How Much Of Trump's Base Admires Putin?
Why would some of the "deplorables" admire the Russian thug/dictator/KBG murderer Vladimir Putin? There is a reason.
For America’s white nationalists, there is only one nation—and one leader—worth emulating. And it has nothing to do with lederhosen or Wagner.
Richard Spencer, the current face (and haircut) of US’s alt-right, believes Russia is the “sole white power in the world.” David Duke, meanwhile, believes Russia holds the “key to white survival.” And as Matthew Heimbach, head of the white nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party, recently said, Russian president Vladimir Putin is the “leader of the free world”—one who has helped morph Russia into an “axis for nationalists.”
For those Americans who are just now familiarizing themselves with Russia’s current political proclivities—due to the recent, high-profile Russian hacking allegations, say, or the brutal military campaign in Aleppo—Moscow’s transformation into a lodestar for America’s white supremacists is enough to cause whiplash. After all, just a few decades ago Moscow was a beacon for the far-left, and its influential Communist International provided material and organizational heft for those pushing Soviet-style autocracy around the world. Over the past few years, however, the Kremlin has cultivated those on the far-right end of the West’s political spectrum in the pursuit, as Heimbach told me, of reifying something approaching a “Traditionalist International.”
Moscow’s appeal to the American far-right is, in a sense, understandable, if no less worrying. The links between Russia and America’s white nationalists and domestic secessionists have both expanded and deepened over the past few years. And the Kremlin, as with its invasion and occupation of swaths of Ukraine, has gone to only minimal lengths to obscure such ties.
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Russia is the most biggest link in the chain connecting white nationalism to threats to national security. After the global recession, and after decades of feeling the shame of a fallen superpower, Russia began poking the West's socioeconomic soft spots.
It funded right-wing parties in European nations coming to grips with refugee crises. It escalated the Syrian civil war, bombing civilians indiscriminately and guaranteeing that refugees poured into Europe, heightening tensions there. It mounted disinformation campaigns to support right-wing candidates vowing to bring Christian civilization back from the brink of "white genocide." And it hacked the computers of Hillary Clinton's allies to cut the legs out from under her campaign and lift the chances of a populist candidate who promised to ban Muslims, deport "illegals" and make America great again.
The link between white nationalists and Russia was not apparent before November. We knew aides Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Carter Page and Jeff Sessions had contacts with the Russians, but we did not know the degree to which they now appeared to have been enmeshed. When Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King blasted President Barack Obama in 2015 for "importing millions of illegal aliens" to register them as Democrats, we thought it was the same dog-whistle politics we have come to expect from Republicans.
The link is becoming apparent. It turns out that Trump himself met with the Russian ambassador, as did Trump's aides. We don't know if Trump agreed to lift Russian sanctions in exchange for Russia's help in winning the election. We do know that Wikileaks released DNC emails after their meeting. And on Sunday, King, who urged Trump in August to go to the wall on "illegals," tweeted his support for Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician rising to power who is looked on favorably by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
King said that "Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies." This is catnip to white nationalists. To them, diversity, or "somebody's else babies," will lead to "white genocide" or the collapse of "our civilization." That's why prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer re-tweeted King's comment, adding "The 15 words." He recognized that King's tweet echoes the 14 words of a white nationalist slogan: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."
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Aleksandr Dugin is a radical, Trump supporting, self-proclaimed philosopher from Russia. Traditionalism and cultural purity are two of his most valued philosophical tenets. And while his influence may be overstated in Russia, his ideology has infiltrated white nationalist circles in the United States and parts of Europe.
Outside of the U.S., Dugin has connections to Nikos Michaloliakos, the jailed leader of Greece’s far right nationalist party Golden Dawn, and met with the party’s representatives in 2014 to discuss the annexation of Crimea. His rhetoric has been echoed by Emmanuel Leroy, a speechwriter for the Front National’s chief Marine Le Pen.
In a 2008 essay, Leroy calls for the European Union to be replaced by “a continental economy…from Brest to Vladivostok” and advocates for “solidarisme”, “a nationalist, economically protectionist ideology derived from the traditional fascist ‘Third Position’,” the Daily Beast reported.
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....those most susceptible to external programming are no longer the fashionable, urbane, progressive, well spoken, well traveled—but the angry, displaced former assembly-line workers in Youngstown and Macomb County who believe their America has been stolen from them by cosmopolitans in New York, D.C., and Silicon Valley. The conventional wisdom has it that the angry hordes are neanderthals—parochial, unaware of or unconcerned with the world. But that’s not true. Like their liberal, cosmopolitan predecessors, the angry horde is inherently transnational, if not international, and it has compatriots in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and beyond. These people are not bound by a shared politics or program so much as a shared racial identity—a white nationalism born of a loathing for the multiculturalism and complex interdependency embraced by the Davos class. It is a global anti-globalism, and it is reflected in Trump , Brexit, and Marine Le Pen.
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https://thinkprogress.org/the-white-nationalist-movements-favorite-philosopher-42576bc50666/
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/why-angry-white-america-fell-for-putin
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Article is closed because right wing trolls derailed it.
The deplorables in the US are in ideological unity with their counterparts in Russia and white nationalist Europe, hence the appeal of Putin and his friendship with their hero Donald trump.
Awesome!
Keep it up John.
You are helping guarantee the 2018 mid terms and 2020 to the Republicans.
Good job there buddy ...... high five!!!!!
So does Donald trump and Vladimir Putin. They are all of a mind.!
Lol, like puppets on a string. Trump has you dancing aimlessly in the wind ..... keep it up!
But i must admit, i hope the liberal drone dance doesn't make it go too far in the other direction. Never a good thing for one party or the other to have too much of a majority in congress. Not at all.
That said, carry on with your bad self John.
Most people would be embarrassed to use Hillary Clinton's name as much as you do.
Article is closed because right wing trolls derailed it.
Article is closed because right wing trolls derailed it.