Good article! I don't know why so many people on the right are so in love with the Russian system. I bet most (dissident) right-wing people would far rather live in the Netherlands or Sweden than Belarus/Russia, despite their politics. Personally, I don't get why someone would choose to ban other people from and freedom of speech/expression (including lgbt), so the authoritarianism of that region is not appealing to me.
It reminds me of how some believe that conservative values will increase TFR but look at South Korea! It's got the lowest TFR and is much more culturally conservative than the West afaik. These countries seem to be in the unholy intersection where they face demographic collapse but also have fewer freedoms. We are fortunate to be in the West.
Finally, I don't think it's right to compare EU hard-right with Putin & co. : in Europe they are primarily motivated by migration, not so much by other social issues. Having said all this, I wish the best for people in the East and hope they can catch up in terms of living standards and liberty with the rest of us.
There are some people on the right who see Russia as something to admire/emulate. But most of us just don't see the value in constantly antagonizing them, especially since it has pushed them, Iran, North Korea, and China together. Back in the Cold War we had people in foreign policy who had an above room temperature IQ and realized that one piece of the communist block needed to be pried away from the rest.
I'm trying to write more full pieces since a mere comment won't be convincing, but my argument is this:
During the Cold War, the primary enemy was Russia, so America made peace with China.
During Cold War 2.0, the primary enemy is China, so shouldn't America make peace with Russia?
Here's the difference: in 1970, China had incredible potential for growth, while Russia was relatively "maxed out." In 2024, both Russia and China are heavily industrialized and are both undergoing demographic decline. So there is no partner here to serve as the "upstart" or "younger brother."
Unlike 1970, where America had little trade with USSR / China, in 2024, America has massive trade with China. So we are already fairly "maxed out" in terms of our interdependence on China. This has turned out to be beneficial for China, and problematic for us. North Korea is a Chinese proxy, and Iran is a potential regional hegemon.
At this point, the logical strategy of containment is to degrade Iran and China without engaging in a major war. Directly confronting China would lead to heavy costs. Confronting Russia is easier. If Russia is seen as a Chinese proxy, this makes perfect sense. The argument that "America should have been nicer to Russia in the 1990s" is completely irrelevant, to the point of whataboutism. It has no bearing on where we are now.
"At this point, the logical strategy of containment is to degrade Iran and China without engaging in a major war. Directly confronting China would lead to heavy costs. Confronting Russia is easier."
Except we are losing, or at best not winning, all of those fronts. China's economy is growing faster than ours, and their demographic problems are still decades away from degrading them, at which point our European allies will be on their last legs and we will be in a similar decline. Iran has been gaining ground through regional proxies, and they now have a higher enrichment potential than they did at any time when the JCPOA was in effect. Their regime is dysfunctional and not well liked, but is nowhere near collapse. Russia is treading water under immense sanctions, and even Western sources admit their military is significantly larger and more functional than in early 2022 when the war started. North Korea is still doing their thing, and supplying Russia with tons of arms. Nothing short of a reproachment with 1 or 2 of them will break the informal alliance apart.
Please provide a source on Chinese economic growth so I know what you're talking about. China seems to be slowing down, and tariffs will make this worse:
I agree that ideally America's growth will exceed China's, and have a better demographic situation. Iran also has negative fertility (1.69 births per woman), but they still have a young population. I didn't suggest that Iran is near collapse. The Russian economy is entirely Chinese at this point. We're already in an effective economic alliance with China -- so "rapprochement" with China defeats the entire concept of a great power conflict. I don't think rapprochement with Russia is possible until Putin goes, and in the meantime, limiting Russian expansion seems logical.
Ah Hungary does make more sense. I don't know much about South Korea but heard that there was significant resentment between men and women there due to gender expectations and East-Asian conformity pressures.
1) Ethnic Russians are given special status in the russian constitution through a 2018 amendment. "Russian-speakers are a state-bearing people"
I remember this being both praised and controversial at the time. "First time since the tsars, Russians are given their own country." Obviously, liberals didn't like it but some RuNats didn't think the phrasing went far enough and voted against in the referendum.
