Now that a number has been found from which to obtain a mathematical measure of the hatred Americans arguably profess to have for Russia and as would be predicable, for everything Russian, the time is maybe nigh to offer a sketch of the genealogy of that hatred. While it would be hard intellectual work to commit to a detailed history of such hatred, a genealogy of the general attitude that the American nation has traditionally or typically exhibited toward Russia is manageable. But two caveats are in order before committing to that. The first one is, there seems to exist no historical or journalistic evidence on reciprocation from the Russians to the American hatred for them, and for anything related to their nation. For one thing about the nation of Washington and Jefferson has remained true throughout history: Americans are easy to love; it is however true that this is often part of the problem. And another thing is also true: what today can be easily recognized as acerbic hatred for Russia from the American side, was not always readily understood to be so.
To stay within the self-imposed restriction indicated above, let’s point out right away that the genealogy of the American hatred toward Russia we are witnessing today has its bibliographical site in Tocqueville's magnificent book, Democracy in America Democracy in America (Ps. 395-96) and Ps. 629-30). Therein, the French political philosopher made the most fundamental observation to date that has ever been made about America vis-a-vis Russia. It has the distinction of having been the earlier of its kind; geometrically precise, it still shows its long-lasting foresight. Thus, Tocqueville observed that, to paraphrase him, having emerged at about the same time into history and having been forged almost in "obscurity," without the concert of the nations of the world taking notice, both Russia and America have managed to occupy their respective places among them in an almost natural way, both of them growing and developing at almost the exact same pace, and each acquiring defined shape and character from the very start. More importantly, the almost similar way in which both nations came unto themselves as they inserted themselves into modern historicity, revealed they both possessed equivalent quanta of willpower. That means that the naturally stored Will in the mind and soul of the Russian people matched that of the politically stored Will of the Americans, or at the very least, of their leading classes. All this, Tocqueville underlies, made America and Russia much like each other—if only to a point, for the historical parallelism between them ends here.
That is because, while Russia came into the world as the continued reorganization and redirection in the political sphere of an ancient order based and sustained through ethnic inheritance, and therefore the Will is inherent to them (in their land, beliefs, popular psychology, and the rituals of their form and understanding of Christianity), America is the political product of a rupture not only with their ethic inheritance (with the traditions, beliefs, and the idiosyncrasies which, being them originally British, would have naturally been theirs. That is, whereas Russia represents a historical continuum of the Russian nuclear family ethos and structures, America represents a rupture, a violent break from their own family, which also happened to be their business partners—who had gone rogue. These similarities and differences are what lend the Russians and the Americans their respective essential characteristics at all the different levels and are constantly there whenever they come to face to face with each other.
As the Frenchman would have observed, America and Russia came into modern historicity representing two diametrically opposed, potentially conflictual modes of being. Whereas the former was born democratic, the latter was born aristocratic. The Americans, to the extent that they incarnate the origin of their nation, are democratic in manners and attitudes, both individually and collectively. For their part, the Russians, also qualifiedly, are aristocratic in character and manners, and in their modes of thinking. So being it, historically destined to self-differentiation, the Russians, and the Americans, were on the same historical logic destined to tense competition, to coexist in friction, and their respective interests in their world to coexist arranged in opposition to each other. Yet, because America is the product of a violent break with its own past and it is therefore “revolutionary” in the ideologically determined meaning of this term, the strange notion and sense of it being somewhat superior and more historically “advanced” than Russia, and therefore to have been born in the “right” side of history, in time became integral to its national self-consciousness. That is the essence of what gets referred to by students of American history as “the American exceptionalism.” Americans generally believe they are an “especial exception,” a notion which however is at odd with their claim to being a democratic nation. Not that the contradiction therein is made a note of.
But however true, none of the above has never meant cooperation between them would be impossible, and even desirable, although at times more from one of the two sides than from the other, although always proceeding from contrary motivations.
