Why the American Right Admires Putin’s Russia
Reactionaries largely agree with Putin’s critique of the weak, “woke” West. To the Right, the fight against multiracial pluralism overrides everything else.
New Democracy Americana: 1/
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/why-the-american-right-admires-putins
Why the American Right Admires Putin's Russia
Reactionaries largely agree with Putin’s critique of the weak, “woke” West. To the Right, the fight against multiracial pluralism overrides everything else.
Last week, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington culminated in an impassioned address to a joint session of Congress in which he thanked the U.S. and pleaded with American lawmakers to continue their support for his country. 2/
America is divided. That’s not news. But the authoritarian ruler in the Kremlin deciding to invade a democratic neighbor – that’s the type of international crisis that traditionally might have inspired some closing of the ranks: Set differences aside, let domestic quarrels rest. 3/
But conservatives are evidently out on the idea of patriotic unity, even in the face of a despotic war of aggression against an allied democracy. The Trumpiest of Republican representatives and some self-proclaimed rightwing populists, demonstrated their disdain for Ukraine’s war effort. 4/
Tucker Carlson, the Right’s leading media extremist, went much further and treated his audience to what was, even by Tucker’s exquisite standards, a rather unhinged tirade – calling Zelenskyy “the Ukrainian strip club manager” and raging against continued U.S. support. 5/
Carlson’s rant is a reminder that significant portions of the Right are not on board with America’s support for a European democracy fighting for freedom, that quite a few rightwingers, can’t seem to shake their admiration for Putin and the cause he supposedly represents. 6/
The Right’s reactions to the Russian invasion have ranged from blatant admiration for Putin to anti-Russian saber-rattling combined with a shrill critique of President Joe Biden and “wokeism” at home. Trump and Carlson were perhaps crasser than most, but they weren’t outliers. 7/
Early on, prominent Republicans focused on Joe Biden’s supposed weakness as the real cause for Putin’s aggression and left no doubt who they considered the biggest threat - the “enemy within,” as Sen. Rick Scott put it: the “militant left wing in our country.” 8/
Openly siding with Putin in this war is not GOP mainstream – siding with his critique of “woke” leftwing forces as the central threat to the nation very much is. That is hugely significant, as it reveals so much about the Right’s animating vision for American society. 9/
There is an influential tradition on the Right of admiring Russia in general and of idolizing Putin specifically, as a defender of white Christian values against the onslaught of secular, “leftist” liberalism. 10/
In the Obama era, the conservative media machine loved to fawn over Putin as the very white, very macho, very alpha (in that stupidly toxic, riding-a-horse-shirtless kind of way) counterpart to Obama. 11/
Both reactionary intellectual sphere and religious conservatives were in too: In 2013, for instance, Pat Buchanan described Putin as “One of Us,” an ally in what he saw as the defining struggle “against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.” 12/
Similarly, in 2014, famous evangelist Franklin Graham lauded Putin for having “taken a stand to protect his nation’s children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda” – an agenda Barack Obama was supposedly pursuing in the U.S. 13/
Some of the confusion over the Right’s pervasive sympathy for Putin stems from the fact that conservatives still love to rail against the omnipresent threat of Communism – while adoring the Russian autocrat who is an ex-KGB officer Shouldn’t this bother conservatives? 14/
The Right is actually quite correct in perceiving the prevailing system in Russia as a kind of authoritarianism defined by an ethno-religious understanding of the nation and a social order that combines patriarchal traditionalism with oligarchic dominance. 15/
This certainly captures how the American Right has seen Russia for quite some time. It’s a vision U.S reactionaries find very attractive – close to what they want to impose on the whole country as the natural and/or divinely ordained order. 16/
Once we look closer into what, exactly, conservative anti-“Communism” has been all about during and since the end of the Cold War, it becomes clear why the transition from “evil Commie empire” to “white Christian Russia” was rather effortless. 17/
Even at the height of the Cold War, when they invoked the specter of “Communism,” conservatives didn’t just talk about a foreign threat. Anti-“Communism” was always also, and often predominantly, an anti-liberal stance against the “leftist” enemy within. 18/
This infamous photo, for instance, was taken at the Little Rock, Arkansas state capitol, in August 1959 – the “Communist Race Mixing” in question was the integration of Little Rock’s Central High School (from a Library of Congress collection): 19/
Conservatives have always derided anything that threatens the social and racial hierarchy, any sort of leveling attempt, as “Communism” or “Socialism” and used these terms to demonize anyone who dares to question the righteousness of white reactionary elite rule. 20/
Based on this specific understanding of what the danger of “Communism” actually was/is, it is perfectly consistent to rail against Communism while admiring the ex-KGB officer in the Kremlin for his willingness to uphold traditional hierarchies by whatever means. 21/
As is so often the case, what happened after 2016 was not caused by Trump – but his rise exacerbated these long-standing trends and tendencies. With Trumpism in power, the simmering admiration for Putin morphed into GOP orthodoxy. 22/
Support for Donald Trump correlates strongly with a favorable opinion of Putin, and Americans who define the U.S. as a “Christian nation” have a much more favorable view of Russia. As recently as January 2022, Putin had a higher approval rating among Republicans than Joe Biden. 23/
Thomas Zimmer
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