(Not that it matters because russian election are predetermined by the Kremlin)
Also, I caution reading too much into the constitution. Russia is not a rule of law state so reading the law is not reflective of how the system works. Planning offensive wars is also against domestic russian law. There's many examples of the Kremlin ignoring or changing it's interpretation post-hoc when it suits them.
2) There is evidence Putin is a great replacement-tionist. Pressganging ethnic minorities and illegal immigrants to fight in a war in Ukraine, while stealing Ukrainian kids and raising them as russian. Just like everything Putinist, he's not intellectual or smart enough to lay out a manifesto where he articulate this and propose solutions. It's more indirect, impulsive and based on instinct. This trend goes back to everything Putin does in all areas. He's not the mastermind bond villain western libtards, ukronats, balts and DR people make him out to be.
Another example of this would be the 2014 Olympics, were he did very little (and very late) to appease westerners to come to the Olympics despite it's purpose was to show off russian greatness as a modern and big country.
Andropov famously said "we do not understand the system under which we live, our actions will therefore seem eccentric and impulsive". That's much more true under Putin than under the leadership of the all-union communist party.
3) "The authoritarianism and stability of Putinism make Russia a less dynamic and more static country. There is less internal social chaos (sexual deviancy, political polarization, breakdown of the family). This reduction in chaos makes a right wing reaction less likely."
It's more atomisation rather than stability. Russia doesn't really have institutions outside of the presidential administration. I do think it's much more inherently unstable because of the hierarchy and absence of independent institutions, whether it be judicial review or NGOs. It's a system all based on loyalty to the president and in turn, loyalty to his deputies, and their deputies and so on.
Russians are an interesting people and in my experience much more culturally European than American when it comes to attitudes to divorce, drugs, family values etc. . I think a lot of the tradtard rhetoric the Kremlin echoes is both imported from America and meant for a foreign (primarily American) audience. There are many people in America who share the values of Mike Pence, if you look at surveys (combined with my anecdotal evidence), russians are not culturally conservative (outside of the so-called DICH republics, poor Muslim regions in the south including Chechnya) as the propaganda makes it out to be, preacher (including from the Russian orthodox church) are routinely persecuted for not following the state line. Including stuff like saying "bless are the peacemaker" in reference to opposition to the war in Ukraine.
"Christian strongman" is used as a veneer while Russia's actual working ideology is technocracy who want to steal and don't want people to be ideological at all.
Much like in the case of the West, the true driver is mass migration. I dont want to say the first part of this article was in vain, indeed running the numbers might be usefull to sketch the picture, but really there are barely ~1.6M chechens in the whole of Russia, little more then 2M worldwide. Alone or even in the company of Tuvans, Buryats, etc it would take them literal centuries to fully replace the Russkye.
Same thing in Europe. Only the continual southern influx by plane or boat, by smugler or passport, can truly turn Europe into a third world dump.
Moscow is still a Russian city along with St. Petersburg. How many large western cities are demographically the same as in say, 1950? London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Amsterdam, Chicago, New York?
Moscow has 2,500,000 Muslims. (The YouTube videos are spectacular.)
I don't mean to make you jealous, but the now-banned "Blacktivist" Instagram account, which had a few million subs at its peak, remains my favorite Russian sock puppet account. (This is documented in the Russian election interference report.) This user pushed black nationalism, advocated revolutionary action, and got videos of blacks being shot by white cops to go viral, giving the impression that blacks are being hunted in the United States.
Russia is neither friend nor enemy. I wish them well in their natural sphere of influence and have no conflict with them. Moscow is 90% Russian as of 2022. How many American cities have white majority populations? How British are London, Birmingham, Manchester, etc these days?
You hate Russia for ethnic reasons being partially Ukrainian or whatever you are. Go over there and fight for them as their whorish women age seeking western men and males of military age fleeing into Western Europe so they need all the help they can get these days.
Americanism is the enemy of the white race not Russia. I’m an American and my class, cultural, and economic enemies are right here at home not overseas.
"Now, instead of targeting leftists, Russian propaganda targets dissident right wingers who are fed up with the woke left. Mass immigration, transgenderism, and COVID are all cited as reasons that Russia is better than America. But Russia pushed its own COVID vaccine and its own vaccine passport system. Russia has mass immigration"
A common trope among the third positionist right during cold war stated soviet communism was just a reversed form of capitalism. We could declare, in retrospect, Putinism is just a reversed form of wokeism.