An early, prominent example of the tense and frictional cooperation between the Americans and the Russians is offered by the America military intervention in Russia in 1918 on behalf of the Kerensky government after the fall of Czar Nicholas II. However desirable that in retrospect it would have been if the American had succeeded in transplanting their capitalist system to Russia, which was the undeclared strategic goal of their military presence on Russian soil, Woodrow Wilson didn't even try to first obtain the consensus or consent from the Russian people and their leaders. So, America sought to extrapolate and impose an economic system that nobody in Russia was asking for and that in fact was being rejected by the Bolsheviks as a matter of principles. And thus, from its first grand-scale attempt to "cooperation," the democratic mode of the Americans easily gave way to suspicion, and hence to confrontation with the aristocratic character of the Russians. Despite that fracas, if not exactly friends, the two nations have always done whatever possible within the realm of their political realities and in accordance with their respective interests not to view each other as outright enemies.
That such has been the case is demonstrated by the even more prominent example in their tense competitive relations— in the three-way alliance between the British and the Americans, with the abominable dictator, Stalin. The reign of terror imposed by Stalin on his own people and on large swaths of Europe should have on principles forbid the self-proclaimed stalwart of capitalist western democracy from coming to any kind of agreement with his Soviet dictatorship. But paradoxically, it was during this most perilous moment in the entire history of the West that Russia and America came the closest to each other, forging a tactical alliance even when mutually mistrusting one another. While Russia needed the Americans to keep fascism from taking over and subjugating the Russian population, as it had already begun doing, America needed Russia not necessarily to defeat fascism but for the again undeclared purpose of preventing the Germans and the Japanese from together dividing up Russia's natural wealth between themselves and thus leaving it out of the take.
Thus, one more time the element of tense cooperation between the democratic and the aristocratic nation can be detected here, made more conspicuous by the ulterior motivations of at least one of the two parties not being openly stated for such “cooperation.” That, however, is not to say such ill-at-ease alliance did not bear its fruits in the destruction of German fascism while the Russians at the same time succeeded in preserving their territorial integrity. On the other hand, that America cared less about defeating the Nazis than about creating the conditions for a return to transplanting its capitalist scheme to Russia in the event of a Soviet defeat by Hitler is reflected in its benevolent willingness to temporize and negotiate with the civil and military remnants of fascism after their defeat, by far and large by Russia, although with the indispensable American participation. In all this, the discrepancies between the democratic mindset of the Americans and the aristocratic spirit of the Russians shine through.
Yet, although hardly consistently or in good faith from either side even during perilous crisis the Americans and the Russians always found ways to at the very least keep talking to each other. So, not even when the "contentment" of Russia became the epicenter of the American foreign policy (1947), did that change. Only presently have the uneasy relations between Russia and America completely morphed from tense, cat-and-mouse competition into open, hold-not-barrel animosity and rivalry. The question logically is Why so, and why now?
A possible answer could be suggested that the Tocqueville insights into the differences and similarities of the Russians and the Americans needed enough time to be made part of the national consciousness via assimilation, adaptation, and reworking of its meaning by the political establishment and the cultural elites—the White House, the American political party system, and Hollywood.
If this is the correct answer it would mean that such insights would have by now fully been digested and assimilated, and that what we are presently witnessing for instance in Ukraine, is literally the long-shot off-shoot of such an assimilation. But no, or at least not totally. For, the meaning of the Tocqueville observation under consideration has in its essence for long been fully digested by the American political establishment, and it has been passed down and around through the whole echelon of the American power system. But maybe not its significance. The belief that aristocratically born Russia is the natural enemy of the democratically born America is a primary element, or rather the tenet of the American political consciousness. As such, that determines all the rationales that guides the American almost blind efforts to impose its brand of "democracy" on any country that lets them to, and the reason it accepts no other brands of the same product. To be sure, what America ultimately vies for is capitalism, democracy or not; but it also knows its brand of this product sells better under the democratic slogan. Hence although historically unvalidated, Americans relate to the concept of "democracy" as the inventor relates to his invention: they claim patent protection over it and willfully ignore that democracy came around thousands of years before the birth of their nation.
Consequently, as if to fulfill the significance of the Tocqueville observation, the aristocratic character of the Russian and the aristocratic Russian ways and ideas are to be denied, opposed, and demonized. So does the democratically born nation fulfills its democratic destiny, as it sees it. Even if mistakenly so, the Americans must of course regard democracy a the new, as the modern form of government and of society simply because, having no prior history, their nation was born into modernity, through democratic means. And this fact necessarily perpetually misleads their understanding of themselves as the natural "representatives" of the future, of whatever has a right to proclaim itself "new," legitimately or not, and wherever and whenever it would take place. Therefore, as it has been remarked many times before by various authors, Americans love the new solely for its "newness," something off-handedly rejected by the aristocratic spirit. The manner of the American national self-understanding decrees that Americans should oppose or cultivate animosity with any nation that, except when it reserves capitalist gains exclusively for American interests, does not claim for itself the "democratic" branding. And these are at the same time the explanation for why America should have been naturally inclined to genuine friendship with Revolutionary Russia, and for why it had to oppose it even more.
