This Is What A Fifth Column Looks Like
Putin showed his true self. So did Carlson and Trump.
(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
If the first casualty of war is the truth, then the second must be any lingering ambiguity as to who people in positions of power and influence truly are. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin took off his mask and showed the world the monster he truly is by invading Ukraine and attempting to justify his actions with a deranged speech that may be the most naked display of revanchist imperialism since World War II.
Two more people who took the opportunity to show us their true selves are Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former President Donald Trump. Carlson’s response to the invasion was to suggest Tuesday night that it is his fellow Americans, not Putin, who are the enemy. Trump went even further in an interview with a right-wing podcast, openly praising as “genius” Putin’s declaration of two breakaway regions in Ukraine’s Donbas region as “independent.”
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What Carlson, Trump, and others praising, defending, or equivocating about Putin’s unprovoked attack are is nothing less than an unpatriotic, un-American fifth column. Their support for a fascist regime’s mission to conquer a fledgling democracy and snuff out its hard-won freedom goes far beyond party politics and shows hatred for the fundamental values of our own country, as well as contempt for the many innocent Ukrainians who will likely die or be displaced at the hands of Russian invaders.
A big reason why Ukraine even has a fighting chance is because the US, NATO, and allies are supporting it through weapons deliveries and sanctions against Russia, not to mention the hard work of its president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the bravery of its citizens willing to take up arms to defend their country and its democracy.
But as president, Trump did everything he could to alienate our allies, undermine NATO, and praise foreign dictators, including Putin. He sought to destroy democracy at home with the help of a Republican Party that, thanks to him, no longer even pretends to uphold it, and he tried to rope Zelenskyy into his scheme by threatening to withhold aid to Ukraine if he didn’t give him dirt on Biden during the 2020 election. Carlson, the most-watched TV news host in the country, commands an audience of millions of Americans who nod along as he spreads fascist and white nationalist propaganda and praises foreign authoritarian regimes, wielding so much influence that his viewers have even called members of Congress to try and get them to support Putin.
It’s not inconceivable that if Trump were still in office, or if he or someone likes him won the presidency in 2024, the US would be on the opposite side of the conflict and supporting an autocracy’s war of aggression against a democracy.
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That’s because the American conservative movement today bears less resemblance to its counterparts in most other Western countries than to parties like Putin’s own United Russia or Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz, especially in its increasingly open displays of authoritarianism and contempt for immigrants and minorities. You couldn’t find a more apt metaphor for American conservatism’s metamorphosis into full-blown fascism than Carlson’s trip to Budapest last summer to fawn over Orbán’s authoritarian government.
Other hints of why the American right prefers a foreign dictatorship over American values abound. Just this week, we’ve seen Texas Gov. Greg Abbott direct authorities to investigate gender-affirming health care for transgender children as child abuse. In Oklahoma, state Attorney General John O’Connor is reviewing 51 books – including those covering LGBT and social issues along with “Lord of the Flies” and “Of Mice and Men” – to determine if they violate state obscenity laws, while conservatives nationwide have sought to ban books and the teaching of subjects they don’t like. That’s on top of concerted efforts to limit access to voting, the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, and now an American version of the Canadian anti-vax truck convoy designed to shut down the Beltway that people in the Washington area rely on to get to work.
These are the actions of a political movement that is about as committed to freedom and democracy as, well, Russian fascist dictator Vladimir Putin. In that context, it should hardly surprise you than they would take his side.
To understand how disgusting and horrifying a trend this is, it’s important to understand just whom American conservatives are climbing into bed with because it’s not as if Putin didn’t show us who he was a long time ago.
Putin showed us who he is in 1999 when – as is likely – he had the FSB bomb a mall and several apartment buildings in Russia, killing more than 300 and injuring more than 1,000, and blamed it on Chechen separatists, bolstering his popularity and enabling him to seize power.
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He showed us who he is throughout the 2000s and 2010s when he orchestrated the assassinations, on Russian and foreign soil, of numerous critics and journalists, often by poisoning.
He showed us who he is in 2008, when he invaded Georgia, like Ukraine a post-Soviet country that had sought to join the EU and NATO and forge closer ties with the West.
He showed us who he is in 2014, when he initially invaded Ukraine, overseeing the creation of two “republics” in the Donbas centered around the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk – whose “independence” he “recognized” earlier this week – and the illegal annexation of Crimea.
He showed us who he is starting in 2015, when at the behest of fellow dictator and ally Bashar al-Assad, he directed the Russian military to bomb Syria, deliberately targeting civilians, including children, in what a Syrian human rights group recently said amount to war crimes.
With his invasion of Ukraine and a televised speech Monday that outright denied the country’s right to exist, as well as reports now coming in that a full-scale invasion is imminent, all bets are off. The only people with an excuse for not knowing who Putin is after this are those who live beneath rocks.
It’s important to point that out because it wasn’t too long ago that many saw Putin as a responsible player on the world stage and the global economy, as pundits counted Russia alongside Brazil, India, and China among the “BRIC” countries. Former President George W. Bush infamously said in 2001 that he had looked Putin in the eye and “found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy.” In the 2012 presidential election, Mitt Romney was ridiculed for calling Russia the United States’ greatest adversary. And many people among the Western left have long seen the Russian dictator as a bulwark against American hegemony while eagerly consuming news from and appearing on the Kremlin’s propaganda outlets like RT, Sputnik, and Soapbox.
But whereas Western political, business and media elites and leftists can at least claim greed, breathless naivety, or ideological blinders got the better of them in their catastrophic misread of Vladimir Putin, Carlson and Trump cannot. They have taken his side not despite, but because of knowing exactly what he is.
American right-wing admirers of Putin praising, defending, or equivocating about his imperialism might call themselves patriots. But then so did Father Coughlin and the German American Bund.
Alaric DeArment is a journalist in New York. Follow him on Twitter at @alaricnyc.
