In a 2017 speech at Hillsdale School, the Claremont Institute’s Christopher Caldwell declared that if “we had been to make use of conventional measures for understanding leaders, which contain the protection of borders and nationwide flourishing, Putin would rely because the pre-eminent statesman of our time.” In Caldwell’s phrases, Putin “just isn’t the president of a feminist NGO. He isn’t a transgender-rights activist. He isn’t an ombudsman appointed by the United Nations to make and ship slide reveals about inexperienced vitality.”
In 2021, The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher praised a Putin speech condemning the West and mentioned that Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban had been “fully clear and fully right on the society-destroying nature of wokeness and postliberal leftism.” (It must be famous that Dreher has nonetheless unequivocally condemned Putin’s invasion.) A 2022 alternate between Steve Bannon and Erik Prince, the founder of personal army contractor Blackwater, was much more illustrative. Bannon hosted Prince on his podcast shortly after Putin’s invasion and proclaimed Putin “anti-woke.” Prince replied supportively that the individuals of Russia “nonetheless know which lavatory to make use of.” And Bannon stored the thought alive, asking, “What number of genders are there in Russia?”
Jordan Peterson, in the meantime, went as far as to indicate that Russia’s aggressive assault might have been merely self-defense in opposition to the specter of Western cultural decadence. The tradition conflict, he mused, could also be “severe sufficient to extend the likelihood that Russia, say, might be motivated to invade and doubtlessly incapacitate Ukraine merely to maintain the pathological West out of that nation, which is a key a part of the traditionally Russian sphere of affect.”
There’s an outdated saying: The enemy of my enemy is my good friend. Ideally, the phrase signifies that People put aside their home variations to deal with international threats to the nation. However on this hyper-polarized period, the far proper will get this equation exactly backward. They’re aiding Vladimir Putin as a result of they see him, too, versus their home enemies.
Earlier than the conflict, MAGA’s mixture of hostility towards Ukraine and admiration of Putin created a really explicit narrative: Rugged, manly, conventional Russia was bodily and spiritually stronger than the liberalizing West, and it could roll over Ukraine with solely token resistance. Certainly, earlier than the conflict, Ted Cruz shared a tweet during which he contrasted Russian and American army advertisements. The U.S. advert, he claimed, confirmed our army to be “woke” and “emasculated.” However the Russian advert reeked of masculine aggression. How might the West — not to mention tiny Ukraine — stand in opposition to such manly males?
