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.

One thing that the American far right opposes is “diversity, equity and inclusion”, a phrase most closely associated, in their minds, with “wokeism” or woke ideology.

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What is woke?

Its advocates call it social justice. Their opponents derisively label it as woke. I have no good definition of the wokeism of “diversity, equity and inclusion”, so yours is as good as mine. I will just cite some examples to make sure we are talking about the same things.

If you are woke, you believe there are not only two genders, namely male and female but several, or even many. Like genders, racial differences don’t exist except as social constructs. It’s sometimes called critical race theory.

Some mental conditions such as autism are “neurodivergent”, but just as acceptable or desirable as any other commonly accepted condition. Beauty is also a social construct, so you can be morbidly obese and still consider yourself a top beauty. If you don’t accept these beliefs, you are racist, sexist and/or discriminatory against others, even if you don’t consider yourself as such.

Generally, diversity in whatever form is the name of the game. It’s considered a strength to an organisation, a government or a society. Many North American companies and government departments now have powerful “diversity, equity and inclusion” offices that can hire or fire staff on the strength of their diversity compliance.

But for the more hardcore woke ideologues, there are supposed privileges enjoyed by white people, who hang on to those discriminatory notions – such as there are only male and female sexes – and practices for exactly that reason, their privileges.

They believe it’s OK to subvert traditional institutions, beliefs and religions to achieve true diversity. This includes banning, rewriting or censoring any number of literary classics, and policing public or online speeches considered inappropriate or hurtful to someone or some groups.

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Wokeism and geopolitics

Wokeism is usually discussed as a domestic phenomenon within many Western societies. In contrast, many social developments and orders imposed by the governments of Russia and China domestically are “anti-woke”, from a Western perspective. We certainly know what Putin and Xi Jinping think about Western wokeism, or its sometimes Japanese and South Korean equivalents.

The Chinese internet and TV, for example, have long banned “sassy men” such as effeminate influencers who imitated those in Japan and South Korea.

But such contrasting approaches and attitudes towards “woke” issues are starting to have obvious implications in their foreign policies as their rivalry and confrontations turn increasingly bitter.

One fascinating Pentagon study – written in 2013 and subsequently compelled to be released by a US court order after freedom-of-information litigation – examines one key aspect of “diversity”, that is race. More exactly, it asks whether “Chinese racism” or Han supremacy offers a geopolitical advantage or disadvantage against the US.

The following are some choice quotes.

“[The] Chinese do not even recognise their racism as a problem. They believe that racism is a Western phenomenon and that Westerners are obsessed with race. This obsession is seen by the Chinese to be a strategic vulnerability of the West, whereas China is not affected by racism.”

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“The Chinese believe that states are good to the degree that they are unicultural. They have a strong, implicit, and racialist view of international politics, and an equally dominant view of the racial balance of power.”

“The Chinese see multiculturalism as a sickness that has overtaken the United States, and a component of US decline.”

“From the Chinese perspective, the United States used to be a strong society that the Chinese respected when it was unicultural, defined by the centrality of AngloProtestant culture at the core of American national identity aligned with the political ideology of liberalism, the rule of law, and free market capitalism.”

In the West, diversity is strength. In China, unity is strength, and that applies to Han “racism” particularly.

Consider this long quote: “Racism is a cohesive force for the Chinese. Racism does benefit the Chinese in four major ways. First, the Han Chinese possess a strong in-group identity with a polarised and tightly defined out-group. This allows the Chinese government to expect sacrifice as well as support from a considerable majority of the Chinese people.

“Second, based on this identity, the government has the ability to focus with great willpower on the demands of the state. All governments make patriotic appeals, but the Chinese government is able to do so effectively because any entreaty is based on patriotism as well as nationalism. When we reflect on the tools the Chinese government has to extract support and 20 resources from the population, only one conclusion is possible, they are formidable.

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“Third, they have strong societal unity and purpose, which supports Chinese power. The Chinese do not have a culture that is self-critical or one that ponders its fundamental faults.

“Fourth, China’s racism and ethnocentrism serves China’s teleological world view. History, in the Hegelian sense, is moving in China’s direction and the future belongs to it, China’s political beliefs, civilisational culture, and economic might triumphed over the West.

“The lack of any desire by the Chinese to self-reflect on the profound faults of their society means that there is no motivation to solve these faults. Accordingly, a powerful message may be that China will not change because it has no desire to do so. In essence, with China, ‘what you see is what you get.’ The country is a civilisation, and that yields them great strength.”

Weaponising unity and diversity, Chinese and US-style

We are perhaps looking into the heart of the difference between China and the West. For the Chinese, national unity, racial unity and a unitary state are and have long been the basis of national strength. I prefer to call it Chinese culturism rather than racism, though the heavy racist elements are undeniable. Racial cohesion is considered essential to societal cohesion.

By contrast, in the US, diversity – and a federal and divided state – guarantees freedom and is considered the raison d’etre of state.

The study concludes in the end, as you do for a Pentagon study, that diversity puts the US on “the right side of history”.

But it dares to consider Chinese racism as a possible “strategic asset” for Beijing, and makes a far more convincing argument than that for the US diversity style being essentially the right thing to do.

Certainly the Chinese and even some Americans consider worsening racial tensions as a divisive and polarising force within US society, and the situation may be worse now than when the study was written a decade ago. Coolheaded Chinese and Russian strategists probably don’t think the country could win in a hot war with the US. Far better to let the US devour itself because of all its many internal contradictions such as racial conflicts.

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Woke as US foreign policy?

What the Pentagon study didn’t consider but which a 2022 study does is how Washington is already weaponising woke ideology to further foreign policy goals.

Suffice to say that Washington can weaponise and has done so with “woke” values just as it does with human rights previously, for example, by interfering in a country’s domestic affairs and sanctioning its government officials for being “anti-gay” or repressing women or minorities, say, China!

The Pentagon study is certainly not definitive. I am not even sure if its characterisation of Han “racism” is correct. But it certainly makes me think about racism and anti-racism as strategic assets and weaknesses in international politics. And that’s something new to me!