Ed West has written an excellent analysis of why so many people on the populist Right are either pro-Putin or regard Putin’s Russia and Zelensky’s Ukraine as morally equivalent. He thinks these conservatives are suffering from ‘oikophobia’ – Roger Scruton’s word to describe the loathing of their homeland by some elements of the Left. The reason Jeremy Corbyn and his fellow travellers always side with Britain’s enemies, no matter how unsavoury, is because they cannot stand Britain and the West and siding with our enemies is a way of expressing that contempt. West thinks that some elements of the Right are now suffering from the same phobia. Here is an extract:
During the Cold War various politicians, writers and artists were prepared to apply a completely false equivalence between the two superpowers. Indeed, one or two of the USSR’s defenders are still MPs today. In the U.S., Angela Davis’s career has not been harmed by her open support for America’s enemies; indeed, it seems to have helped. Others went on to bat for various murderous regimes, including even revolutionary Iran, which Foucault praised as “the most insane” (yes it really was, you old paedophile).
So the far-Left’s initial moral equivalence on the Russian invasion is normal and predictable; it would be worrying if they didn’t side with our enemies, or claim that ‘both sides’ were at fault – if only the anti-bully alliance hadn’t provoked the bully into bullying its neighbours, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Were aliens to invade earth next week, in some Independence Day or War of the Worlds-style scenario, you’d get at least 10 Labour backbenchers blaming America for the conflict. Their radio waves provoked them, or something.
It’s not that they particularly like what Putin stands for, it’s just that they can’t envisage a situation where it’s not our fault, a form of narcissism in which America and her allies are all-powerful and morally culpable. But the radical Left also believe that supporting the West means supporting the values they believe to be in control – the forces of conservatism, capitalism and neoliberalism, all of which will be empowered by Western victory.
That is a fairly rational calculation, and it’s noticeable how some conservatives now come to a similar conclusion. They don’t hate their inheritance like the radical Left, but they hate what their home has become, where progressives wearing the skin of the civilisation they have killed, like a zombie Western civilisation. They also feel that any victory will only further strengthen those in charge.
That perhaps explains why so many populists have badly misjudged this conflict. As Eric Kaufmann wrote this week: “I watched as Tucker Carlson and J.D. Vance defended Putin, or adopted the Kremlin’s critique of Ukraine,” Carlson calling it a “pure client state of the United States State Department”. While there are claims for a realist case “tempering Ukrainian demands and accommodating reasonable Russian security concerns, the inability of some to reject the moral equivalence of Ukraine and Russia was glaring”.
Like oikophobes in times gone by, some on the Right have created an imaginary foreign country to reflect on their own society’s shortcomings. “The perception that Russia is a masculine, white, Christian country unafraid to stand up for its traditions forms part of its appeal to conservative populist thinkers,” Kaufmann writes. “‘Putin ain’t woke,’ Steve Bannon said last month. ‘He’s anti-woke.’ The Russian President’s 2019 interview with the Financial Times, when he declared that liberalism has ‘become obsolete’ clearly impressed many Western conservative populists. Against Drag Queen Story Hour and self-flagellation about the sins of the past could be set Putin’s macho, Christian, nationalist Russia. Clearly, some populist elites took the bait.”
None of these beliefs about Russia are really true, as Kaufmann points out, for “any honest appraisal of Putin’s Russia would reveal that its religiosity is weak, immigration substantial, and the Eurasianism of Putin and Alexandr Dugin would readily trade cultural homogeneity for more territory… Putin’s Russia is a ramshackle, corrupt, aggressive despotism. It is not ‘really hot stuff’ as Donald Trump put it once. It is not a post-woke paradise.”
But then that doesn’t really matter. Like British radicals praising a French Revolution that was first a bloodbath and then a dictatorship, their real concern is with home – the oikos. And perhaps they fear that any victory by the West in 2022 will further entrench a largely progressive-dominated establishment, including now the military, which has followed the great inversion of the past few decades. That is why, in foreign conflicts as in much else, Right is the new Left.
Worth reading in full – and while you’re at it subscribe to Ed’s Substack.
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You’ve moved to Halton? You’ve already “gone native” – only a Scouser calls “Home Bargains” Home and Bargain”!
Hate Not Hope – Underlying principle of Sir Two-Tier’s government.
I keep hearing Zia Farage UK is soaring in the polls but every time I look Zia Farage UK is on 25%, slightly ahead or slightly behind Labour.
