How National Stereotypes Are Formed

More than anything else, I declare year 2024 as the death of mainstream media. Never before was their bias, their criminality and total hostility to truth more openly obvious, more flagrantly flaunted by them. Scandal after scandal marred the last few remnant crumbs of credibility that remained, from covering up Biden’s clear dementia, presidential incompetence, and family crimes, to covering for Israel’s genocide all year long, with ‘creative’ formatting and syntax tricks, as well as lack of any impartiality or ability to question the State Narrative. They have exposed themselves as nothing more than an antiquated soapbox of disinformation and narrative control. This year was truly the long-overdue—and much-earned—death of mainstream media as an institution.

Virtually everything of note, any newsworthy revelation or exposé, was broken on either Twitter/X, Substack, or associated ‘citizen journalist’ haven. People are tuning out more and more from corporate legacy programming in general, whether it’s MSM or Hollywood or even major sports—with recent headlines reporting NBA viewership down by 50%, for instance...

--Simplicius76 Substack

December 31, 2024

There are many ways and instruments with which people’s perceptions are conditioned towards various groups and nations, first and foremost of which is mass media. Stereotypes is how much of humanity deals with the multitude of other groups of humans that inhabit this planet. They replace the need for a deeper knowledge, which takes time and effort to acquire. Since most stereotypes are shared by any one group towards other groups, this enables the user of stereotypes to feel educated and informed, at least while he is with his likeminded fellows. However, this often falls flat, when said individual encounters members of the stereotyped groups who defy expectations.

While some stereotypes are at least partially rooted in reality and fact, they allow for few to no exceptions. They are often so exaggerated as to be useless and even harmful when dealing with the stereotyped groups. The Collective West's lazy stereotyping if not outright lies about its designated geopolitical adversaries is a good case in point.

Stereotypes persist, not only due to historic memories of say a perestroika and early 1990s Russia that was highly beggared and dysfunctional, but also as an incredibly useful tool for those in power, used to control the opinions of the masses. What is even scarier is when those in power begin to believe their own stereotypes and outright BS about others and act accordingly. The failed Russian, Iranian, and Chinese sanctions and blowback on the collapsing EU economies are burning examples as we begin 2025.

There used to be a series on Netflix called Vikings, which has been one of my favorite shows over its first four seasons (you can easily watch Netflix in Russia via VPN). Sure, it always played fast and loosely with chronology from real history, compacting some 300 years of historic events into approximately a single generation of 30 years, but it did a good job of capturing the complexity of characters and the often-contradictory behaviors and views of the clashing Norse and other European cultures. Luckily for the show runners, most people watching were and remain clueless about history, especially Europe in the Early Middle Ages. For the rest of us; the show was entertaining enough to look past such historic license.

Then came Season 5 that began the more serious veering off into historical la la land, where alternate reality takes over and any semblance of history takes a far back seat on the bus. The signs of the show runners and script writers wokeness started to become inescapable. One such example was when the Vikings, who were more than happy to raid and murder Christian monks and laity, invaded a Muslim city and found Muslims praying in a mosque and were too stunned and in awe to harm the Muslims…instant respect. I will not even go into girl-boss themes that well outstripped anything resembling historical roles of women in these Norse societies.

But then came Season 6. It was 2019 and the anti-Russian madness of the Western elites was hitting a fever pitch even prior to the SMO, which was only slightly tapered by the upcoming COVID19 “pandemic”. I only watched the first two episodes of Season 6 before I put a big kibosh on the series as a whole and moved on. It was obvious the writers were driven by the Collective West's mania for demonizing all things Russian and any reality be damned, a sorry state of affairs.

Let’s review the gross injustices visited within just these two episodes:

The season opens with the Rus warriors who appear out of the blue and attack a caravan for no good reason than to just enjoy some murder and pillage. The best part is that the caravan is on the Silk Road. Never mind that the Silk Road was not even going through Rus lands for logistical reasons but through Asia Minor at the time, because the Byzantine Eastern Roman Empire centered on what is now Turkey (don't ask how Constantinople got the works) were then the Celestial Middle Kingdom's best customers.

Eds note: the Byzantines or Orthodox Christian Eastern Romans called the contemporary Chinese "The Silk People" and the Great Tang referred to Byzantium near its height as Da Qin. Also we should add here that the depiction of medieval Christianity as well as Islam in the Tang Dynasty capitol in the 2019 Chinese historic suspense/political intrigue thriller which YouTubers refer to as the "24" of China The Longest Day in Chang'an is highly respectful.

