Circassia, due to the cross being associated with the people who initiated the mass expulsions of Circassians. As a polemic device The Kremlin and its supporters are sometimes criticised for using allegations of "Russophobia" as a form of propaganda to counter criticism of government policy. Sources critical of the Russian government claim that it is Russian state-owned media and administration who attempt to discredit the "neutral" criticism by generalizing it into indiscriminate accusations of the whole Russian population – or Russophobia. In 2006, poet and essayist Lev Rubinstein wrote that similarly to the term "fascism", the term "Russophobia" has become a political sticker slapped onto people who disagree with words or actions of people or organizations who position themselves as "Russian ones" in the ideological, rather than an ethnic or geographical sense. Russian responses to outside anti-Russian criticism has intensified the growth of contemporary Russian nationalist ideology. Sociologist Anatoly Khazanov states that there's a national-patriotic movement which believes that there's a "clash of civilizations, a global struggle between the materialistic, individualistic, consumerist, cosmopolitan, corrupt, and decadent West led by the United States and the idealist, collectivist, morally and spiritually superior Eurasia led by Russia." In their view, the United States want to break up Russia and turn it into a source of raw materials. The West being accused of Russophobia is a major part of their belief. Joseph Stiglitz wrote that this belief is reinforced by the failure of the post-Soviet liberal economic reforms, which is perceived to have been influenced by the US Treasury. A mismatch between U.S. rhetoric about promoting democratic reforms in Russia and actual U.S. actions and policy has been said to cause deep resentment among Russians, helping Russian propaganda to construct a narrative of U.S. malign interference. Since 2014, there was a rapid growth of charges of Russophobia in the official discourse. Use of the term on the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs website rose dramatically during the period between 2014 and 2018. Russian President Vladimir Putin compared Russophobia to antisemitism. Academic Jade McGlynn considered conflation of modern Russophobia and Nazi antisemitism to be a part of propaganda strategy that uses historical framing to create a flattering narrative that Russo-Ukrainian War is a restaging of the Great Patriotic War. Kathryn Stoner and Michael McFaul explained the turn to radical nationalism as a strategy to preserve the regime within domestic economical and political pressures, claiming that