It’s not hard to imagine the Zia Farage UK is the establishment’s choice to form the next government to give the appearance of democracy. They’ll be a few token tax cuts, the boats will magically stop, maybe a referendum on ECHR and Net Zero, which will be ignored like the Brexit vote. Nothing much will really change.
Britain needs restoration not “reform”. Every single law made since 1997 should be repealed, every quango closed, and the police force and judiciary need rebuilding from scratch.
Very good.
I do agree, but maybe reform is the only other choice for now! Rather Reform headed by a donkey than the uniparty headed by the living dead!
Indeed. Quite a few laws made before 1997 should be repealed too, IMO. The question is, is there any appetite among the wider public for such a program? I don’t think there is, though it would be good to see someone try. Rupert Lowe certainly sounded like he was thinking along these lines.
40% of the electorate didn’t vote last time.
True but I doubt that many of those 40% would vote for the kind of program you are advocating. I may of course be wrong and it would be great to find out.
That’s because they are in despair of their vote making any difference.
And no wonder, when the votes of British citizens are swamped and overwhelmed by the Outrageous Commonwealth Voting Rights in British Elections, by citizens of 56 foreign countries!
The heroic campaigners who founded “Migration Watch”, former UK Ambassador Lord Andrew Green and Oxford Professor David Coleman, have been trying to wake up the public for years to ABOLISH THE COMMONWEALTH VOTING RIGHTS in UK elections. All to no avail, because the media and politicians conceal it, and the public won’t listen.
I’ve never heard of the Commonwealth Voting Rights.
Yes, of course there is an “appetite” among the public starving for change! They’ve just been waiting for some bold new ideas, like a lantern in the darkness, showing the way.
I hope you are right
100%.
Hear, hear! Well said, the Lockdown Sceptic! And that’s an apt new name for Reform: “Zia Farage UK”. I like it!
Astoundingly, it is being predicted that around 35% of the votes (obv not the local electorate since many won’t bother) will go to the Labour Party which makes it so clear it despises them.
They can’t ALL be Public Sector employees and/or Muslims, can they?
What excuse do the rest of them have?
They’re the professional unemployed …
I dunno, The people of Canada voted in Carney! nothing suprises me anymore
Indeed. Tragic.
Not really. According to the BBC, it’s hung parliament with the Liberals having exactly as many seats (168) as all other parties together.
Trump’s persistent attempts to be the playground bully who keeps whining about being bullied all the time while smashing other kid’s toys left, right and center were bound to help politicians opposed to him. That’s a political classic: In case of trouble at home, make war on a foreign country. Still helps if it’s only a rethorical war.
Indeed they hate their own voters, as did (and probably still do) the Fake Conservatives, as famously pointed out by Hitchens on Question Time, talking about “Slippery Dave” Cameron. Worth searching out the clip on YouTube just to see Justine Greening’s face.
Excellent article by Steven Tucker, and a nice photo of Nigel with Reform’s new Trojan Horse.
Reform UK’s Runcorn candidate welcomed Syrian and Afghan refugees – but now ‘fully supports net zero immigration’
Councillor expelled from Cheshire East Conservative group – Cheshire Live
“Cllr Sarah Pochin has been expelled by Cheshire East Tories after she agreed to become mayor when the Independents and Labour voted for her”
Remember: A Vote for Reform is a Vote for the Caliphate
Classic Farage – shit all over the local party by dumping some outsider on them.
Maybe it’s just me, but why does Farage seem to always wander about with very dark sunglasses on – not being able to see the whites of peoples eyes is not good to build trust… hasn’t anyone told him that?
Maybe it’s because of that nasty Only Fans prostitute who threw a milkshake in his eyes, temporarily blinding him, as he described his shock afterward, since he didn’t know whether the liquid was something acid or toxic.
I don’t blame him for taking precautions now by wearing sunglasses.
A great deal of party politics in the UK, especially in cities, has been ‘Machine Politics’.
Wikipedia:
But the Conservatives have lost their machine power, and Labour are realising that their machine power is running away through their fingers. Reform and various Muslim organisations are picking up the disaffected. I guess ‘Machine Politics’ wins – until the machine becomes worn out and breaks down.
Before scoffing at the healing power of crystals perhaps the author should think about crystal radios. Crystals do have healing powers, only those irredeemably wedded to prescription drugs think otherwise