Putin greatest transgression was that he performed a nationalist action. Nationalism is the real transgression. The EU elite and the progressive “multicultural” Obama led Left are one world globalists. They loathe nationalism. However the rest of the world has not signed on. Russia, China and most of the third world remain fervently patriotic and nationalistic. what is more this Crimea episode has demonstrated that the real power and influence of the West, as it enters a post Christian, neo pagan decadent era, is in decline. Western leaders have been reduced to grumbling, whining and pouting. That is no substitute for inspiring leadership or effective policies. Events have evolved despite their futile objections.
That is a very myopic view. How is invading a sovereign nation for the sake of an ethnic Russian minority that already had autonomy, a "nationalist action"? It did nothing but harm to both Ukraine and Russia. Nationalist respect national borders.
Putin's internal policies have nothing nationalist about them. For example, Russia is flooded by cheap labor from Asia, with ritualistic lamb slaughter and bottom-up communal prayers to Mecca taking place on main streets in Moscow.
Excellent analysis. I agree 100%.
It be interested to hear you distinguish between Russian and Ukrainian “nationalism.”
The effort to confuse the radically Leftwing German National Socialist movement, with the "far Right," of course goes back to Stalin's propaganda, refocused on the subject after the German invasion in 1941. This mis-characterization was very much abetted by Leftist theorists in Roosevelt's New Deal--which had much in common with the Nazis in dealing with the Great Depression--but needed to differentiate itself, as part of the war effort.
The concept of the "Right Wing," of course goes back to the French Revolution, where the great landowners & State Church leaders sat on the Right in the National Assembly. While it is generally coextensive with Conservatism, in any nation, that is not inevitably so--depending on which institutions the conservatives in any particular nation, consider most important.
Thus we can say that the Monarchists & supporters of the continuity of established and vested positions are right wing, and almost always Conservative. But Conservatives in countries like the United States & Switzerland, with a long Republican tradition, tend to be Republicans, as well as more sympathetic to a greater degree of social mobility, than those in some of the other European nations.
Now, when one looks not at traditional values & interests, internal to any nation; but rather to relations between nations; there is some overlap between Right & Left, with respect to many issues--such as trade, immigration, imperialism & ethnicity. In my humble opinion, the doctrines of the great Swiss authority Vattel, from a quarter millennium ago, offer a clearer insight than anything likely to be offered by so called contemporary "pundits."
The Founding Fathers applied Vattel's principles in devising a foreign policy that once made us the most admired peoples on earth. The EU, like America post Wilson, has gone off on a tangent, and consequently those in Europe--whom the CFR lumps together as "right-wing," are reacting. Whatever any of those groups' policies on domestic issues; their reaction to the loss of control over their respective cultural heritages, certainly seems justified. A people's culture reflects their nature & generations of experience, for which their is no substitute.
But, of course, in my humble opinion, our fellow countrymen, generally, have over-looked the most significant lesson for us, clear in the Crimean events--and that goes to what the American Left's deliberate efforts to change American ethnicity is doing.
William Flax
"That is no substitute for inspiring leadership or effective policies."
What, you weren't inspired by Barry's speech referring to the referendum in Kosovo?
/sarc