argued in an editorial that the White House blamed Russia for the 2021–2022 inflation surge to deflect criticism of the domestic economic policies. Hollywood and video games Russians and Russian Americans are usually portrayed as ruthless agents, brutal mobsters, psychopaths, and villains in Hollywood movies and video games. In a 2014 news story, Fox News reported, "Russians may also be unimpressed with Hollywood's apparent negative stereotyping of Russians in movies. The Avengers featured a ruthless former KGB agent, Iron Man 2 centers on a rogue Russian scientist with a vendetta, and action thriller Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit saw Kenneth Branagh play an archetypal Russian bad guy, just to name a few. Some games in the critically-acclaimed Grand Theft Auto series depict Russians and the Russian Mafia as ruthless and heavily-armed enemies in which the player has to fight against as part of the storyline, particularly Grand Theft Auto IV which features a Russian mobster named Dimitri Rascalov as its primary antagonist. The video game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 portrays Russian soldiers as over-the-top villains and contains a controversial mission titled "No Russian", which involves the player engaging in a mass shooting in a Russian airport. In Russia, the game sparked calls for boycotts and prompted live streamers to pull out of deals with publisher Activision, with online Russians also flooding Metacritic to vote down the game's user score. Pacific New Zealand Russophobia in New Zealand dates back to the colonial era; early anti-Russian sentiment among New Zealanders was influenced by "the general Victorian dislike of Tsarist autocracy" and British immigrants to the colony who brought "with them the high level of anti-Russian sentiment at home." Polish, Hungarian and Jewish refugees fleeing Russia's suppression of various rebellions and outbreaks of anti-Jewish pogroms also influenced Russophobia in New Zealand. In the aftermath of the Crimean War, suspicion of a possible Russian invasion of New Zealand led the colonial government to construct a series of "Russian-scare" coastal fortifications along the coastline. However, during the First World War, anti-Russian sentiment subsided as New Zealand and Russia found themselves fighting on the same side against Imperial Germany and anti-German sentiment grew in its place. By late 1920s pragmatism moderated anti-Russian sentiment in official circles, especially during the Great Depression. Influential visitors to the Soviet Union, such as George Bernard Shaw, provided a sympathetic view of what they experienced. The history of Russophobia in