Vladimir Putin – Freedumb’s Great White Hope
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I’m so old that I remember when praising a Russian leader was a distinctly un-American thing to do.
As the founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party, an American group that aims to preserve the privileged place of whiteness in Western civilization and fight “anti-Christian degeneracy,” Matthew Heimbach knows whom he envisions as the ideal ruler: the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.
“Russia is our biggest inspiration,” Mr. Heimbach said. “I see President Putin as the leader of the free world.”
Kids today say the darndest things.
Throughout the presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump mystified many on the left and in the foreign policy establishment with his praise for Mr. Putin and his criticism of the Obama administration’s efforts to isolate and punish Russia for its actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. But what seemed inexplicable when Mr. Trump first expressed his admiration for the Russian leader seems, in retrospect, to have been a shrewd dog whistle to a small but highly motivated part of his base.
If only there were people whose job it is to investigate such things as the statements and motives of people seeking office and report what they discover to the public. Because personally, I think that when an American who is running for president courts the Fans of the ex-KGB thug turned super-power leader who has people who annoy him jailed or bumped off vote, that is something that would interest other Americans.
At any rate, the article the NYT did produce discusses Putin’s international supremacist fan club which is interesting in a Watching the ancient horror crankily demand more sacrifices sort of way, but in regards to American Vlad-symps, it also raises the question: What do he got that Trump ain’t got? And would a topless pony ride help?
As an aside – on the topic of dog whistles.
For Mr. Heimbach is far from alone in his esteem for Mr. Putin. 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.
Again, if there were people whose job it is to investigate and report things, I would not expect them to use pejorative (in this case anti-Semitic) terms such rootless cosmopolitan elites in this manner. Don’t blow the subject’s dog whistle would be a guideline I would expect these “reporters” of information to follow.
