Our politicians and media try to make us hate the Russians - we should hate them instead

I will start this blog with two very different historical tales; it will make sense soon. The first one I'm sure many of you have heard.

In the first year of WW1 on Christmas eve, soldiers from British trenches heard German soldiers singing Silent Night from their trench. Soon after; both sides exchanged messages, gifts, photographs and even met in no-man's-land to bury their dead. There's a legend of football matches taking place along the lines, but little historical evidence. There is however lots of historical evidence for a Christmas truce...

This Christmas truce of 1914 was not repeated. The story goes that officers thought it might be rather difficult to persuade SNCOs and juniors to assault German trenches and kill the inhabitants if they discovered the Germans were human beings just like them.

The second tale comes from Hartlepool; a small north-eastern coastal town in England. During the Napoleonic wars, a French ship had run into trouble off the coast. When the ship sank and wreckage washed ashore, the residents of Hartlepool discovered a monkey dressed in a French uniform. Not having ever seen or spoke to a Frenchman before, they concluded the monkey was a French spy, held a quick trial on the beach and then executed the poor monkey by hanging. The people of Hartlepool are known as "Monkey Hangers" to this day.

My point is that though humans are tribal; familiarity and shared common interests stop us from hating one another. When we meet other people and realise they are just like us, it's very hard for bad people to convince us to kill one another. The more remote and unfamiliar a group of people are, the easier it is to dehumanise and kill them.

Fast forward to 2017 and we've had years of constant hate directed towards the Russians by the political and media classes. Not just Vladimir Putin, but the Russian people as well. In London; far-left candidate for PM Jeremy Corbyn advocated seizing houses and properties owned by the wealthy, the justification given by many of his allies was that these properties were owned by Russian millionaires. The same excuse was used by the EU when they forced Cypriot banks to raid their own customer's deposits.

But by far the biggest Russia hate of all comes from America. Whose media and politicians seem determined to go to war with Russia. The nonsensical claim that "Russia hacked the election" has been repeated Goebels-like; until it has become truth. No-one stopping to think: "What does that even mean, what exact systems did they hack and do you have any proof?"

In reality; any evidence of any "hacking" points to disgruntled people working for the DNC leaking to WikiLeaks because they were angry at how Bernie Sanders was cheated. And the "hacking" was simply revealing the truth and damning the DNC and Clinton with their own words.

Contrast this Russia-hate to what's actually happening online. People from the former iron curtain can talk and make friends with people from the west. In fact many of us here on Steemit use a currency (Ethereum) invented by a Russian. Like those British soldiers in the trench we can look across no-man's-land and see friends rather than enemies. They are just like us. They like the same movies, video games and music.

So we should instead turn our hatred to those who are trying to convince us Russians are our enemy like we're still in the cold war.