The Progressive Zionist: Nowadays It's Right Wingers That Serve As Useful Idiots for Moscow

During the Cold War, there was unfortunately a small segment of the American Left who served as Useful Idiots for the totalitarian Soviet regime, as well as some other regimes such as Cuba. In their zeal to support anything that opposed what they didn't like about America, they ended up embracing regimes who actually had values diametrically opposed to theirs. But today, to the extent that the hard core left has a tendency to serve as Useful Idiots, they have largely moved away from Communism and instead toward Islamists and nationalist thugs.

Ironically, it is now a segment of the American Right which has pimped themselves out as Useful Idiots of a totalitarian in Moscow, this time in the guise of Vladimir Putin. The totalitarian is no longer a Communist, but a nationalist kleptocrat. So what has made some denizens of the Tea Party and Paulbots profess their love for this former KGB agent? It pretty much boils down to the way he doesn't like gay people.

Writing in townhall.com, notorious paleocon Pat Buchannan comes right out and says it with an article entitled "Is Putin One of Us?" To be clear, Vladimir Putin murders his political opponents with radiation poisoning, sees himself as a rival to, rather than an ally of, the West, and presides over a country where tens of millions of people live in abject poverty and squalor.

But he hates gay people so maybe American conservatives should love him!

Buchannan says things like

While his stance as a defender of traditional values has drawn the mockery of Western media and cultural elites, Putin is not wrong in saying that he can speak for much of mankind.

and

Putin says his mother had him secretly baptized as a baby and professes to be a Christian. And what he is talking about here is ambitious, even audacious.
He is seeking to redefine the "Us vs. Them" world conflict of the future as one in which conservatives, traditionalists and nationalists of all continents and countries stand up against the cultural and ideological imperialism of what he sees as a decadent west.

The comments posted in response to Buchannan's sloppy kiss of the KGB man are somewhat divided but there is clearly a contingent that is ready to declare their allegiance to one of America's principle geopolitical enemies:

I'm siding with Putin at this point in time. We here in American can thank tv, hollywood and the media for forcing this gay life style down our throughs for the last thirty years a little at a time to make it seem normal.

and

It is a strange new world when the leader of Russia states our values better than our President does.

Refreshingly, some people really pushed back. I hate to say it, but this proposed Putin love apparently is getting more push-back from paleocons than Islamist-love gets in many left wing forums:

To answer the question "Who is writing Putin's stuff", someone who understands that they have the potential of a new cadre of useful idiots in the US. Instead of courting the left, they can court the right. Oh, joy.

and

I'm not siding with Putin. The gay marriage movement is not Nazism. The occasion does not fit Churchill's proclamation that if Hitler were to invade Hell, he, Churchill, would at least make favorable mention of the devil.

Putin is no Stalin, but he's a lot closer to Stalin than the American Left is to Hitler. Putin may share this one position with the American Right, but we have nothing else in common. Most particularly, we are not fond of secret police, be they Gestapo or KGB. And Putin? That's who he is. That's the organization he got his start in. The same people who stick dissidents with ricin capsules or poison them with polonium.

If Putin were to go to singing hymns and praising Reagan, we still could not be friends with him.

and of course someone who assures his fellows that he hates gay people as much as they do, but perhaps this shouldn't be the only test of character:

Robert Mugabe and Hassan Rouhani are also against homosexuality and gay marriage. Doesn't make them good guys.

Lastly, no blog would be complete without a comment exhibiting schizoid paranoid conspiratorial word salad from a Ron Paulbot:

I hope more people start to listen to pope francis, since he is pointing his finger at the people of the world who are following the purveyors of greed and the rest of the decay of the whole social system of the world, the Rothschild world central banking cabal, the rules the world thru the temptation, intimidation, and manipulation of the governments of the world. Ron Paul is right in wanting get our banking system out of foreigners hands! Putin is speaking the same message, hopefully it is from the same God.