You ever noticed that the West thinks vikings are cool but the Mongols are evil?

Even their understanding of the Vikings is incredibly western, most barely know about how prominent the Varangians were in Eastern Rome because they only read Latin sources. It begins and ends with Ragnar and some Marvel superheroes (and the Nazis, obviously).

asking rome fanboys why they want to return to a society where they can fuck 11 year olds boys is always funny
Wonder how many of the Viking stans are even aware who and what "The Rus" were. Ya know, Rurik and co
- "Based vikings ruling over the Russian savages" is often accompanied by "and then the savages took the worst from Mongols and became an asiatic horde and that's how Russia was born" which also don't prevent them from praising Mongols themselves.
  Common opinion in polish internet and not only, i once heard that even from actual medieval history professor ex cathedra in university, just without the loud said slurs, those were only implied in his case.
Also Varangians weren't exactly this prominent in Byzantium, they were kept apart from rest of society (which often hated them because it's their axes that were chopping up the citizens heads in every significant riot) and they weren't even kingmaking as much as one could expect from a Byzantine throne bickering.
- Yeah, I didn't mean "prominent" as in wealthy or socially highly regarded but just in how they are a notable fixture of that society. It's very rare to read a Byzantine source that doesn't mention Varangians and eunuchs at least once, and yet those "successors to Rome" in Western Europe don't know much about either. As soon as things stop being relevant to the Normans, Westerner pop historians just forget about it.

Really? I was under the impression the current bunch of internet dwellers are rather uncritically starry-eyed about the Mongols. Especially when the question of Russia comes up. If I had a nickel for every time a redditoid said a variation of "hurr da Mongols had attacked da Russkies in winter and won!", I'd probably be a petit bourgeoisie by now

It seems to me that people think lots of empires that killed millions of people are 'cool'. E.g. Mongols, Napoleonic, Byzantine. They only react negatively to things that occured from 20th century onwards.

I think they're both cool.

Racists end up missing out on a lot of cool in their lives.

I feel the opposite. Neither was cool, both were quite violent
- Back in the Medieval era you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who wasn't, although in terms of scale Mongols and Vikings were pretty far reaching in their brand of violence.
- I found the vinland saga fan
Yeah no offense intended to either, should have made that clear. They're both being exploited by racists.
- No worries, and no offense taken! (Personally, I don't have a dog in the race, just lowkey interested in ancient/medieval cultures).

Are Mongols really portrayed as evil in the west?

I honestly can’t even recall portrayals of Mongols in mainstream western media.

They were saying that a lot of Russians have Mongolian heritage and so they're naturally predisposed to violence as part of the war propaganda.
- Lol what that seems absolutely insane
In old western historiography, up to like 40-50 years ago Mongols were often portrayed as wild savages, "scourge of god" etc. Socialist historiography was more neutral on them (like Lev Gumilev or Stanisław Kałużyński). Recently westerners did close to a 180 on them though, as part of the historical revision trend going for at least 3 decades (most of that trend is actually not that bad, for example new critical look on ancient roman sources, still a lot worse than marxist view but a lot better than uncritically quoting Suetonius for example). From the top of my head read anything by John Man or Justin Marozzi.
- That’s very interesting, I never heard of this.
- Screw Lev Gumilev, though
I can think of South Park and Ghost of Tsushima.
Ghost of Tsushima is based in Japan but it's made by Sucker Punch so I am counting at as American.
- South Park is an interesting example, and one I actually remember now that I think of it.
  Though from what I remember they were portrayed as crafty and clever invaders, and both sides (the “Chinese” guy trying to stop them and the Mongol “invaders”) were portrayed in a bad light (kinda like most people in South Park really).

Having as a core value the act of taking by force stuff produced by others for yourself is in general quite cringe, be it in the east or in the west. ~~Something something, surplus value.~~