Where the Far-Left and the Far-Right Meet
Anti-imperialists and Reactionaries share the distinct strategy of parroting Kremlin propaganda, and that is precisely what Putin wants.
When Christopher Hitchens visited Cuba in 1968 he did so to confirm “whether Cuba’s claim to be an alternative ‘model’ to Soviet state-socialism possessed any staying power.” Hitchens first encountered Cuban authoritarianism in the form of having his passport confiscated and he wisely felt “an immediate sense of unease.” His unease grew with each layer of his seeming imprisonment and the glaring faults in the government’s promises: he was not allowed to wander outside of the workcamp, their trip to the utopian San Andres commune was regularly postponed, the Cuban government religiously iconized Che Guevara, and young female prostitutes were readily at hand during Castro’s “headmaster” lectures. The authoritarianism of alleged socialist governments would disencline Hitchens from his socialism, and it would become his tragic “phantom limb.” Yet, Hitchens demonstrated the prescient self-reflection to shake off his anti-imperialist lens to point out illiberalism, no matter where it was and the shape and form in which it presented itself.
Contemporarily, Western socialists who fail to condemn communist governments for their authoritarian and illiberal policies are labeled as “tankies,” bestowed initially upon members of the Communist Party of Great Britain that either supported or disregarded the Soviet Union’s tyrannical crushing of the 1956 worker revolutions in Hungary and the 1968 Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia. Unlike Hitchens, this breed of anti-imperialist is unwilling to condemn the authoritarian social sabotage and illiberal policies of governments that allegedly espouse socialist and communist systems, such as Mao’s China and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Today, the inheritors of the sobriquet dismiss Xi Jinping’s Uyghur Genocide as Western propaganda to discredit China and justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a form of self-defense against NATO and the allegedly encroaching West. Yet, anti-imperialist leftists have surprisingly arrived at a meeting of the minds with an unprecedented ally.
The war in Ukraine has made anti-imperialist leftists and reactionaries one and the same. Far-left and far-right pundits are sharing the same notes passed down by Moscow, and their common denominator is a fervent anti-West and anti-NATO position, which leads them into the arms of Putin’s Kremlin.
This phenomenon among both political extremes is occurring globally. In the U.S., anti-imperialist leftist pundits and politicians like Glen Greenwald and Tulsi Gabbard justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and extremist reactionaries like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump voice support for Putin. In Germany, the far-left party member Sahra Wagenknecht is colluding with far-right media magnates to derail Germany’s support for Ukraine and allow Kremlin propaganda to infiltrate German politics. The product is an insidious contact between the opposite sides of the political spectrum, finding a political adhesive in the form of any sentiment anti-West and anti-NATO.
In his writing, Greenwald has shown sympathy for Russian state-run media outlets that have been banned in Europe, claiming that this is a coordinated move by the “state-corporate censorship regime” imposed by the US and NATO. Regarding the suspension of the pro-Russia Twitter account “Russians with Attitude,” Greenwald said it was “one of the most informative, reliable and careful dissident accounts.” Greenwald is quick to argue that this war benefits NATO and US imperialist motivations, without ever mentioning that it is Russia and Putin’s singular revanchist efforts that began the conflict.
On his media platforms, Greenwald champions conspiratorial perspectives regarding the war in Ukraine, such as claiming that the war is a CIA/NATO proxy war. In that same tweet, Greenwald laments the firing of his newfound comrade Tucker Carlson. “With Tucker fired, corporate media is close to 100% united behind Biden. That's not healthy for anyone. And it's thus impossible to be informed without independent media.”
In his Rumble video series “System Update,” Greenwald claimed that Fox was trying to censor Tucker Carlson because he is anti-establishment, despite Fox and Carlson being stuck in a contractual dispute. Despite Carlson’s history of reactionary rhetoric and dishonest journalism, Carlson and Greenwald are coming to each other’s support and platforms because they have found common ground in condemning NATO and distributing Kremlin propaganda vis-a-vis Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In the American far-right media, no pundit has championed Putin and Russia more loudly than Carlson, from echoing Greenwald and calling the war in Ukraine a proxy war between the US/NATO and Russia to reiterating Putin’s claims that cast doubt on Ukraine’s legitimacy. Carlson roots for Russia so eloquently and feverishly that Russian media have offered him job positions. And Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov even came to the defense of Carlson after his firing from the network.
