Hi All,
Both the 'far left ' and the 'alternative right' have a love in with Putin. The far left see Britain, America and the west as some kind of secular evil, if they were the Mullahs of Iran think 'great satan', mini-satan and 'the son of satan' , so the default position is to support anything that seems to oppose imperialist capitalism, whilst overlooking its bad bits. I am not going to dwell on the far left infautuation with Russia and Putin, though, because left wing commentators George Monbit and Nick Cohen had both written articles on this very topic, albeit from a left perspective , here and here.
In any case I see myself as a centralist conservative and feel that the 'love in' some conservatives have with Putin needs to be challenged. He's basically using you as 'useful idiots' as another Russian once said.
Here's my thoughts.
As far as conservatives and the right have admired Putin sometimes on superficality such as being a 'masculine' leader, riding horses in Siberia without a shirt on as opposed to (at the time British Prime Minister) David Cameron's hugging of the huskies. This is superficial and if you think that a bare chested leader hunting bears in Siberia is what makes a man... well that's so stone age of you...because both Putin and Cameron were crafting a particular image for a particular constiteuncy at the time. If that's all that floats your boat about Putin, then you aren't worth engaging with, it is as superficial and sterotypical as thinking all gay men are effeminent wimps or lesbians butch army latinos like the one in 'Aliens'.
In short Putin is playing us for fools...
The other line of support for Putin is that he is 'anti-globalist' and therefore dislikes 'Soros and co', which means we won't be ruled by a one world government. But again that isn't what Putin actually is, because he is a Russian nationalist and his ambtion is to see all ethnic and Russian speakers renuited with 'mother Russia' and a restoration, but also continutation of, the Tsarist Russian Empire. Vlad would be happy with a one world globalist government- if it were ruled by himself as Tsar and Russians as the elite.
In short Putin is playing us for fools ....
I think more intriguing is the defence of Putin from some who have social conservative values, because they are so far in the trenches of the culture wars, they have'nt looked around them or stuck their head above the parabit for a long time, but it comes down to Putin being a Christian and being anti-gay marriage. I will admit I have no window in Putin's soul, but from what we can at least see his Chrisitanity is not that of a Southern Bapitist /Protestant or a Roman Catholic or for that matter mainstream Christian Orthodox thinking, but that of a partiuclar school of Russian theology that fuses the Russian Orthodox religion and Russian-Slavic nationalism.
The anti-gay marriage is a useful sop to those of us fighting culture wars in the west and gays are a good scapegoat at home, as we should note Russia's population decline, alchohol, abortion and sucide rate are not being addressed by anti-gay legislation or rhetoric. This is probably because such exhortions do not address the pyramid structure of Russian society itself which is despite a communist revolution a continuation of what went before it : of a handful of extremly rich oligrachs at the apex (the new nobility), following by a small middle class and technocrats who are getting a slither 'cut' of the wealth, followed by the bulk of the Russian population of urban poor and rural serfs, followed by the various minorties who live in Russia and are subject to 'Russification' and have a de facto 'pale of settlement' -that used to apply to Jews- in their various semi automonus oblasts and republics (chechnya being the infamous example) which the Church reinforcing or even justifying this societal structure , for if Tsar Nicolas II time travelled to 2022 he would probably not see much of a difference between today and his time. If the West is decadent, what then of Russia? What of Putin's personal indiscresions, mistresses and lovechild?
But even if we put all this aside and argue that, like some have with Trump, God can still 'use' Putin for his 'purpose' in the western cultre wars, rather than focus on his own personal failings , and all that matters is his view toward gay people, then following from this logic a person would have had to support Communist Castro's Cuba, which whilst he and Che were turning Cuba into a communist police state at home and exporting revolution abroad - wherein their numerous interventions in Africa and South America results in hundreds of thousands of deaths- they were also putting gays and lesbians into prison camps. Presumably the death, destruction and loss of property was ok then, because he was 'sound' on the 'gay question?' and that 'god' was 'using' Castro for the very purpose of keeping wicked homosexuality out of harms way?
Another issue for Putin apologists is that of abortion. If we follow the logic that Putin is a better leader because of his avowed social conservatism, then one should logically be in praise of Romania, also during its communistic period. Nicolae Ceaușescu was a brutal dictator of Romania and even by Communist standards he was bad and of course had his own cult of personality. But interestingly he issued decree 770 in 1967. This law more or less outlawed abortion and contaception with the secret police monitoring all pregnancies and maternity hospitals It did create a baby boom, which later backfired, resulting in the imfamous orphanahges and mass child mortality as families could not afford to feed themselves and indeed a huge increase in the mortality of pregnant women who tried to self abort children they knew they couldn't properly look after. The end result was a sharp demographic shrinkage of the Romanian population, which continues to this day. But we have another example of a socialist regime enacting a dream of anti-abortion activists, so like Putin we should be defending Ceasusecu, no?
