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The "LEFT" (I apologize as I don't know what other label to assign)......maybe the "Crazied Russian Haters" is better)....
They hate RUSSIA because: ============================ 1. It's generally an unabashedly orthodox Christian nation; 2. It's largely 'white' - meaning not diverse; 3. It's portrayed as generally 'anti-gay'; 4. Russia appears to still believe there's value in the 'traditional' nuclear family; 5. Russia is very protective of its sovereignty; 6. Russians (as a people) appear to l…
"They hate RUSSIA because"
Because the must have an enemy to focus the masses' hatred on.
It's got almost nothing to do with the items you enumerate. Liberals hate Russia because of the 2016 election -- the release of the Podesta/DNC emails -- and have found that Russia makes an excellent, useful, ongoing focus of fear and hatred, with easily invoked Cold War tropes that still resonate in the cultural memory.
Neoliberals don't give a rat's ass about the strength of e.g., the Russian Orthodox Chur…
Respect your opinion....but disagree with it...
It fails to address even remotely "why Russia"? There's no proof Russia had anything to do with the Wikileaks email postings. The "Cold War" wouldn't resonate with any of these Russia Haters...they can't remember what they had for breakfast let alone concern themselves with 30 years... Evil Empire?? These are not Reaganites... These Russian Haters despise the past... They believe they have nothing to learn from it other than how stupid people…
Honestly, I think you are giving the Neoliberals too much credit. I agree with Mona. Their hatred of Russia is just an easy target to get the non thinking masses focused on as the new bogeyman.
But there are other easy targets if all that's needed is a bogeyman: Iran (which still has "Death to America" ralllies) and China (which really is a geopolitical threat) spring readily to mind. I think Heime Israel's list is a good starting point to explain the choice of this bogeyman. Though the vilification of post-Soviet Russia long predates Orange Man Bad, in fact, it even predates (and to some extent fueled) Vladimir Putin's rise to power. Some of us remember that Wesley Clark and Madeline Albright seemed eager to start WWIII with the Russians in their enthusiasm for backing war-crimes committing Muslim Bosniaks and Roman Catholic Croats in their war with war-crimes committing Orthodox Christian Serbs, that there were voices during the Yeltsin era in Russia that warned against pushing NATO expansion into the former Soviet Union, and thought the fomenting of the "color revolutions" was a bad idea. It would have been far better to embrace Russia as a new friend after the fall of Communism, but instead the neoliberals insisted on keeping Russia, almost definitionally, as an enemy.