13-12-2016, 06:50 PM
The regime that some people on the "Left" are trying to defend. Again, can anyone imagine why Putin might have a motive to promote Trump and his alt-right followers?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/...putin.html
Throughout the collection of white ethnocentrists, nationalists, populists and neo-Nazis that has taken root on both sides of the Atlantic, Mr. Putin is widely revered as a kind of white knight: a symbol of strength, racial purity and traditional Christian values in a world under threat from Islam, immigrants and rootless cosmopolitan elites.
"I've always seen Russia as the guardian at the gate, as the easternmost outpost of our people," said Sam Dickson, a white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan lawyer who frequently speaks at gatherings of the so-called alt-right, a far-right fringe movement that embraces white nationalism and a range of racist and anti-immigrant positions. "They are our barrier to the Oriental invasion of our homeland and the great protector of Christendom. I admire the Russian people. They are the strongest white people on earth."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...putin.html
Rather, their newfound enthusiasm for the men inside the Kremlin has everything to do with the Russian government's anti-gay crackdown, a crackdown they relish seeing take place here in America. Social conservatives' latter-day admiration for Russian authoritarianism has its origins in one of the crucial debates that existed between Cold War-era conservative and liberal anti-communists. At the time, conservatives tended to be more willing than liberals, even enthusiastic, to make deals with nasty regimes in the third world, provided they were not communist. From Pinochet's Chile to the Greek military junta to apartheid South Africa, anti-communist governments proclaimed their defense of traditional moral values against the threat of Marxist dictatorship. And they often found a receptive audience in a sector of the American right; see, for instance, Pat Buchanan, who lauded Spanish dictator Francisco Franco as a "Catholic savior" and listed him alongside Pinochet as "soldier-patriots."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...putin.html
That's right, Donald Trump and his alt-right fanbase are hardly the only Americans who deeply admire Vladimir Putin: He has a fairly large fan clubamong politically active U.S. Christian conservatives.
It includes some pretty big names, like conservative Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, National Organization for Marriage leader Brian Brown, and American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer. In almost every case it has been his distinctive combination of homophobia and Islamophobia that has made Putin one of the Christian right's favorite international figures. The cultural conservative preference for authoritarian Christian Slavs who are fighting Muslims has, as Beinart notes, carried over from the Serbs to their traditional sponsors in Moscow, and most especially to the former KGB officer who has revived Russia's pre-communist tradition of militantly traditionalist Christianity.
Putin's attacks on "gay propaganda" have been particularly heartwarming to Christian-right folk, probably because of echoes they hear of their own longtime warnings about a sinister "homosexual agenda" pervading U.S. politics and culture.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/...putin.html
Throughout the collection of white ethnocentrists, nationalists, populists and neo-Nazis that has taken root on both sides of the Atlantic, Mr. Putin is widely revered as a kind of white knight: a symbol of strength, racial purity and traditional Christian values in a world under threat from Islam, immigrants and rootless cosmopolitan elites.
"I've always seen Russia as the guardian at the gate, as the easternmost outpost of our people," said Sam Dickson, a white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan lawyer who frequently speaks at gatherings of the so-called alt-right, a far-right fringe movement that embraces white nationalism and a range of racist and anti-immigrant positions. "They are our barrier to the Oriental invasion of our homeland and the great protector of Christendom. I admire the Russian people. They are the strongest white people on earth."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/20...putin.html
Rather, their newfound enthusiasm for the men inside the Kremlin has everything to do with the Russian government's anti-gay crackdown, a crackdown they relish seeing take place here in America. Social conservatives' latter-day admiration for Russian authoritarianism has its origins in one of the crucial debates that existed between Cold War-era conservative and liberal anti-communists. At the time, conservatives tended to be more willing than liberals, even enthusiastic, to make deals with nasty regimes in the third world, provided they were not communist. From Pinochet's Chile to the Greek military junta to apartheid South Africa, anti-communist governments proclaimed their defense of traditional moral values against the threat of Marxist dictatorship. And they often found a receptive audience in a sector of the American right; see, for instance, Pat Buchanan, who lauded Spanish dictator Francisco Franco as a "Catholic savior" and listed him alongside Pinochet as "soldier-patriots."
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/201...putin.html
That's right, Donald Trump and his alt-right fanbase are hardly the only Americans who deeply admire Vladimir Putin: He has a fairly large fan clubamong politically active U.S. Christian conservatives.
It includes some pretty big names, like conservative Evangelical leader Franklin Graham, National Organization for Marriage leader Brian Brown, and American Family Association spokesperson Bryan Fischer. In almost every case it has been his distinctive combination of homophobia and Islamophobia that has made Putin one of the Christian right's favorite international figures. The cultural conservative preference for authoritarian Christian Slavs who are fighting Muslims has, as Beinart notes, carried over from the Serbs to their traditional sponsors in Moscow, and most especially to the former KGB officer who has revived Russia's pre-communist tradition of militantly traditionalist Christianity.
Putin's attacks on "gay propaganda" have been particularly heartwarming to Christian-right folk, probably because of echoes they hear of their own longtime warnings about a sinister "homosexual agenda" pervading U.S. politics and culture.