We’ve said it before: No, Vladimir Putin is not a good guy. Geopolitical analyst Brandon Weichert agrees, and explains why:

There is a pernicious belief held by many of my colleagues on the new Right in the West that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is some sort of defender of Western Civilization. Under his reign, Putin has made comments that would make many right-wingers swoon.

For example, on Vladimir Lenin’s birthday in 2005, Putin lamented that Lenin was possessed of many “bad ideas” and that his Bolshevik regime “placed a time bomb” under the Russian state.

Putin repeatedly has struck at the ideological underpinnings of communism and he has correctly assessed that communism utterly eviscerated Russian prestige and power in the century that Marxist-Leninism ruled Russia in the form of the Soviet Union. Putin has restored, for example, the Christian Eastern Orthodox Church to its pre-Soviet standing in Russian society. Putin has attempted to reclaim traditional Russian civilization after almost a century of it being eroded by the Reds.

All of these things make many right-wingers pleased — notably those who lived through the particularly frigid days of the Cold War. And, let’s face it, Putin has implemented extremely traditional social programs — ranging from pro-natalist policies to anti-homosexual laws that appeal to many Western conservatives (if not in practice, then certainly in theory).

Yet, all of that is a thin veneer meant to weaken and appeal to a sympathetic Right in the West at a time when the Left has fallen out of love with Russia. Remember: it was the Western Left that routinely carried water for the old Soviet Union during the Cold War. The problem the Left has always had with Putin is that he isn’t enough of a communist to their radical liking.

Weichert argues that “it has been clear for some time that Putin and many who surround him are quite opposed to Western Civilization.” He explains:

Much like Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution, the West has been hijacked by radical Marxists seeking to remake the civilization into something that is not and never has been. It is this thing that the Right rages against — and that the Western Right believes (incorrectly) Putin also hates. But, Putin’s actions are directed not only against us as well as leftist ideologues in the West. They are directed against all of Western Civilization. Putin’s recent horrific invasion of Ukraine is yet another assault on the Westphalian nation-state system that most Americans on the Right defend and support.

And, Putin is as opposed to democracy and freedom that undergirds Western Civilization as the Woke leftists are today.

Weichert argues that much of the confusion comes from the fact that “Putin is a Russian nationalist,” and most conservatives are nationalists. But their nationalism is very different. Confusion also stems from Putin’s embrace of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Russia, although he has “co-opted” much of it and “used [it] as a cudgel against his reputed enemies.” Putin, says, Weichert, “uses the Eastern Orthodox faith the way Osama bin Laden used the Islamic faith: as a tool for furthering his own political ambitions.”

He concludes:

All of this is to say that there’s little in common between the objectives of Putinism and the American Right. Yet, bizarrely, so many on the Right today are attempting to defend Putin and insist that his ways are the ways of our movement. They are not. And Putin is not only opposed to the things that the American Right supports, he actively seeks to create a new world order in which the very values the American Right is struggling to defend are destroyed.

Based on his actions, his rhetoric, and his associations … Vladimir Putin is no defender of Western civilization. To the contrary, he is attempting to destroy Western civilization. And he just might get what he wants.

Read the whole thing here.