Salvini, leader of the Italian Northern League Party, and former deputy prime minister, once posted snaps of himself on Instagram wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with Putin’s image.
Having travelled to Przemysl, a town on the border between Poland and Ukraine, Salvini was confronted by the mayor of the town, Wojciech Bakun. Standing in front of reporters at a railway station, Bakun presented Salvini with the same T-shirt, declaring: “I would like us to go to the border and to a refugee centre, so you can see what your friend Putin did.”
As Salvini walked away from the press conference, Italian journalists shouted: “You’re a clown, go home! You’re a fool!”
Such spectacles are likely to be forthcoming for several of Europe’s populist politicians in the coming months. Such politicians include Nigel Farage, who once said Putin is the leader he “most admires”, Marine Le Pen, who received significant funding from Russia for her 2017 presidential run, and Viktor Orban, a former friend of Putin’s who has recently tried to shed his association before the upcoming Hungarian election on April 3.
Donald Trump is also working to distance himself from his prior praise for Putin, telling the Washington Examiner in a recent telephone interview: “I’m surprised. I thought he was negotiating when he sent his troops to the border. I thought he was negotiating … I thought it was a tough way to negotiate but a smart way to negotiate … I think he’s changed … He’s very much changed.”
Both the European and American public are overwhelmingly against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. According to recently released Pew Research, a majority of the American public (85 per cent) – including similar shares of Republicans (85 per cent) and Democrats (88 per cent) – support maintaining strict economic sanctions on Russia, even if it means increased gas prices at home. According to the poll, six in 10 Americans (63 per cent) strongly favour strict sanctions, and only 7 per cent believe the US is providing too much support for Ukraine.
Despite this, Tucker Carlson, who hosts one of the most popular cable news shows in the country, has repeatedly made arguments rationalising Russian warmongering, arguing that “Ukraine is not a democracy”, that it is a “pure client state of the United States State Department”.
To be fair, almost nobody aside from the US intelligence agencies accurately predicted the scale of Putin’s invasion. When the Biden administration released its intelligence about Russian troops gathering on the border, many pundits and analysts dismissed or downplayed the threat, presuming it was exaggerated by an alarmist media.
But on February 24, the day Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Carlson delivered a stunning monologue minimising the invasion on the premise that Putin was less deserving of “hate” than Western ruling elites.
He asked his audience rhetorically: “Why do I hate Putin so much? Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic that wrecked my business and kept me indoors for two years? … Is he trying to snuff out Christianity?”
People can and do make honest mistakes, and populists in politics and the media have not been alone in underestimating Putin’s belligerence. Nevertheless, many have been painfully slow to update their positions on Putin in light of his aggression against Ukraine.
To be sure, it is reasonable for commentators to argue that the US should not get involved in a shooting war over Ukraine. Nobody wants the conflict to escalate, and everybody is aware of the risk of nuclear war. But, while sober and sensible commentary about strategy is essential, there is no public demand for pundits to attack Ukraine while its citizens are fighting for their lives and their homes.
So why are populists such as Carlson engaging in arguments that are deeply unpopular?
In The Psychology of Populism, UNSW Scientia professor Joe Forgas explains that both left-wing and right-wing populists share similar psychological strategies and political narratives. One of those strategies is to pit groups against each other in an ongoing battle between good and evil. For left-wing populists, the struggle has traditionally been between workers and employers – the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. (More recently it has been women against the “patriarchy”, people of colour against “white supremacy”, and LGBTI against “heteronormativity”.)
Adherence to such narratives can make rigid ideologues out of reasonable and intelligent people. Even if such narratives contain some accuracy, their totalising nature means adherents become inflexible and dogmatic, seeking confirmation of their biases rather than searching for truth.
Today’s right-wing populists use the same meta-narrative as their left-wing counterparts but instead of the oppressors being the bourgeoisie, the oppressors have become “Western ruling elites”. Sometimes labelled “globalists” or “neoliberals”, Western ruling elites are blamed for every ill that afflicts society. From job losses, to wokeness, to drug dependency and the increased cost of living, whatever the issue is, the answer is always to blame the elites.
But now Putin has invaded Ukraine, populists are confronted with the jarring reality that evil exists outside this framework. The elites did not invade Ukraine – Putin did.
And even if one believes the West has made strategic mistakes, this does not excuse the bombing of pregnant women in maternity hospitals or civilians taking shelter in movie theatres, as well as a litany of other war crimes carried out by the Russian military.
There’s nothing like a real war to make culture wars look trivial by comparison. For those who have built entire careers out of anti-elitism, it can be a rude shock to finally find oneself without something of interest to say.
This is why we should not be surprised that populist figures, such as Carlson and Trump, have been flat-footed in distancing themselves from Putin and adjusting their rhetoric to the realities of our new world. Just how fast these figures can pivot to reflect public sentiment – while acknowledging their prior misjudgments – will determine how much longer their brand of populism can last.
Claire Lehmann is the founding editor of Quillette, a platform for free thought.
More Coverage
Ambitious climate targets must not undermine growth
Stiell’s warnings should be considered but not taken at face value.
China pursues Australian activist
Beijing hunts dissidents to the end of the earth.
A video circulating online shows the dramatic moment when Matteo Salvini, a populist Italian politician, is publicly shamed by a Polish mayor for his prior sympathy for Vladimir Putin.