So that, the national political self-identity of the Americans is at the bottom of the problems encountered on both sides to develop consistent constructive cooperative relations should be readily understood. For it is true that by its very nature, at least in its American incarnation as an imperial democracy in contrast with its larger and older forms (the Hindu and the Swiss incarnations), Americans proselytize, and seek converts. And yet, paradoxically, this is the one feature American democracy most shared with Soviet communist when it was still around, something that suggests that such state system was an aberration imposed on the aristocratism of the Russian spirit: by its very definition aristocracy does not proselytize; it does not seek recruits, which is in the first place what makes it aristocratic. In its Greek origin, the aristocratic literally the “highly-born.”
Thus, that Russia does not anymore compete with the Americans for the “hearts and minds” of the countries of the worlds since it cleansed itself of the communist aberration of its aristocratic proclivities should have made relations between them into the normal affair which is it not. However, the rationales are not readily available to directly explain that the relations between the American and the Russians and their reciprocal attitudes have become more intractable just as the ideological orientation of their respective economies have become more relatable, after the demise of the Soviet Republic, with the new Russian Federation moving resolutely away from this chapter of its past toward its own endogenous form of capitalism and democracy. Thus, insofar as Russia has not been engaged in sabotaging the development of other countries; in throwing down foreign governments it does not like; in assassinating civilian or military representatives of foreign nations in their own land; in oppressing its own people and allowing or condoning their impoverishment; and, as far as its participation in the international organizations it is a member of is done within their legal framework as it has been the case as a Federation, it could fairly be regarded as a valued international partner. Which it is. But not by the Americans and the governments under its tutelage. Alas, it has only gotten worse.
That such is the case; that America has become more invested in cultivating a more confrontational relation with Russia after the demise of communism than it did when communist Russia was a real threat to democracy and capitalism everywhere, can be only understood if we accept that such attitude does not correspond or express a political or philosophical rationalization of economic or otherwise material or objective interests that must be preserved at any cost from Russia. The short, two-word explanation for this, is ancestral hatred. In being ancestral, American hatred for Russia and Russian things is also an existential hatred. American hubris lies herein.
Discharging its democratic hatred on everything aristocratic, even during the historical period in which it needed Stalinist Russia to keep Nazi Germany from keeping American business and political influence out of Europe, America couldn’t but secretly hate the Russians because democracy was forced to enter a tactical alliance with aristocracy, and to depend on it for triumphing over fascism. Evidently, the mere fact of Russian being Russian is the only "rationale," although one lacking in reasonability, that could coherently explain America opposing and fighting Russia in the past because of its communist Stalinist satrapy, and to continue to do it in the present, because it no longer is.
As for the Russian attitude toward America? By its own definition, the aristocratic character forbids itself to give vent to hatred. Hatred originates in impotence, which it is often a manifestation of; but the aristocratic character knows itself better than the democratic one and is more self-assertive of its capabilities. For the aristocratic character, to hate something would be equivalent to either accord similar status to what it regards as inferior to itself, or to attempt to lower itself to an inferior level, and either of these motions is impossible for it— for it would contradict itself either way. Because of this, the most the aristocratic character can feel for what it does not regard as its equal, is contempt. And contempt is simple disregard. Literally, that means intentional blindness or deafness, or intentional lethal indifference. Contempt is what the American hatred for Russians has always been met with. Incidentally, Tocqueville was also keenly aware of this, as he goes on to imply in another observation of his in the same work (P.330).
As it happens, the aristocratic character of the Russian leadership as much as of the Russian people is the touchstone to understanding the first thing about Russia. But that is precisely what the American political establishment as well as its echo chambers, Hollywood, and the media, have again and again failed to grasp. Over and again, American Presidents from Woodrow Wilson, Roosevelt, and Truman, to Clinton, Obama, and now down to Biden have one after the other shown themselves to be incredibly ignorant concerning the psychological makeup of the aristocratic character of the Russians. For example, they all have consistently believed that in the Russians they are confronted with an “autocracy,” thus revealing an unfortunate ignorance of political psychology. Consequently, whereas Lenin first ignored and then threw President Wilson out of Russia, Stalin in his turn drew circles around Roosevelt and Truman, and presently Putin is outsmarting and outrunning Biden, after having outdone Obama.
