How Putin Conned the American Right
He carefully planted the seeds for his popularity among conservatives.
If you could hop in a time machine, buckle up, and pop back three decadesāor even just oneāand tell a loyal Republican of yesteryear that prominent American conservatives in 2022 would admire and defend the former KGB officer who rules Russia, you would be met with disbelief. Yet here we are:
Now that the world has seen the brutality and horror of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, much of Putinās fan base on the American right has either become āanti-anti-Putinā or gone quiet altogether. But itās worth taking a moment to look back at what attracted them to the dictator in the first place. Doing so helps us to see that Putinās American stans are not savvy observers of the international scene, but gulls. Putin has long been positioning himself as the leader of global cultural conservatism, but not because he believes in the policies and ideas. He simply understands their value to him in domestic and international politics.
Consider his surreal televised speech on March 25, during which he said that āthe proverbial ācancel cultureā has become the cancellation of cultureā while invoking the criticism of Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling. He gave a similar speech as recently as February, echoing the talking points of American conservatives in his warnings against an assault on ābasic things such as mother, father, family or gender differences.ā These resonances didnāt come as a surprise to Kremlin watchers, who know that Putin, who often literally cancels his adversaries, doesnāt give a fig about figuratively ācancelingā authors or about any kind of decency. But many on the American right have loved his shtick for years.
Putin made his first moves in the direction of conservative cultural leadership in 2013. The previous year, President Barack Obama had put social conservatives on a defensive footing by coming out in favor of gay marriage. Then, in 2013, the Supreme Court agreed to hear United States v. Windsor. Six weeks after the oral argument, the Russian Duma passed what would come to be known as the āanti-gay law,ā but Putin didnāt sign the bill into law immediately. He let it sit on his desk for three weeks. Days after the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, he signed it into law.
Later in 2013, a Kremlin-connected Russian think tank called the Center for Strategic Communications published a report titled, āPutin: World Conservatismās New Leader.ā The document repeated populist talking points that would prove influential during the 2016 presidential election. It rejected āideological experimentsā and called for social stability and conservative family values instead. It characterized immigration as a threat to the nation-state, and it framed Putin as a defender of sovereignty.
Days after the report was published, Putin gave his annual State of the Nation address to the Duma. His speech centered on the reportās conclusions, and gay marriage featured prominently:
We know that there are more and more people in the world who support our position on defending traditional values that have made up the spiritual and moral foundation of civilization in every nation for thousands of years: the values of traditional families, real human life, including religious life, not just material existence but also spirituality, the values of humanism and global diversity.
The speech made Putin an icon in segments of the right. Pat Buchanan and Franklin Graham wrote op-eds praising him as a new standard-bearer for Christian values. Graham even traveled to Moscow to meet him. Christian groups such as the World Congress of Families began developing stronger associations with Russia, and conservatives on social media began to publicly express support for Putin as an avatar of social conservatism.
In 2019, the Center for Social and Conservative Policy, another Kremlin-connected think tank, published a report that identified āthe leading role of culture in social development [as] a landmark point of Putinās political philosophy.ā Putin went on the offensive soon after. In an interview with the Financial Times, he questioned social changes in the West, using them as evidence for liberal democracyās weakness, and called for a return to traditional social valuesāābiblicalā valuesāinstead.
Putin has also exploited conservativesā anxieties about the retreat of masculinity in the West. Pictured shirtless on a horse or doing judo, he has created an image of himself as a strong, masculine leader. Even his military campaign in Syria played a role. While his targets were mostly the secular opposition to Bashar al-Assad, Putinās propaganda machine portrayed the campaign as a decisive leaderās war against Islamist extremists. The contrast with the West was pronounced: The United States kept its operations against the Islamic State limited and its profile low to avoid getting mired in the Syrian civil war.
Putinās information strategy is a continuation of the old Soviet information strategy. It prioritizes a large variety of low-cost operations; efforts and resources are multiplied for whichever works best. And just like the Soviet regime before it, Putinās regime is impotent in understanding American politics, but it is well versed in understanding American societal divisionsāand how to exploit them.
For years, Putinās strategy seemed to pay off, as a segment of writers and magazines and broadcasters on the American right praised him, or at least took it easier on him than they otherwise would have. But the war in Ukraine has shown the limits of Putinās soft power: An overwhelming majority of Americans object to Russiaās invasion and view the Russian leader as a menace and a pariah. But his erstwhile supporters on the American right, now gone mostly quiet, could prove themselves gulls again if Putinās media specialists attempt a rehabilitation campaign. This possibility proves that Putinās efforts to court social conservatives were not a total waste.
