{"id":280374,"date":"2025-04-12T13:25:12","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T13:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/12\/how-the-g-o-p-fell-in-love-with-putins-russia\/"},"modified":"2025-04-12T13:25:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-12T13:25:12","slug":"how-the-g-o-p-fell-in-love-with-putins-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/12\/how-the-g-o-p-fell-in-love-with-putins-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"How the G.O.P. Fell in Love With Putin\u2019s Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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As Buchanan saw it, the great struggle of the 21st century wasn\u2019t a geopolitical battle between East and West, or freedom and oppression. It was a cultural battle between traditionalists and the secular, multicultural, global elite. In this context, America\u2019s crusade to spread democracy was bound to lead it astray. \u201cIf communism was the god that failed the Lost Generation,\u201d he wrote in the early \u201990s, \u201cdemocracy, as ideal form of government, panacea for mankind\u2019s ills, hope of the world, may prove the Golden Calf of this generation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buchanan had a following, but he was very much on the margins of a party dominated by neocons, who saw America\u2019s victory in the Cold War as the decisive triumph of liberal democracy. The post-Cold War world order appeared to be set; history had ended. The attacks of Sept. 11, and the overwhelming bipartisan support for America\u2019s military response to them, only reaffirmed the urgency and righteousness of the cause.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Buchanan turned his gaze toward Russia. He had recently published his best-selling book \u201cSuicide of a Superpower,\u201d bemoaning what he saw as America\u2019s ongoing social, moral and cultural disintegration. It was an apocalyptic warning about the country\u2019s declining birthrates, the diminishing influence of Christianity, the vanishing nuclear family and what Buchanan called \u201cthird world\u201d immigration. Chapter titles included \u201cThe End of White America\u201d and \u201cThe Death of Christian America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Against this backdrop, Buchanan saw Putin as an inspiration. While Obama condemned the Russian president as an enemy of American values, Buchanan embraced him as one of his own. \u201cIs Vladimir Putin a paleoconservative?\u201d he wrote in 2013 in The American Conservative. \u201cIn the culture war for mankind\u2019s future, is he one of us?\u201d When Russia annexed Crimea the following year, Buchanan characterized the invasion as part of Putin\u2019s divine plan to establish Moscow as \u201cthe Godly City of today and command post of the counterreformation against the new paganism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mainstream conservatives distanced themselves from Buchanan \u2014 and Putin \u2014 but the ground was shifting beneath them. A backlash was brewing on the right against immigration and progressive social change, as well as America\u2019s misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the American project to export liberal democracy. A new generation of nativist, reactionary thinkers gravitated toward Putin\u2019s Russia as an ally in their culture war to turn America instead toward an antiglobalist nationalism. Putin\u2019s critiques of Europe\u2019s liberal immigration policies and his talk of rebuilding a Russia with citizens who felt \u201ca spiritual connection to our Motherland\u201d resonated. \u201cIn 20 years, Russia will be the only country that is recognizably European,\u201d the right-wing commentator and author Ann Coulter said in 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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As Buchanan saw it, the great struggle of the 21st century wasn\u2019t a geopolitical battle between East and West, or freedom and oppression. It was a cultural battle between traditionalists and the secular, multicultural, global elite. In this context, America\u2019s crusade to spread democracy was bound to lead it astray. \u201cIf communism was the god […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280375,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/04\/12\/magazine\/12idea-putinism-top\/12idea-putinism-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[217048,100352,217053,111093,7985,217050,164768,163575,2437,68960,136390,217051,3096,169367,409,205460,217052,21852,3979,163696,217054,202,190570,217049,52,69215,174743,128437,163486,81146,34139,8774],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280374"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280376,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280374\/revisions\/280376"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}