https://theworldnews.net/ca-news/adam-zivo-pro-russia-conservatives-have-lost-their-moral-compass

I would like to thank Nan for the link to this interesting story.   It emphasizes what I had figured that the support for Russia comes from those who are waging the culture wars against the LGBTQ+ and those Christian Nationalist who want the nation ruled by their church doctrines.  I want to point the article uses the term wokeism.    I find the use of this term stupid in that it is not used by the left.   It is useless.   It may have been started by young college kids or people on social media but real liberals / progressives never used it.   The right uses it as an insult and it means what ever they want it to mean, because they want it to be an insult.  Don’t like broccoli today then broccoli is woke.  I once heard a great explanation over what the term P.C. meant.   It means.  It means trying to be decent to other people and not hurting their feelings.  Oh how evil a thing that is.   Being decent to others, not hurting their feelings if possible, how dare you ask that.    To me woke is the same idea.   Again I have no idea of why the right pushes this woke thing, but to me it means just be a decent person, take care of others along with yourself, and leave things better than you found them if possible.     Makes hating woke weird doesn’t it.  

I also want to address this issue that there is an extreme leftist movement in the US.  Maybe on college campuses.   I don’t even think communes exist anymore.   There is no extreme leftism in the US.  There is a desire of progressives to copy the ideas of the more progressive advanced societies like the Scandinavian countries or even Canada to give the people some benefits of the GDP of the country.  That is the extreme left in the US, stopping runaway unregulated capitalism that diverts all the countries wealth to the upper levels of wealthy people.   That is what they do in Russia, give all the countries wealthy to the wealthy rulers so the public has to live more desperately in poverty every year.  In other countries the government works for all people and everyone benefits.   In the US and Russia the wealthy benefit and the rest of the people slowly sink into more poverty and despair.  These are facts that you can look up on google.  The best times in the US for all people economically were between 1950 to 1980 when the wealthy / large corporations paid the highest share of the costs of government and the government served the public.  Those are facts.   Many people in the US alive today can remember those times.   Is that woke?   If so bring back woke.  Is that PC?  If so bring back PC.   But the right loves the tRump thug idea of never backing down, never making a mistake, calling everyone else names, being a bully, and ruling hard over everyone else.    They constantly talk of Alpha males vs Beta males?  Why?   Because their idea of tough and great is the biggest meanest bully who hurts others to get their own way all the time.  No one stands up to that bully or corrects them when they call black people names, call gays fagots, and laughs about making others please them, by force if need be.     They would have adored my abusive brawling adoptive male parent, he was maga before maga was born.  I prefer to be a decent human being.   So call me woke I don’t take it as an insult to be a decent person.   

One more point.  The US never tried to establish liberal democracies anywhere.  That is a falsehood that makes the US look better to itself.   The rest of the world knew clearly what the US was doing.   We were establishing governments where our US corporations / businesses could flourish and make large profits.  We changed government not to help the people of those countries, but to help businesses make money.  Look at the history of each US involvement of any country and you seen that US business first were blocked out and then after the US invaded or changed the government the US businesses were at the top of the list of new companies into the country.  Look at Iraq, US oil companies rushed to get the oil field management contracts.  Why is the US government against Venezuela?  Because the government there wouldn’t let the US oil companies have their oil, instead nationalizing them for the people of the country.   Why do you think the US turned on Castro when we were dealing with dictators all over the world?  He threw out the large companies that owned the farmland and forced the people to work like slave labor to make sugar companies wealthy and companies stealing the wealth of other resources of the island.  I hate this fake idea that the US was a benevolent loving country coming in to save the people.   Look at our own people to see that is not true.  The US was coming in to save the profits of big business.

Those who care about conservatism’s moral integrity should vehemently condemn the misguided Russophilia on the right

This column originally appeared exclusively for subscribers who are signed up for the NP Comment newsletter, NP Platformed.

Most of the western world is united in opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but unfortunately, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been supported by many on the far right and the far left. While the far left has spent decades apologizing for foreign autocrats under the misguided belief that anything anti-American is inherently good, the far right’s infatuation with Russia is a newer and more unexpected development. Those who care about conservatism’s moral integrity should vehemently condemn this misguided Russophilia.

In the United States, far-right politicians, such as Republican representatives Madison Cawthorn and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have echoed Russian talking points, suggesting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a “thug” and that his government is filled with neo-Nazis.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump made several statements lauding Putin’s aggression towards Ukraine and initially called the invasion “smart.” To Trump’s credit, after photos of Ukrainian suffering reached the public, he shifted positions and condemned Russia’s invasion as a “holocaust,” though he continues to praise Putin and criticize NATO.

American far-right media figures have also parroted Kremlin propaganda. Conservative commentator Candace Owens has consistently promoted Putin’s narratives, such as the claim that Ukrainian nationhood is an illegitimate invention of the Soviet Union, which is historically inaccurate. Meanwhile, conservative media icon Tucker Carlson amplified a Russian conspiracy theory that the United States was operating secret bio labs in Ukraine.

