Thread by @tzimmer_history

Conservatives may not like Putin - but they like multiracial, pluralistic democracy even less.

The Right’s infatuation with autocrats like Putin and Orbán is a reminder that the reactionary counter-mobilization is a transnational phenomenon.

My new column for @GuardianUS:

https://twitter.com/GdnUSopinion/status/1499693273224417280

Right-wing reactions to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine range from openly siding with Putin to condemning him while agreeing with his critique of the weak, “woke” West. To the Right, the fight against multiracial pluralism overrides everything else.

The Right’s reactions have oscillated between blatant admiration for Putin and anti-Russian saber-rattling combined with a shrill critique of President Joe Biden. This goes well beyond Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson.

At last week’s CPAC, conservatives focused their ire 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 Senator Rick Scott put it, the “militant left wing in our country.”

https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1497678104449404936

It may feel shocking, but it shouldn’t be surprising that many Republican leaders and conservative elites think the American President is a more dangerous enemy than the Russian autocrat.

There is an influential tradition on the Right of idolizing Putin as a defender of white Christian values. In 2013, for instance, Pat Buchanan described Putin as “One of Us” in the struggle “against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.”

Under Trump, the simmering admiration for Putin morphed into GOP orthodoxy. This rapprochement shaped the Right well beyond conservative elites. As recently as January 2022, Putin had a significantly higher approval rating among Republicans than Joe Biden. washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…

Such authoritarian, white Christian nationalist, anti-“Left” leanings are now informing the Right’s reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Far Right is all in on Putin, and so is the Christian nationalist wing of the Republican Party, preferring Putin’s “Christian values.”

Vladimir Putin understands his appeal to Western reactionaries precisely. He likes to present himself as an ally in the fight against “wokeism,” often railing against “cancel culture” and the West’s supposed obsession with trans rights, emphasizing “family values.”

Many conservatives admire him for that. Rod Dreher, for instance, is an interesting bellwether for the reactionary intellectual sphere: he is begrudgingly pro-Trump, because he is enthusiastically anti-liberal. And he hares Putin’s contempt for America’s “woke” culture.

This critique has basically become dogma on the Right: A radically “Un-American” woke Left is out to destroy the country – and has already succeeded in undermining the nation considerably, especially its “woke, emasculated military,” as Texas Senator Ted Cruz put it.

Right-wingers imagine Russia as a stronghold of white patriarchal Christianity, where men get to be real men. They love how autocrats like Putin and Orbán glorify their nations’ past, forcefully push back against those cunning “globalists,” and deal with the real “leftist” enemy.

The American Right does not stand alone with its reaction to Putin’s invasion. Across the West, far-right and reactionary movements have similarly oscillated between openly siding with Russia and condemning Putin while fully agreeing with his general critique of “woke-culture.”

The transnational right-wing admiration for autocrats like Putin and Orbán is a crucial reminder that the struggle over democracy and multiracial pluralism is indeed playing out not just in the U.S., and that the reactionary counter-mobilization is an international phenomenon.

It’s also why, conversely, right-wing movements across the world have been obsessed with Trump. They rejoiced in 2016, because they saw his election as proof that the forces of reaction would ultimately prevail over multiracial pluralism. Trump was supposed to stem the tide.

In a way, the escalating obsession with foreign autocrats is a reaction to Trump’s failure to make good on that promise. If not Trump, then who? Reactionaries are looking elsewhere. Many, like Rod Dreher, believe that Putin and Orbán have shown the way forward.

Right-wingers everywhere understand the transnational dimension as well as the world-historic significance of the current fight over democracy more clearly than many people on the Left: Is it possible to establish a stable multiracial, pluralistic democracy?

A truly multiracial, pluralistic democracy has never been achieved anywhere. It’s a vision that reactionaries abhor – to them, it would be the end of “Western civilization.” And they are determined to fight back by whatever means necessary.

More here:

https://twitter.com/gdnusopinion/status/1499693273224417280