I don’t see anything new in that particular line of reasoning. “The barbarians at the gates,” is after all a long standing trope. Barbarian tribes that “snuffed out” the light of Rome. And so it goes down through history.
“History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.” — Voltaire
Which gives me a certain hope because it is always the powerful and disdainful of “those” people who paint that image. That everyone else is “barbarians” Europe and England were quite prone to that line of reasoning. See Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden.”
So not shocked that Europe is beset by “savages” and “barbarians”
“disdain for Russians as an uncivilised and backward people, and simultaneously an immeasurable threat looming over Europe.”
Yep. Both are true. They are disdainful and terrified as Rome was by the Visigoths, and the Persians were by Alexander and the Mongols.
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branchandroot
Re: Survey on political violence
Date: 2022-08-22 03:11 am (UTC)“History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below.”
— Voltaire
Which gives me a certain hope because it is always the powerful and disdainful of “those” people who paint that image. That everyone else is “barbarians” Europe and England were quite prone to that line of reasoning. See Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man’s Burden.”
So not shocked that Europe is beset by “savages” and “barbarians”
“disdain for Russians as an uncivilised and backward people, and simultaneously an immeasurable threat looming over Europe.”
Yep. Both are true. They are disdainful and terrified as Rome was by the Visigoths, and the Persians were by Alexander and the Mongols.