My Take | Is Han ‘racism’ a geopolitical asset in China’s rivalry with the US?
- Putin and Xi think their countries need ‘manly men’, racial unity is a strength, and ‘wokeism’ is destroying the West. A pioneering decade-old Pentagon study agrees with them
Everyone and their dog has by now commented on Tucker Carlson’s controversial interview with Vladimir Putin. So I am very late to the game. My poor excuse is that what I am about to comment on is not urgent, like where the war in Ukraine is headed or whether Donald Trump 2.0 will shut down US support for Kyiv, but something much longer-term.
One big reason I can think of – there were of course many others – why the Russian strongman was happy to sit for hours with Carlson was because the former Fox News star anchor and now online influencer is closely associated with America’s far right.
There is even a rumour circulating – one which Carlson has never denied – that if Donald Trump secures the Republicans’ choice for him to be their presidential candidate, Carlson could be his running mate.
Putin has long tried to cultivate relationships with far-right leaders in Europe and the United States, whether it’s Marine Le Pen in France or Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, even before the Ukraine war. Certainly many such far-right leaders and parties have been demanding an immediate end to the war.
Putin would consider Trump as part of the gang, as the former and possibly future US president has consistently expressed admiration for Putin. Trump’s latest row, probably meant as a joke, was to call on Russia to attack Nato member states who did not pay their dues.
What Putin wants, as one policy wit in Brussels once observed, is a “far-right International”, something like, but ideologically opposite to, the old communist International.
Over the years, Putin has repeatedly attacked Western wokeism. And Carlson had no trouble playing up Putin’s pet peeve.