How
Putin became the Che Guevara of the Right
Giving
Putin the thumbs-up is the equivalent of pulling on a Che T-shirt for
the Left.
By PETER
POMERANTSEV 11/3/16, 3:17 PM CET Updated 11/6/16, 1:08 AM CET
“He’s a Kremlin
puppet!” has been a clarion call for those rallying to stop U.S.
presidential hopeful Donald Trump.
But his public
pro-Putin positions, and a few unfounded Kremlin links thrown in by
his detractors, haven’t hurt Trump in the polls. And he’s not
alone. Similar charges have been thrown at the successful campaign to
leave the European Union and at right-wing movements gaining traction
in Europe.
So is accusing your
opponent of being Putin’s pal a good strategy? What if accusing
someone of colluding with the Kremlin actually helps their cause?
Imagine, for a
moment, you are the leader of an “anti-establishment” political
movement. You thrill your followers by sticking it to the “liberal
elites” and the “global order.” There’s nothing more
“anti-establishment” than showing two fingers to such elite,
aloof projects as NATO or the EU, and giving props to the man who
wants to undermine them — Vladimir Putin.
What better way to
milk the outrage of the “liberal” media than by siding with a
Kremlin that has made attacking “liberal values” its motto? And
wouldn’t you welcome attacks from liberal elites for associating
you with the sort of disruption you wish to emulate?
Arron Banks, the
millionaire funder of the Leave campaign, and former UKIP Leader
Nigel Farage have been out and proud in their admiration for Putin
and his foreign policies.
For the
“anti-establishment” Right, giving Putin the thumbs-up has become
the equivalent of what pulling on a Che T-shirt has long meant for
the Left.
In April’s Dutch
referendum on the EU’s association agreement with Ukraine, leaders
of the anti-immigrant, anti-EU movement gleefully used Kremlin
disinformation to smear Ukraine as “fascist” and downplay
Russia’s role in the Ukrainian conflict. Liberals accused them of
being the Kremlin’s useful idiots — and lost. Voters didn’t
care about Putin. They were concerned about immigration and the
economy. If anything, they saw the Russian leader’s anti-EU stance
as an echo of their own.
In the U.K.
referendum on leaving the EU, the Remain campaign played up how
delighted Putin would be by an Out vote. Brexiteers portrayed the
effort as part of the global elite’s’ attempt to distract the
electorate from Brexiteers’ real concerns — again, immigration
and the economy.
Arron Banks, the
millionaire funder of the Leave campaign, and former UKIP Leader
Nigel Farage have been out and proud in their admiration for Putin
and his foreign policies.
When Donald Trump
was attacked for being too close to Putin, his response was to ask
the Kremlin to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails. He doesn’t hide his
admiration of Putin; he advertises it. His bet seems to be that
because Russia doesn’t take away American jobs, and because his
supporters aren’t as viscerally threatened by Russia as they are by
Islamic terrorism or immigration from Mexico, playing footsie with
the Kremlin won’t feel like betraying America.
Being pro-Moscow, or
at least deviating strongly from the establishment in his attitude to
Moscow, is a fantastic raspberry to blow at the Beltway. For a
candidate whose tactic is to be outrageous and break taboos, here is
another one.
No new right-wing
politician has been quite as brazen in her backing of Putin as Marine
Le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant National Front in France. When
it first transpired two years ago that the National Front was funded
to the tune of €11 million by a small Russian bank close to Putin’s
closest allies, you would be excused for thinking it would spell the
end of Le Pen’s career. She is still soaring in the polls.
Le Pen has openly
supported ending sanctions against Russia. National Front delegates
monitor and applaud Putin’s referendums — referendums rejected by
global institutions — that validate his foreign conquests. Le Pen
has asked Russia for another €27 million. Her voters just don’t
care.
In these looking
glass games, those who try to undermine the Trumps and Le Pens of
this world by accusing them of being too close to the Kremlin risk
merely doing them a favor.
There is nothing
particularly “covert” in these relationships: They appear to work
best if they are brazenly overt. The very point is to advertise your
Putin sympathies.
The 20th century
language of secrets, spies, agents and conspiracies worked when the
Kremlin was the official enemy and it was considered treachery to get
in bed with it. But in our highly networked era, simple notions of
“ally” and “enemy” are being replaced with weird webs of
non-linear interconnections.
In these looking
glass games, those who try to undermine the Trumps and Le Pens of
this world by accusing them of being too close to the Kremlin risk
merely doing them a favor.
Peter Pomerantsev is
the author of “Nothing Is True and Everything is Possible: The
Surreal Heart of the New Russia” (PublicAffairs, 2014), for which
he won the 2016 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize.
Authors:
Peter Pomerantsev
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