It is worth noticing here that it is more than emblematic that the six America Presidents mentioned above are all Democrats. In them we have a sort of statistical illustration that the democratic spirit is ill-fit to adequately deal with the aristocratic character. Truth to be told, of Kennedy it can be said to have been the great exception here. In the face a real imminent dangerous situation in the form of a nuclear confrontation in which Russia had the upper hand, this Democrat revealed himself capable enough of making a judicious call and averting a nuclear catastrophe. But the fact that it could have been too late for the Americans, demonstrates that indeed the "democratic" mindset does not understand the inner working of the aristocratic character. The American frustration resulting from time after time failing to decipher how the Russian soul works has greatly contributed to sharpen the chronic American hatred for the Russians. Which points to the failures in political psychology on the part of the Americans that have led to Russia militarily attacking Ukraine, and to its territorial dismemberment, and to the demolition of its military organizations.
After merely pointing that out, I should now attempt to fully answer the “why-now” question I posed above, concerning the fact that, the more Russia has left behind its Bolshevik communist past and the more it has defined for itself its own path toward an autochthonous form of democratic capitalism, the more has America been upping the ante of its animosity toward the former. To this end, the first thing one should pay attention to, is how in contrast to the half-dozen Democrat Presidents above, governments headed by Republicans, from Bush Sr. to Bush Jr. to Donald Trump have had, if not necessarily good-will or better disposition toward finding common grounds with it, at least shown a definitively more tempered hostility toward its opponent— if only in their public discourse.
As it is well-known by anyone following the world of America politics through the corporate mainstream media, so little animosity, or rather, so much did the Trump government tempered its hostility on its Russia policy, that it inevitably led to the anti-Trump camps (the Democrat Party and the national media) to groundlessly accuse him of being a "Russian asset." And this even though the Trump government had been, one spurt after the other and from its early days and all throughout, adopting political-administrative measures punitive to Russia. So unusually harsh and unprovoked was the punishment imposed by Trump on Russia under miscellaneous pretexts and accusations, an independent reader could have concluded he was indeed trying to deflect attention from the fact that he indeed was the “Russian asset” he was being accused of being.
Of course, what Trump was most interested in doing was to sell an image of himself as a "strong," "competent," and "unchallengeable" President who was not afraid to confront Putin, the truly stronger man on the international stage, to make himself "deserving" of the right to call Obama weak. But this is beside the point. As for President G.W. Bush, with the Soviet Union having dissolved some years back and with as yet no visible opposition left to America's foreign policy for the world at large, his job was limited to consolidating as a fait accompli the expansion of NATO that Clinton had already advanced by fiat, neither one of them having the foreseeability to understand they were just gathering sticks for the fire that two decades or so later, we would be calling "Ukraine."
And lastly, but actually "firstly" in the historical reality, George H.W. Bush. The Kremlin agreed-upon dissolution of the Soviet Union had taken the Americans much by surprise. As a result, not without the deepest satisfaction but at same time not without certain dignified circumspection in discourse, before giving free range to celebration Bush Sr. appealed to Gorbachev in a failed attempt to slow down the process. The "sudden" total collapse of the Union would not immediately be beneficial to American's global interests in the absence of adequate strategic foreign policy concerning the nations let loose from the Soviet ideological straitjacket, because a comprehensive strategy toward the expansion of NATO and the isolation of Russia had not yet been devised. Since the American administration under Bush Sr. did not exactly know what was happening right before its very eyes, the most it could have aspired to do was aiding the dissolving Soviets in a soft-landing. America feared an implosion of multiple nationalist claims at once which it was ill-prepared to handle. Logically, the Republican President tried to avoid that, but failed. And that's where Clinton and the Democrats came in. And so, did the unnecessary NATO expansion begin, opening a new chapter in American ancestral hatred toward Russia.
