Dismissing Dissent By Calling It a 'Myth'

The entire exercise comes across as an effort to stigmatize dissenting views on Russia policy and to delegitimize them as “myths” that can be dismissed out of hand rather than seriously debated.

Chatham House has released a series of short pieces on Russia policy that they presented as debunking a number of “myths” that have supposedly distorted Western governments’ Russia policies for the worse. In almost every case, the “myth” that they set out to discredit is not a myth, but rather an opposing policy view that the authors reject for one reas…