The final argument for Russia and Putin is along the lines of 'NATO/EU should never had expanded into the old warsaw pact/ old soviet union repbulics because this hurt Russia's feelings and Russia felt threatened by this expansion. Russia as in the Soviet Union felt threatened by America (on another continent) and for that matter Western Europe, which led to the formation of both NATO and the Warsaw Pact, so by this logic NATO should never have been created and maybe the enitre continent of Europe from Ireland to Romania should have been a Russian 'sphere of influence' to appease and allay their fears ? Beside which during the cold war the Soviet Union was always trying to expland its spheres of influence across the globe, not just Europe -North Korea, North Vietnam, Angola, Cuba, Ethiopia, Somalia , Zaire, Egypt, Syria etc etc.
In any case after the cold war NATO actually CUT its numbers and budgets, where for example is the BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) ? In actual fact even American troops in Germany had been reduced to a few thousand to the point that even with NATO 'at the gates of St Petersberg', it did not have the ability to actally invade Russia conventionally at a moments notice and would require significant transports from America to Europe, whereas the Europeans themselves are utterly incapable of any kind of offensive, even at brigade level (e.g. number of Typhoons actually operational or the British tanks which can't operate, the fact Britian can only deploy a dozen Destroyers/Frigates, ordered carriers without planes to fly on them and the cutting of the army to 50,000 soliders and that's one of NATO's 'big boys' !). In short the idea that NATO expansion was the equivalent of the Germanic hordes poised to sack Rome is ludicrous fantasy.
All of this overlooks the fact that Ukraine, the other former Soviet states and warsaw pact states are states and have the right to self determination. If they wish to align with the west and not Rusisa that is their choice and to be honest who wouldn't want to enjoin with the west?
You see the thing is that too many commentators -on left and right- have a tendancy to put the west down. The left put us down for our past deeds -such as colonialism and slavery- often overlooking the progression and industrialisation of humanity that has brought us to where we are today. The right sometimes puts us down partly, I think, as a reaction to the left: our society exhibits so much more ills than when thinks looked really good (often when a person is in their prime and look back with rose tint & the older you get the more conservative you become) and this, to the right, is the result of the decline of social cohesion and religious devotion.
But in reality both sides display an unwarrented put down of what actually is the best- if imperfect model- for humanity. To quote Harold Macmillan 'We've never had it so good'. And this is true, even if there are always needs for reform and improvement or self reflection. Broadly speaking, though, look at the evidence and it works. Freedom of thought and expression allows for inovation in technology, medicine and science. This in turn creates better communication across societies and the capitalist way allows for a marketplace of ideas and promotion of these technologies, which can be manufactured so everyone can have a go or a say (e.g. the internet). There is no inquistion which will put you into trouble if you claim the earth goes round the sun and there is scientific method to promote acurate scientific discourse. There is no formal discrminatory barriers that stop you from reaching the top, if you happen to be a minority of some sort and today rather than wealth and education being the sole perview of a hereditary nature, be it the nobility and the church, it is such than in theory anyone can become good and rich, something which society should celebrate more often.
If this all seems convoluted then just think that I'm in my 30s now and a hundred plus years ago I would be considered 'old', life expentancy has risen and we can now have things like retirement a reward for labouring away for most of one's life. We are able to split the atom and soom to fuse it .We have landed men on the moon and are on the cusp of a permanent moon base. We have a space station in orbit around the planet. We have a green revolution which helped to transform and feed people in the 1970s. The major competitor to the west, China, is a competitor precisely because she has in part copied or stolen the western ways, rather than create a 'new' societial or political state of affairs. Israel is a middle eastern country, which has a western style liberal parliamentary order and is a prosperous state. Jordan, with a simliar population and no oil is a relvatively poor one, despite being a western ally. In short a nation's people will be more prosperous, free and live longer if they are alinged more to the western model than any other. It's something we forget, but if we had a choice would we prefer to live in the west or North Korea, Cuba or even Russia? Which would you prefer and why don't we actually praise what we do have and what we can do? Or put it another way, why do you think economic migrants exist and why are they coming to the west and not to Russia?
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