For, that the expansion of the NATO membership could have been deemed necessary even as Russia receded economically, scientifically, militarily and in terms of national pride and self-confidence can only be understood as the expression of hateful irrationality. Just as it is said of virtues, hatred too is its own reward: America had nothing concrete to gain by seeking to make the Russian lebensraum progressively smaller. Yet, to itself it felt justified doing so on account not of why it had to do it but on account of whom it was doing it to. Again, the democratic consciousness was thereof only expressing its inherent hatred for the aristocratic character: Russians had to be surrounded and thus isolated from the rest of Europe merely on account of being Russians. And so, the unnecessary yet consistent expansion of NATO can be interpreted as the fulfillment unto history of the truth encapsulated in the Tocqueville observation in reference. For America has always pursuit the “correction” of the dictates of the Tocqueville’s “Providence” to gain unique advantage in the world. The key word here again is hubris.
It is both highly emblematic and logically consistent with the ethological accuracy of such observation that such NATO policy would have been conceived of and spearheaded and directed by President Bill Clinton. For he himself is in the highest degree morally and psychologically exemplary of what the democratic mindset of the American nation has developed into from its earlier days. Therefore, to some extent, together with Obama and Biden, President Clinton is the paladin of the democratic ways and idiosyncrasies in all its appreciable virtues, and in its many defects. It wouldn't have been fortuitous then that, ever since Roosevelt but even more so since Truman, every American government headed by a Democrat had sought to "contain" Russia, and that "containment" through one means or another since the years after the WWII has figured prominently in the international political agenda of the Americans.
After the WWII, Russia had to be "contained" because the Americans no longer needed them to fight the Germans. But then, Russia had demonstrated in the Nazi killing fields that even under a loathsome dictator like Stalin the aristocratic spirit could fight and win under any conditions, circumstances, weathers, and terrains, and whoever the enemy should be. And that infused the Americans with profound fear of the Russians. Thus, somewhat paradoxically again, it was precisely because of the legendary courage exhibited by the aristocratic spirit of the Russians during the Nazi death factory, that the hatred of the democratic mind toward them began more openly to express itself. And such phenomenon has only grown concurrently with American democracy becoming more "democratic," in all the possible meanings carried by this sentence," but namely, this has continued to be so the more the Democrats has managed to produce more “democratized” American presidents than the Republicans.
And so, the ongoing war in Ukraine illustrates how greatly the society has become "democratized" up and down across the board and all around as it over time became assimilated by the Democrats through its programs and policies, even when they have been out of the White House. The take-away from these remarks is that hateful American actions against Russia are exponentially more likely when the nation is in the hands of the Democrats. The historical evidence suggests that, taking the name of their party all too literally, the Democrats have traditionally assumed they are the genuine, unique embodiment of the democratic origins and of the democratic set of beliefs on which the American nation was founded, and therefore they also believe and behave as though they are the true representation of the American nation. Thus, on the same rationale as above the theory can be sustained that the more an American president is convinced of being the "natural" inheritor of, or the incarnation of the spirit and letters of the American brand of democracy present at the birth of their nation, the stronger the conviction and the propensity to exacerbate the differences and to seek confrontation with any other nation which the democratic type writes down and off as being "undemocratic." And Russia is first to be listed.
Which summarily explains Clinton, Obama, and Biden vis-a-vis Russia. So, whereas Clinton devised and got in motion the process of isolation through enveloping Russia with nations which, because of the oppressive character of the former Soviet Union were slated to eventually turn hostile toward their former tovarish, Obama went a step further to overtly antagonized Russia by organizing a coup d’état in Ukraine against the government of Victor Yanukovych, which was not more corrupt than many other governments backed up by America. It damaged itself not because it was corrupt (look at Zelensky’s), but by wanting, pursuing, and maintaining friendly relations with Russia. Such government had to be brought down by Obama because its behavior toward Moscow was factually undermining the Clinton long-term strategic policy of bringing NATO to Russian's door.
With the arrival of Biden into power we would have had finally arrived at the full answer of why it is now that the inevitable American hatred for Russia that forces it to oppose, provoke, and counter-act on practically anything the aristocratic spirit of the Russians seeks and aspires to, has reached a literal boiling point, in Ukraine.
