{"id":76293,"date":"2022-02-27T00:27:13","date_gmt":"2022-02-27T04:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=76293"},"modified":"2022-02-27T22:27:38","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T02:27:38","slug":"supporting-mr-putin-as-well-as-other-authoritarian-leaders-is-yet-another-way-in-which-the-political-right-in-the-usa-is-weaponizing-culture-wars-to-further-divide-americans-mr-putin-is-not-waging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=76293","title":{"rendered":"Supporting Mr. Putin as well as other authoritarian leaders is yet another way in which the political right in the USA is weaponizing culture wars to further divide Americans. Mr. Putin is not waging a culture war. He is waging real, actual war, in which real, actual lives are already being lost"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Emily Tamkin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week, before Russian threats toward Ukrainian borders turned into an all-out invasion, one part of the American media landscape questioned why we weren\u2019t supporting the invaders.
\n\u201cHating [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has become the central purpose of America\u2019s foreign policy. It\u2019s the main thing that we talk about,\u201d Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson said on Tuesday. \u201cIt might be worth asking yourself, since it is getting pretty serious: What is this really about? Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him?\u201d<\/p>\n


\nInterviewed on \u201cThe Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show\u201d on Tuesday, former President Donald Trump described Putin as \u201csmart\u201d and \u201csavvy.\u201d Then on Wednesday night, as reports of Russian explosions across Ukraine rolled in, Mr. Trump repeated his admiration for the Russian leader.<\/strong> <\/p>\n

J. D. Vance, a Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio, said during a Feb. 19 podcast interview with Steve Bannon, Mr. Trump\u2019s former White House chief strategist, \u201cWe did not serve in the Marine Corps to go and fight Vladimir Putin because he didn\u2019t believe in transgender rights, which is what the U.S. State Department is saying is a major problem with Russia.\u201d Mr. Bannon, for his part, hailed Mr. Putin as \u201canti-woke\u201d hours before Russia\u2019s assault on Ukraine.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The American political right was long associated with Cold War hawkishness. But in recent years the trend has shifted toward fawning praise for autocrats, even those leading America\u2019s traditional adversaries, as well as projecting our own culture wars overseas. Where once Russia and other autocracies were seen as anti-democratic, they have now become symbols of U.S. conservatism \u2014 a mirror for the right-wing worldview.<\/p>\n

Supporting Mr. Putin, as well as other authoritarian leaders, is yet another way in which the political right is weaponizing culture wars to further divide Americans.<\/p>\n

Part of this new paradigm is that foreign policy is now a partisan matter. In 2016, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n offered an endorsement of then-candidate Donald Trump, admiration that was later returned. Mr. Putin\u2019s Russia reportedly meddled in the American election in 2016, and the Russian president has admitted that he wanted Mr. Trump to win. <\/p>\n

Those amicable relationships trickled down to the Republican voting population, which shifted its views on Mr. Putin\u2019s favorability, which soared from a mere 10 percent in July 2014 to 37 percent in December 2016. A Yahoo News\/YouGov poll from January of this year found that 62 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents consider Vladimir Putin a stronger leader than Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

\u201cStrong\u201d may be the key word here. In this construction, a strong leader is apparently one who cracks down on opposition, cultural and political, and does not concede. <\/p>\n

This idea then dovetails with right-wing ideas that liberal elites are actively corroding deeply held traditional values \u2014 including traditional gender roles. For those who spend a fair amount of airtime worrying about the emasculation of men, the kind of strength portrayed by Mr. Putin \u2014 who on Monday convened his top security officials and demanded they publicly stand and support him \u2014 is perhaps appealing.<\/p>\n

Many of the admirers of the world\u2019s strongmen on the American right appear to believe that the countries each of these men lead are beacons of whiteness, Christianity and conservative values. On Wednesday, conservative commentator Rod Dreher wrote, \u201cI adamantly oppose risking the lives of boys from Louisiana and Alabama to make the Donbass safe for genderqueers and migrants.\u201d<\/p>\n

These comments, from the right, aren\u2019t exactly advancing a new position. In 2018, political commentator Pat Buchanan said that Mr. Putin and Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko were \u201cstanding up for traditional values against Western cultural elites.\u201d <\/p>\n

He considered the Belarusian Ministry of Internal Affairs to have told a \u201cmoral truth\u201d in asserting that same-sex relationships were \u201cfake.\u201d But those traditional values do not include the freedom to political opposition. According to Viasna Human Rights Center, an organization dedicated to keeping track of Belarusian abuses, there are over 1,000 political prisoners in Belarus, many of whom were arrested for peaceful assembly, protesting or daring to engage in political activities.<\/p>\n

Russia is neither all white nor all Christian \u2014 it is a country that encompasses several regions, religions and ethnicities. Still, it is often perceived as white. White nationalist Richard Spencer has referred to Russia as \u201cthe sole white power in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

Matthew Heimbach, a founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party who was involved in the 2017 Unite the Right rally, has expressed admiration for Mr. Putin and ultranationalist European political leaders. \u201cRussia is our biggest inspiration,\u201d Mr. Heimbach told The Times in 2016. \u201cI see President Putin as the leader of the free world.\u201d As The Times reported at the time, this construction of Mr. Putin as a beacon of far-right values began with the ultra-far-right nationalists in Europe and later spread to the United States.<\/p>\n

But, as the Washington Post opinion writer Christian Caryl wrote in 2018, just as the halcyon image American Communists had of Stalinist Russia in the early 20th century belied the truth of a brutal regime, the Russia celebrated today by conservatives is also, in some ways, a fiction.<\/p>\n

In any event, Mr. Putin is not waging a culture war. He is waging real, actual war, in which real, actual lives are already being lost.<\/p>\n

But then, why would that matter? The Russia, Ukraine, Hungary and Belarus of conservative pundits\u2019 imaginations are just that: imaginings. Avatars. Projections of themselves. The Russians and Ukrainians who are living \u2014 and dying \u2014 do not factor into the picture.
\n
\nCourtesy:New York Times<\/em><\/p>\n

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By Emily Tamkin Last week, before Russian threats toward Ukrainian borders turned into an all-out invasion, one part of the American media landscape questioned why we weren\u2019t supporting the invaders. \u201cHating [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has become the central purpose of America\u2019s foreign policy. It\u2019s the main thing that we talk about,\u201d Fox News anchor …<\/p>\n

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