Contrary to the popular adage, opposites don’t attract. If they do, they aren’t really opposites.
However, they can converge tangentially, overlapping on this or that issue while still differing on others. Thus, populist Right and populist Left seldom agree on economic policy, except perhaps in France, where Mélenchon’s Trotskyists and Le Pen’s crypto-fascists are both socialist.
Yet you won’t find the same convergence between, say, Farage and Corbyn, or Trump and Ocasio Cortez. There is an economic chasm separating Farage’s and Trump’s near-libertarianism from Corbyn’s and AOC’s near-communism.
Nor can one talk about any visceral attraction drawing such opposites together. What’s more noticeable is mutual loathing. But they do converge on the issue I consider the world’s most vital one at present. Putin.
And the deeper we delve into possible reasons, the closer we get to the common ground at the root of it all. Both extremes actively dislike the West, if for different reasons.
Conservatives are broadly in sympathy with the Right’s reasons, while despising those of the Left. Yet whatever their motivation, both radical groups despair of bringing the West in line with their ideals, which makes them look for paragons of anti-Western virtue elsewhere. And Putin is the most implacable enemy of their enemy.
The other day I wrote about Farage’s self-proclaimed admiration of Putin, albeit only as a “political operator”. But Putin isn’t a political operator at all, for the simple reason that his country has no politics in our sense of the word.
Tyrannical dictators aren’t politicians any more than Mafia chieftains are. They do manoeuvre to avoid being knifed in the back by their lieutenants, but that’s not politics. It’s jungle warfare.
Other than that, Putin rules by murdering dissidents at home and abroad, throwing thousands of people in prison for voicing the slightest disagreement with his policies, suppressing free press and freedom of assembly, arming and training terrorists all over the world and – above all – waging aggressive wars of extermination, mainly against the former slave nations of the USSR, such as Chechnya and now the Ukraine.
Which of these aspects of Putin’s ‘politics’ does Farage admire most? All of them? Perhaps, because otherwise he wouldn’t be willing to parrot Kremlin propaganda by claiming that Putin was provoked into murdering hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians by NATO’s “ever-eastward” expansion.
Actually, in recent months that dastardly bloc also expanded ‘ever-northwards’, when Finland and Sweden, both neutral for decades, begged to be admitted to NATO. Why does Farage suppose they decided to do that?
Choose the right answer: A. They were talked into it by NATO to provoke Putin even more; B. They realised they needed extra protection in the face of Russian fascism on the march.
If you chose B, congratulations. You now understand why Eastern European countries, all perennial victims of violent Russian oppression, beat Finland and Sweden to it. Not to see this obvious fact suggests that blinkers are firmly in place. And it’s admiration of Putin that shields his fans’ eyes with that fashion accessory.
Yesterday Farage responded to the public outcry over his repugnant pro-Putin remarks by doubling up. According to him, it’s Zelensky, expertly prodded by Boris Johnson, who sticks a crowbar into the wheel spokes of peace.
Asked if he’d be willing to see Zelenksy cede territory, Farage said: “That’s his choice. No one is even talking about peace. All we are talking about is ‘Ukraine is going to win’. Really? I’m pretty sceptical about that.”
Ukrainian victory can come in many guises, and Farage didn’t specify what he meant by “winning”. But his kind of peace comes in one shape only: the Ukraine’s capitulation, total or as near as damn.
Political leaders, such as Farage and even sometimes Trump, have to preserve a modicum of circumspection in their public pronouncements. They leave it to their acolytes to spell out their innermost thoughts.
Thus, candidates from Farage’s Reform Party tried to ward off the slings and arrows aimed at their leader. Our would-be MPs have opined that:
“…Russia/Putin has shown a maturity of which we can only dream of.” [Love the grammar.]
“Putin is a master of Realpolitik… if only the West had politicians of his class.”
[I wouldn’t have] “given a penny” to Zelensky because he is a “dangerous corrupt oligarch”.
It is “the biggest lie” that “Nato is a defensive alliance”.
Things aren’t conspicuously better on the other side of the Atlantic, and haven’t been ever since George W. Bush “looked deep into Putin’s eyes and saw his soul”. Congratulations to Dubya: he managed to see something that wasn’t there.
Trump has never bothered to conceal his admiration of Putin. Once, after meeting that mass murderer, he said: “I liked him. He liked me. It was great.”
At present, Trump is indulging his tasteless appetite for braggadocio by claiming he’ll stop the war within 24 hours or at most three days of regaining the presidency. Trump has been reticent about his way of bringing that peaceful intention to fruition. Yet two of his closest advisers let that mangy cat out of the bag.
Clarifying Trump’s position were Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg and Frederick Fleitz, who both served as chiefs of staff in the National Security Council during Trump’s presidency and are now part of his inner circle.
These gentlemen propose that all arms supplies to the Ukraine be stopped until Zelensky has sued for peace. As a starting point of that initiative, the Ukraine must agree to freezing the frontline at its present location, which would effectively mean ceding 20 per cent of her territory to Russia.
That’s only for starters, of course. Russia, bled white by the war, would catch its breath for a couple of years, regroup, rearm and then come again to claim what’s left of the rump country.
Coincidentally, this happens to be Putin’s thinking on the subject as well, which he summed up in what amounted to an ultimatum a couple of weeks ago. Zelensky rejected that ‘proposal’ out of hand, stating correctly that it amounted to a demand for capitulation.
In a touching show of unity, populist Left is in agreement with populist Right on this issue. Both Corbyn and Mélenchon love Putin in direct proportion to their hatred of the West.
Theirs is the deeper resentment because they detest everything the West stands for, including its most fundamental principles. In that, they feel they’ve found a kindred soul in Putin, and they are right.
Unlike the Lefties, people like Farage or Trump don’t hate the West – they merely hate what it’s becoming or has already become, and they have every justification for this. Yet when it comes to their policy towards Putin’s fascism, this is a distinction without a difference – certainly for the Ukrainians, and for those who know enough history to realise that fascism must be stopped before it ignites the world.
Convergence without attraction, such could be the slogan inscribed on the banners of right and left populists as they march together towards suicidal appeasement. That word is a cognate of ‘peace’, but its opposite in meaning more often than not.
Many people think the Ukrainians ought to surrender simply because the war cannot be won. Are there any circumstances under which you think it would be acceptable for Zelensky to sue for peace?
No, I don’t, unless the Ukrainian army is routed. We all have a vested interest in preventing such an outcome.