Right-wing switchback: "National conservatives" dump Putin, want to claim Ukraine

[marmar]

Right-wing switchback: "National conservatives" dump Putin, want to claim Ukraine
At global gathering of right-wing nationalists, a startling pivot: Putin's toast — and wow, do they love Ukraine

By KATHRYN JOYCE
PUBLISHED APRIL 13, 2022 6:30AM


(Salon) From the first day of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have been placed in an uneasy position. For more than two decades, right-wing activists and politicians have praised Russia as the unlikely wellspring of renewed traditionalism, as Vladimir Putin intertwined church and state in an effort to bolster Russian nationalism and, more quietly, his aspirations to reconstruct the Soviet empire.

When the launch of Putin's war coincided with the first day of the Conservative Political Action conference in late February, a dizzying ideological switchback began. Speakers who had declared just days or hours earlier that they didn't care about the fate of Ukraine were rapidly forced to recalibrate. Fox News' Tucker Carlson, who in 2019 declared he was "root[ing] for Russia" in its conflict with Ukraine, was compelled to recant, at least temporarily. In Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who had celebrated his long and fond relationship with Putin in Moscow just weeks before Russia invaded, issued a tepid condemnation. (Hungary is a member state of both the EU and NATO, though its relationship with both is tense.)

At least initially, on the broader, more ideological level, there was a sense that Russia's aggression — and Putin's claims that he was fighting not just Ukraine but the whole of the "degenerate" West — would engender a rebuke of the "illiberal" populist movements that have swept far-right leaders into power around the world.

As the Washington Post editorial board put it this week, Putin had launched two wars, the second being a war of ideas over the international illiberal agenda Russia has helped lead. Or as columnist Brad Littlejohn wrote at The American Conservative, "behind the battles being waged on the plains of Ukraine was a deeper battle over the narrative that would frame Russia's invasion, the lessons the West must learn from it, and the vision for a future Europe that ought to emerge on the other side of this crisis."

....(snip)....

Yet when the NatCons gathered several weeks ago in Brussels, for their fifth international conference, the dominant message of the speakers was not reassessment or remorse, but vindication. Not because of any overt or coded sympathy for Russian aggression — the speakers were so uniformly vitriolic in condemning the invasion that conservative writer Rod Dreher, another presenter, noted it was "almost impossible to dissent from anti-Russian maximalism" — but rather because of their ambitious and perhaps mind-bending claim that Ukraine's struggle against an invading army embodied their values, not those of the democratic center or left. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/04/13/right-wing-switchback-national-conservatives-want-to-claim-ukraine/

[Lovie777]

1. Like other RWers/White Nationalists/Qanon, etc.......

These people are truly sick in mind and body. The admiration of this group and other conservative groups should put sane people to think twice because their motives are sincerely evil, hopefully President Zelenskyy will know the difference.

[Midnight Writer]

2. It's a cult. They go where they are led. One day's saint is the next day's sinner.

They spend hours every day listening to their leaders.

[flamingdem]

3. Because the Russian donations ran out!

Yep...

[Marvin Marvin]

4. Something about picking a winner? That's my guess/ n/t