Yeah, dude, Putin isn’t the white savior the retards in the dissident right hoped but then neither is anything coming out of The West, including The Dissident Right.
To the extent that the far right overlaps with old racial beliefs, Slavs are considered inferior to the general Northern European stock. But NATO expansion into Ukraine will not be for the benefits of those Europeans; it will be so the EU can flood Ukraine with more Africans. And if Putin wins, he’ll flood Ukraine with chechens. A lose lose situation!
Curtis yarvin would advocate for an American Putin because he thinks mass immigration is okay if it is managed appropriately by a strong central government. Most on the far or dissident right would not endorse this moderate vision. Putin giving money to right wing parties in the west does not seem to particularly favor yarvin / thiel vs other groups. Russia would just be happy to see NATO weakened by any possible means. And so would the ethnic nationalists, because NATO and the EU are tied in with mass migration.
Pro natal and pro Christian policies only seem to serve as affirmative action for getting people to not violently lash out and produce ugly, nihilistic art, rather than actually increasing birth rates. So it is not really something that will rescue the west, but makes it easier to live with the decline.
How is a reduction of population benefit the economy,when most nations want to increase birth rates and migration to have more taxes to sustain their citizens?A decline in population can help environmental stability but the economic and mental stability of the people will take a hit,and we will have to accept a pre modern way of life
You say that further population growth is not economically sustainable,but it's mostly the opposite,capitalist markets have thrived on an increasing population and demand,investments need constant growth to be successful Governments in Japan and Korea spend a lot to fix their economic damages from their declining population,they might even become more open to migration to sustain their economy that would otherwise be hostile to due to cultural differences
Good article! I don't know why so many people on the right are so in love with the Russian system. I bet most (dissident) right-wing people would far rather live in the Netherlands or Sweden than Belarus/Russia, despite their politics. Personally, I don't get why someone would choose to ban other people from and freedom of speech/expression (including lgbt), so the authoritarianism of that region is not appealing to me.
It reminds me of how some believe that conservative values will increase TFR but look at South Korea! It's got the lowest TFR and is much more culturally conservative than the West afaik. These countries seem to be in the unholy intersection where they face demographic collapse but also have fewer freedoms. We are fortunate to be in the West.
Finally, I don't think it's right to compare EU hard-right with Putin & co. : in Europe they are primarily motivated by migration, not so much by other social issues. Having said all this, I wish the best for people in the East and hope they can catch up in terms of living standards and liberty with the rest of us.
There are some people on the right who see Russia as something to admire/emulate. But most of us just don't see the value in constantly antagonizing them, especially since it has pushed them, Iran, North Korea, and China together. Back in the Cold War we had people in foreign policy who had an above room temperature IQ and realized that one piece of the communist block needed to be pried away from the rest.
I'm trying to write more full pieces since a mere comment won't be convincing, but my argument is this:
During the Cold War, the primary enemy was Russia, so America made peace with China.
During Cold War 2.0, the primary enemy is China, so shouldn't America make peace with Russia?
Here's the difference: in 1970, China had incredible potential for growth, while Russia was relatively "maxed out." In 2024, both Russia and China are heavily industrialized and are both undergoing demographic decline. So there is no partner here to serve as the "upstart" or "younger brother."
Unlike 1970, where America had little trade with USSR / China, in 2024, America has massive trade with China. So we are already fairly "maxed out" in terms of our interdependence on China. This has turned out to be beneficial for China, and problematic for us. North Korea is a Chinese proxy, and Iran is a potential regional hegemon.
At this point, the logical strategy of containment is to degrade Iran and China without engaging in a major war. Directly confronting China would lead to heavy costs. Confronting Russia is easier. If Russia is seen as a Chinese proxy, this makes perfect sense. The argument that "America should have been nicer to Russia in the 1990s" is completely irrelevant, to the point of whataboutism. It has no bearing on where we are now.
"At this point, the logical strategy of containment is to degrade Iran and China without engaging in a major war. Directly confronting China would lead to heavy costs. Confronting Russia is easier."
