conversations that The Guardian was afraid of.
