tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4251777016037497783.post7338738157640501220..comments2023-12-14T20:02:51.470-06:00Comments on The Heavy Anglophile Orthodox: Their problem, never oursMatthew Franklin Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15233216128641267240noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4251777016037497783.post-82273735124787515532013-10-18T00:45:39.046-05:002013-10-18T00:45:39.046-05:00Hi John!
It's still the Franks, really. Mean...Hi John!<br /><br />It's still the Franks, really. Meaning the French, of course. And also the Netherlands (with the exception of the far northeast) and Germany still speak Germanic tongues sharing close kinship with Frankish.<br /><br />I think you're right, of course, but there's an extra dimension to Russophobia than just the anti-Byzantine legacy of Western thought. At the very least Western Whiggish historians would grudgingly make the concession that the Holy City of S. Constantine Isapostolos was 'civilised', in however condescendingly-orientalist a sense. But the whole notion that Russia is 'barbaric' (an idea called out for its speciousness by no less than GK Chesterton in the New York Times back during WWI) seems to stem in part from their Varangian legacy also.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4251777016037497783.post-36298529948857029012013-10-17T22:13:47.069-05:002013-10-17T22:13:47.069-05:00Russophobia may be one of the last great “respecta...Russophobia may be one of the last great “respectable prejudices” left in the modern Western world. It may also be one of the oldest. As I always like to say, I bet you could trace many of the negative stereotypes about Russia and the Russians to negative Western views of the Byzantine Empire and the Byzantines. Charges of autocracy and ostentatious brutality, for example, often sound similar to what some “Franks” wrote about the “Greeks” back in the Middle Ages. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com