Except we are losing, or at best not winning, all of those fronts. China's economy is growing faster than ours, and their demographic problems are still decades away from degrading them, at which point our European allies will be on their last legs and we will be in a similar decline. Iran has been gaining ground through regional proxies, and they now have a higher enrichment potential than they did at any time when the JCPOA was in effect. Their regime is dysfunctional and not well liked, but is nowhere near collapse. Russia is treading water under immense sanctions, and even Western sources admit their military is significantly larger and more functional than in early 2022 when the war started. North Korea is still doing their thing, and supplying Russia with tons of arms. Nothing short of a reproachment with 1 or 2 of them will break the informal alliance apart.
Please provide a source on Chinese economic growth so I know what you're talking about. China seems to be slowing down, and tariffs will make this worse:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48985789
China's growth rate is still roughly double the US's, and triple Europe's. And in PPP terms, which are what really matters, it's higher than the US.
I agree that ideally America's growth will exceed China's, and have a better demographic situation. Iran also has negative fertility (1.69 births per woman), but they still have a young population. I didn't suggest that Iran is near collapse. The Russian economy is entirely Chinese at this point. We're already in an effective economic alliance with China -- so "rapprochement" with China defeats the entire concept of a great power conflict. I don't think rapprochement with Russia is possible until Putin goes, and in the meantime, limiting Russian expansion seems logical.
South Korea has a comparable level of feminist and Pentecostal influence in their culture to the USA.
Most on the right list Hungary as their target goal more than Russia.
Ah Hungary does make more sense. I don't know much about South Korea but heard that there was significant resentment between men and women there due to gender expectations and East-Asian conformity pressures.
South Korea has both gender conformity and feminism. Then again, the two usually go hand in hand in a way
1) Ethnic Russians are given special status in the russian constitution through a 2018 amendment. "Russian-speakers are a state-bearing people"
I remember this being both praised and controversial at the time. "First time since the tsars, Russians are given their own country." Obviously, liberals didn't like it but some RuNats didn't think the phrasing went far enough and voted against in the referendum.
(Not that it matters because russian election are predetermined by the Kremlin)
Also, I caution reading too much into the constitution. Russia is not a rule of law state so reading the law is not reflective of how the system works. Planning offensive wars is also against domestic russian law. There's many examples of the Kremlin ignoring or changing it's interpretation post-hoc when it suits them.
2) There is evidence Putin is a great replacement-tionist. Pressganging ethnic minorities and illegal immigrants to fight in a war in Ukraine, while stealing Ukrainian kids and raising them as russian. Just like everything Putinist, he's not intellectual or smart enough to lay out a manifesto where he articulate this and propose solutions. It's more indirect, impulsive and based on instinct. This trend goes back to everything Putin does in all areas. He's not the mastermind bond villain western libtards, ukronats, balts and DR people make him out to be.
Another example of this would be the 2014 Olympics, were he did very little (and very late) to appease westerners to come to the Olympics despite it's purpose was to show off russian greatness as a modern and big country.
Andropov famously said "we do not understand the system under which we live, our actions will therefore seem eccentric and impulsive". That's much more true under Putin than under the leadership of the all-union communist party.
3) "The authoritarianism and stability of Putinism make Russia a less dynamic and more static country. There is less internal social chaos (sexual deviancy, political polarization, breakdown of the family). This reduction in chaos makes a right wing reaction less likely."
It's more atomisation rather than stability. Russia doesn't really have institutions outside of the presidential administration. I do think it's much more inherently unstable because of the hierarchy and absence of independent institutions, whether it be judicial review or NGOs. It's a system all based on loyalty to the president and in turn, loyalty to his deputies, and their deputies and so on.
Russians are an interesting people and in my experience much more culturally European than American when it comes to attitudes to divorce, drugs, family values etc. . I think a lot of the tradtard rhetoric the Kremlin echoes is both imported from America and meant for a foreign (primarily American) audience. There are many people in America who share the values of Mike Pence, if you look at surveys (combined with my anecdotal evidence), russians are not culturally conservative (outside of the so-called DICH republics, poor Muslim regions in the south including Chechnya) as the propaganda makes it out to be, preacher (including from the Russian orthodox church) are routinely persecuted for not following the state line. Including stuff like saying "bless are the peacemaker" in reference to opposition to the war in Ukraine.