In Canada, People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier has latched onto conspiracy theories that undermine support for Ukraine. He has implied, among other things, that Canada supports Ukraine because Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s grandfather may have been a Nazi sympathizer (I guess Bernier believes that political views are hereditary).

Russia obviously does not have the West’s best interests in mind, as Putin frequently argues that Russians must prevail in an existential battle against the United States and the European Union. Why, then, have so many western conservatives lost their moral compass and chosen to support a regime that actively opposes their own interests?

The main reasons seem to be the all-consuming viciousness of America’s culture wars and the delegitimization of neoconservative foreign policy.

Many on the far right are so narrowly focused on litigating cultural issues that they’re willing to make unethical alliances if it helps them vanquish wokeism. In the post-Soviet era, Russia has re-embraced Christianity and traditional values, which it has conspicuously positioned in opposition to the “degenerate” West. Russia’s cultural conservatism makes it a convenient ally against wokeism — “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a devastatingly relevant adage here.

Putin has cleverly exploited this and has explicitly drawn parallels between Russia and American anti-wokeism, claiming, for example, that western elites are trying to “cancel” Russia like they cancelled J.K. Rowling.

Many conservatives swallowed Putin’s bait and now gleefully align themselves with Russia, despite the fact that, in practically every other respect, Russia does not align with western values. There are now conservatives who ostensibly champion freedom, but defend a dictator who poisons political dissidents. We have conservatives who rally against out-of-touch elites, but romanticize Russia, a country that is ruled by an unaccountable oligarchy.

“Has Putin ever called me a racist?” asked Tucker Carlson, as if that single factor, which is so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, absolves Russia of responsibility for its war crimes.

I consider myself a moderate conservative and think that wokeism is a problem that needs to be addressed. But I oppose wokeism because of its infringements on personal liberty, individualism and pluralism. When the far right looks to Russia as an ideal, a country where liberty is non-existent, I find it embarrassing and discrediting.

It’s the conservative equivalent of when moderate leftists feel mortified by their extremist counterparts who romanticize the Soviet Union and Maoist China. In both cases, ideologues lose the forest through the trees, wilfully blinding themselves to the obvious immorality of repressive regimes.

Not too long ago, conservative Russophilia would have been inconceivable. From the 1960s to the early 2010s, neoconservatism dominated right-wing politics. This strain of conservatism was confident in the supremacy of American values. It had faith in liberal democracy, which it aggressively promoted throughout the world through a highly interventionist foreign policy.

However, in the aftermath of the Cold War, neoconservatives became arrogant. The Bush era, with its endless entanglements in the Middle East, made it clear that imposing liberal democracy on unwilling nations was a recipe for disaster. Neoconservative foreign policy lost its moral credibility and collapsed under the weight of its own hubris.

This created an intellectual and political vacuum that was filled with Trumpist isolationism. Conservatism turned inward, towards domestic frictions, both economic and cultural. Foreign policy became an afterthought, and the less attention that was given to it, the more it could be subsumed by the demands of domestic politics.

So now we have an American conservatism that lacks a strong foreign policy vision — a diminished and pessimistic conservatism that doesn’t have faith in liberal democracy. Rather than asserting western excellence to the world, this brand of conservatism tethers itself to Russia, a hostile second-rate regional power. It’s a sad development to see — not only because of the immediate humanitarian costs that are abetted by Putin’s useful idiots, but also because conservatism should be bigger than this. We need a stronger conservative movement that has the integrity to stand against its enemies, rather than betray itself to score petty partisan victories.

 

As anyone reading above can see I do not really agree with the article.  The article is trying to build a case that is not there.  Basically the article is trying to blame the left for the right loving the strongman tactics of Putin.   That is incorrect.   The right loves tRump because he is a bully thug who is lower educated, never backs down, never pays a price for what he does, seems to make the rules instead of following them, is above the consequences for his actions / words.   Who does that sound like?  Putin.   Who did tRump bow to, Putin.   That is why the right loves Putin, he is above their cult lord.      But now what about the rest of the Russia supporters?  That was mentioned in the article but in my opinion glossed over.   Bigotry and racism are the keys.   Let’s look at racism first.  What do the white supremacist love about Russia?   It’s hegemony.  It is mostly all white and minorities are really treated shitty.  Look at pictures from Russia.  You only see white people.   Racist mention this all the time.   They love it.  Putin is their hero because they think he enforces that racism.   Then there are the religious aspect / people.  That is the bigotry part.  Why do people like Brian Brown (who is a co-founder of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), and became In 2001, Brown became the executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, a socially conservative organization.) love Russia and travel there frequently?   They adore what Putin did by turning to the Russian Orthodox Church which has become a vital pillar of support for Putin.   The Christian Nationalist in the US look at what Putin has done in Russia as the blueprint on how to get their church in charge of the US.  They love the Kremlin making LGBTQ+ illegal in Russia, these Christian nationalist love how Putin uses the state’s power to enforce the churches doctrines and dictates.  They want that here, and now are copying those laws here with the don’t say gay laws, and the dictates trying to force doctors to practice medicine only on state approved church doctrines.    It is a dangerous convergence of two hateful groups who want their way of life only over all others.   It is scary but it seems they may make the US into Russia, they are well on their way to doing so.