Hopefully with Chinese historic drama series becoming bigger and better attracting even non-Asian actors, we'll soon see a series depicting a Chinese envoy in ancient Rus and, in a reversal of the Marco Polo storyline, in the great city of Constantinople itself.

-- James Smith, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher

Oops, we won’t let something trivial as geography or historic reality get in the way of some Russian-bashing, shall we? The key here was to show ancestors of modern Russians as evil warmongers.

Truth be told, when the attack happened, for anyone with any knowledge of historical peoples and their dress, no one could even guess that the Mongol-style uniformed warriors were supposed to be Russians. Seriously? Long fur hats with steel spikes, small round shields, dark cloths and furs? Rus warriors, be they Slavic or mixed Slav-Scandinavian ancestry in origin, dressed a lot like everyone else in Europe. Rus warriors had kite shields or round flat shields, not the round raised shields of the Mongols. If anything, Rus warriors preferred bright colors, especially red.

The protagonists are captured and are than taken to dark, foreboding and oppressive Kiev, the people themselves are mostly shown as dark haired and swarthy complexioned. Never mind that every other Russian is some shade of blonde or redheaded (especially the Northern Eurasian Chuvash people who are more redheaded than the Irish) and looks nothing like an Arab or Persian. And yes, I said Kiev. This was before the outbreak of the Special Military Operation (SMO), when the writers had at least the tiny bit of honesty to show the capital of Rus as its historic place, Kiev. Cannot get that kind of honesty these days, the Collective West has rewritten our entire history for us…at least for the consumption of its own peasants.

So, they arrive in Kiev...and gasp, of course its winter, since every Westerner knows that there is only one season in Russia: winter. For the record, have you ever noticed that in most shows and news stories that cover Russia, everything is gray? Do you honestly believe that even the air in Russia is gray? That fact of the matter, the Western media uses gray shading on the film to give an oppressive feeling. They do similar things with reporting from other countries, such as China or Mexico. This is how perceptions are shaped at a base, subconscious level. Once such shaping has been established, all other stereotyping are than erected on a sound foundation.

Now we meet Prince Igor, who of course just got done murdering someone, that is the daily Russian breakfast ritual, as everyone knows.

Oleg, the Christian who remembers his ancestral Norse tongue....what? The real Oleg was a pagan, a Scandinavian, brother to Rurik, who adopted Rurik’s young son Igor. Oleg and Rurik both came from Denmark, where Rurik was a minor lord...so yes, they would definitely "remember" their ancestral Viking tongue.

Then there is the Christian issue. Oleg was pagan and the first strong Christian influence was St. Olga, the widow of Igor. She was baptized in Constantinople with the Byzantine emperor as her Godfather and that in the second half of her life, so roughly 30 years later. But the Rus nobility was still pagan, and her son Svetoslav the Great was a raging pagan, as were his sons. It was only after his youngest son Vladimir defeated his brothers to claim the throne that he converted to Christianity in midlife and became St. Vladimir Equal to the Apostles, who then proceeded to baptize Rus. A history that Russians and Ukrainians who follow the canonical Orthodox Christian Church share, albeit one that's been highly distorted by Ukrainian nationalists in the (heavily intelligence service influenced) Canadian Ukrainian Diaspora's historiography and more recently, by the post-2014 Maidan regime in Kiev. But, all these events are some 100 years in the future from the years depicted on the show.

Further, Oleg after taking Ivar as a guest proceeds to torture Ivar's henchman. After all, Oleg is Russian and everyone knows that is just what Russians do for fun. In reality, Guest Law was so important that a Rus prince would go to war with another Rus prince if the guest of the first would then go visit the second and be insulted in any way. Honor demanded no less.

Nevertheless, the smears on Rus (who remember, are also ancestors of most modern Ukrainians with the exception of the Galician principality) does not stop at this. The writers in their best woke traditions go after Christianity, especially Orthodox Christianity. It is portrayed as malicious, corrupt and much inferior to Norse paganism.

That is how propaganda works. Other shows like Chernobyl, The Last Tsars, and The Great, about the German-born and German-settlers to Russia welcoming Empress Catherine the Great, all paint similar negative, biased images. Some do it through a base comedy, for example The Great, while others through softer Russophobia, such as Chernobyl and The Last Tsars. All do it through entertainment, since people get bored of brash propaganda, but will be more than happy to absorb the messaging as long as they're entertained. Many such willing victims will even consider themselves intellectuals for having absorbed these absurd story dishes.

In the end, it is up to each individual to decide if he wishes to go along with the groupthink that his corporate and political betters want or to do his own research. Visiting various lands and interacting with the locals is the most profound way to reshape one’s mind to the actual parameters of reality.