"Christian strongman" is used as a veneer while Russia's actual working ideology is technocracy who want to steal and don't want people to be ideological at all.
Much like in the case of the West, the true driver is mass migration. I dont want to say the first part of this article was in vain, indeed running the numbers might be usefull to sketch the picture, but really there are barely ~1.6M chechens in the whole of Russia, little more then 2M worldwide. Alone or even in the company of Tuvans, Buryats, etc it would take them literal centuries to fully replace the Russkye.
Same thing in Europe. Only the continual southern influx by plane or boat, by smugler or passport, can truly turn Europe into a third world dump.
Moscow is still a Russian city along with St. Petersburg. How many large western cities are demographically the same as in say, 1950? London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Amsterdam, Chicago, New York?
88% of Rome is Italian. Do you know how much of Volgograd and Moscow are Rusyn? The answer is less than 70%.
Volgograd supposedly is 92% Russian. Rome is a lot less than 88% Italian these days. African migrants must not be counted as official residents.
Moscow has 2,500,000 Muslims. (The YouTube videos are spectacular.)
I don't mean to make you jealous, but the now-banned "Blacktivist" Instagram account, which had a few million subs at its peak, remains my favorite Russian sock puppet account. (This is documented in the Russian election interference report.) This user pushed black nationalism, advocated revolutionary action, and got videos of blacks being shot by white cops to go viral, giving the impression that blacks are being hunted in the United States.
Russia is not based, and it is not a friend.
Russia is neither friend nor enemy. I wish them well in their natural sphere of influence and have no conflict with them. Moscow is 90% Russian as of 2022. How many American cities have white majority populations? How British are London, Birmingham, Manchester, etc these days?
You hate Russia for ethnic reasons being partially Ukrainian or whatever you are. Go over there and fight for them as their whorish women age seeking western men and males of military age fleeing into Western Europe so they need all the help they can get these days.
Sure, Ivan.
Is that your middle name? Ivan?
Americanism is the enemy of the white race not Russia. I’m an American and my class, cultural, and economic enemies are right here at home not overseas.
"Now, instead of targeting leftists, Russian propaganda targets dissident right wingers who are fed up with the woke left. Mass immigration, transgenderism, and COVID are all cited as reasons that Russia is better than America. But Russia pushed its own COVID vaccine and its own vaccine passport system. Russia has mass immigration"
A common trope among the third positionist right during cold war stated soviet communism was just a reversed form of capitalism. We could declare, in retrospect, Putinism is just a reversed form of wokeism.
Yeah, dude, Putin isn’t the white savior the retards in the dissident right hoped but then neither is anything coming out of The West, including The Dissident Right.
To the extent that the far right overlaps with old racial beliefs, Slavs are considered inferior to the general Northern European stock. But NATO expansion into Ukraine will not be for the benefits of those Europeans; it will be so the EU can flood Ukraine with more Africans. And if Putin wins, he’ll flood Ukraine with chechens. A lose lose situation!
Curtis yarvin would advocate for an American Putin because he thinks mass immigration is okay if it is managed appropriately by a strong central government. Most on the far or dissident right would not endorse this moderate vision. Putin giving money to right wing parties in the west does not seem to particularly favor yarvin / thiel vs other groups. Russia would just be happy to see NATO weakened by any possible means. And so would the ethnic nationalists, because NATO and the EU are tied in with mass migration.
Pro natal and pro Christian policies only seem to serve as affirmative action for getting people to not violently lash out and produce ugly, nihilistic art, rather than actually increasing birth rates. So it is not really something that will rescue the west, but makes it easier to live with the decline.
How is a reduction of population benefit the economy,when most nations want to increase birth rates and migration to have more taxes to sustain their citizens?A decline in population can help environmental stability but the economic and mental stability of the people will take a hit,and we will have to accept a pre modern way of life
Who are you asking? Where do I say that "a reduction of population is a benefit to the economy"?
You say that further population growth is not economically sustainable,but it's mostly the opposite,capitalist markets have thrived on an increasing population and demand,investments need constant growth to be successful Governments in Japan and Korea spend a lot to fix their economic damages from their declining population,they might even become more open to migration to sustain their economy that would otherwise be hostile to due to cultural differences