Consistent with the theoretical premise this analysis is pursuing, the short answer to this question obviously is that Biden represents a far-out, extreme radicalization of the democratic type of man the American nation churns out in large numbers. Thus, he is ideologically controlled by the conviction that the "democratic type" must as a matter of "principles" lash out at anything that does not bill itself in likewise terms as his and does not have "democracy" printed on its forehead. But that is not all. Biden has come into power during the interplay of two very decisive historical factors that work to exacerbate the ideological extremism which America has progressively been in the tutelage of ever since Clinton.
On the one hand, America is a country whose profound economic, social, military political, and moral conditions at every turn reveal the same signs of decline and decay that are paralleled and even amplified by the documented physical, mental, and intellectual decline and decay of its leader. On the other hand, this compounded, two-folded signs of maybe irreversible decline and decay are becoming more noticeable at a time in which the aristocratic Russian people and their country, left for dead by successive American administrations, is showing a formidable resurgence, with a revived economy, an unchallengeable military, culturally compact, a stable and popular leadership, a flourishing foreign policy, and with diverse and powerful international friends and allies.
As it is, Russia has built itself into a bulwark of aristocratic freedom with military capabilities impervious to any challenge coming from anywhere beyond its borders, and with but scarce need for anything America has to offer. And this is something the democratic type cannot stand. In other worlds, under Putin's leadership Russia has come to prove Tocqueville was right in philosophically accessing the Will stored in the aristocratic character of the Russians as being the match to America's. For his part, Nietzsche too was correct when later in the same century he saw that Russia was indeed the storehouse of the Will in the whole Europe.
And yet, there is more. The ancestral, defining hatred of democratic America for the aristocratic ways of the Russian spirit is presently rekindled by issues that are consubstantial to America's decline and decay and that mark the stark differences between both the Russian and American societies. To see what that is, one just has to take notice of some elements in the Biden domestic agenda which, spiraling upward since Obama, now claims absolute priority and enjoys undisputed pride of place thereof. If you have not yet guessed what that is— whereas Clinton still believed that a marriage was "between a man and woman," Obama was an overt advocate of the so-called "Gay Agenda" and resolutely pushed for "gay rights." But Biden has not only ratified and amplified those rights; he has extended them to anybody that claims to have, or to have acquired, any sexuality or gender identity that opposes itself to male and female heterosexuality, and to whoever has allowed themselves to get doctored into a "gender" of their choosing and has irrationally disposed of their born-with biology, to pharmaceutically grow the sex-parts of their whims.
That the promotion of homosexual transgenderism has been one of the foremost priorities of the Biden administration and that as a matter of course he often finds the occasion to "celebrate" people getting their gender doctored, serves as a graphic image of the kind of the state of the democratic mind in contemporary America.
So being it, the very fact that Russia vocally sticks to traditional family-oriented values, which again, Nietzsche already had identified as the reservoir of Russian mighty Will, as compared with decadent Europe, is for Biden and the Democrats a constant reminder of why the American nation has a duty to hate the Russians. Thus, one would be failing to grasp a decisive motivating factor in the irrationality in Biden's overreaction to the Russian especial military operation in Ukraine if one does not account for the importance that the "democratic mind" places in the defense and promotion of homosexual transgenderism. (It suffices to notice here how, following the Biden lead, the countries within the European Union have exhibited as much irrationality in overreacting to the Russian attack as they exhibit in their home-front policies on homosexual transgenderism).
For, by necessity, and so that it will continue to form the core of its national identity; so that it can be preserved and passed on through the generations, thus self-sustaining the reservoir of its Will, the aristocratic spirit of the Russians compels them to mount a fundamental defense and promotion of traditional family values. And this will always bring it into conflict with the brand of democracy sold by the American mind, for which "everything goes" and for which everything has an equal right to be equally “included,” which further creates more “diversities” to continually strife for their “inclusion.” Thus do American and European societies become the cause of their erosion.
In closing— not that I would pretend to have covered all the elements that form the genealogy of the American hatred for Russia. But I trust to have delved deeper into and to have uncovered the interconnections thereof that account for the most of this ancestral hatred. If any doubt remains that hatred is the main motivation of the democratic mind of the American, one need only ask oneself: what is the essence of hatred—how does hatred manifest itself in its purest form?
The answer is: They who hate the deepest would spare not even themselves and theirs in their attempt to knock down the object of their hatred. Which explains the destructive dosages of economic sanctions of the Americans and their western allies have decreed… against their own peoples.