Oikophobia and the crisis of modern Western civilization

Abstract

The subject of this article is the phenomenon of oikophobia, which in recent decades has attracted the attention of philosophers, political scientists, sociologists and psychologists who tend to interpret it as the origin of many crisis phenomena affecting the modern Western civilization. The term has been used in political contexts to refer critically to political ideologies that are perceived as responsible for repudiating one's own culture, history, traditions and laud others. The simplest way of defining oikophobia is as the opposite extreme of xenophobia. As xenophobia means the fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners, reversely oikophobia means the fear or hatred of home or one's own society or civilization, oikos being the ancient Greek word for home, house, household. The article reveals the essence and content, characteristic manifestations of oikophobia in its narrow and broad meanings, the historical, cultural and intellectual background and sources of its origin and development. The author identifies signs of oikophobia in a number of key political, philosophical and ideological paradigms and concepts. Based on our findings, we suggest that various manifestations of oikophobia, especially those that may provide the ideological basis for mass protest movements, pose a serious challenge to public policy and government institutions not only in Western countries, but also in Russia. Government bodies and non-governmental organizations involved in the process of policy formulation in the spheres of security, information and education should pay attention to the threats and challenges that government institutions in the USA, Great Britain and a number of other Western countries have already dealt with. In our opinion, one of the most relevant areas of interaction between the Russian government and civil society in the field of countering the manifestations of oikophobia should be formulating general criteria for identifying Russophobia, which could be applied not only in the field of scientific research and educational practices, but also in the field of lawmaking and law enforcement.