The far-right’s shift to anti-West occurred while Donald Trump was serving as president and in a 2018 NATO summit suggested the US could withdraw from the alliance. It did not help either that President Trump displayed a deep loyalty to Putin and the Kremlin, going so far as to put his trust in Russian intelligence over the FBI and attend meetings with the Russian president, kept secret even from his aides. However, Carlson admits on “The Tulsi Gabbard Show”—the Youtube platform for the former Democratic presidential candidate and Congresswoman from Hawaii—that he first began siding with Trump on the issue of NATO in 2015, when the then-presidential hopeful questioned NATO funding after the end of the Cold War.
The meeting between Tulsi Gabbard and Tucker Carlson is another example of anti-imperialist leftists and reactionaries coming together under the anti-West and anti-NATO umbrella. Gabbard has shown support for authoritarian regimes such as Bashar Al-Assad’s in Syria and more recently dramatically left the Democratic party under the pretense that it is ruled by an “elitist cabal of warmongers.” Gabbard has also claimed that NATO and Europe share in the responsibility for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The team-up between leftists and reactionaries may seem wholly unprecedented, especially when the issue at hand is the sovereignty of a nation under attack by a nuclear power. However, the war in Ukraine has pushed one of the most famous anti-imperialist thinkers to question whether national sovereignty is really what the invasion is about.
Professor Chomsky has famously criticized US foreign policy and empire, but today he thrives within the cohort of Russia’s apologists. In an interview with Matt Chorley of Times Radio Professor Chomsky practices the tankie’s exercise of misdirecting the argument away from the present war criminal to a history of US war crimes. Chomsky admits that the invasion of Ukraine is a war crime, however, considering the imperialistic and violent history of NATO and the West, Chomsky argues “it cannot be put in the category of greater war crimes.”
Professor Chomsky is more concerned with Russia having rekindled Western cooperation: “It’s an act of criminal stupidity. He’s driven Europe into Washington’s control.” Chomsky claims that Sweden and Finland have no reason to join NATO other than to get their hands on advanced weapons, as “there has never been a threat to Sweden or Finland.” These claims do not align with Russia’s history of revanchism.
Russia has occupied Georgian territory in South Ossetia and Abkhazia since 2008, has organized coups in NATO countries such as Montenegro in 2016, and attempted the assassination of two Britons on British soil in 2019. All of these and other imperialist infringements have occurred and continue to happen in NATO countries, and betrays the little fear Russia has of NATO enlargement.
Chomsky’s anti-imperialist sentiments are more often than not correct, but he has at times confused the victim for the bully and vice versa. On the issue of Russia, as recently as 2004, Chomsky has treated Russia very generously, going so far as to celebrate its terroristic takeover of Chechnya because, unlike Iraq, “Grozny is now a booming city.”
In 2014 Chomsky commented on Russia’s annexation of Crimea, responding with a what about-ism from one hundred and ten years ago, “nobody talks about the U.S. occupation of Guantanamo.” Chomsky argues that at least Russia has a claim on Crimea, “whatever everyone claims of Crimea, there is a claim: popular support, a history of Kruschev handing Crimea over to Ukraine without even asking the population… I mean, there are considerations.”
Regarding Putin’s motivations for the invasion of Ukraine, Chomsky pushes perhaps the most egregious and dangerous format in which Kremlin propaganda is distilled across the world. In the same interview with Chorley, Chomsky continues to insist that Ukraine’s prohibition from induction into NATO was a thirty-year-old agreement between every Russian and US official and anything compromising that is crossing “red lines.” The evidence against the illusion that Russia fears NATO encroachment is overwhelming, and Putin is not an obscurantist with respect to his motivations.
In his 2021 letter, Putin makes it clear that retaking Ukraine is a direct result of his gripes against the Bolsheviks, who he believes stole that land from the Soviet Union. NATO is only mentioned twice in the entire letter, and when Putin mentions the West, his gripes are focused on the conspiracy that the West fuels anti-Russian sentiment in former Soviet bloc nations. It is this form of Kremlin propaganda and tactful perfidy that Greenwald, Gabbard, and Chomsky buy into.
Putin’s Kremlin has been attempting to sow Western and global distrust for Ukraine in the lead-up to the invasion and throughout the ongoing theater. From deep-fake videos of President Zelensky advising his soldiers to stand down to simulated fears of NATO encroachment, Putin and the Kremlin are providing anti-imperialists and reactionaries with the very argumentative narratives they want to hear, and the very misinformation Putin needs to spread to legitimize his invasion of Ukraine.
The apologist effort and distribution of Kremlin propaganda is not a phenomenon exceptional to US media and politics. In Germany, the far-left member of the Die Linke party, Sahra Wagenknecht, also parrots Kremlin propaganda, and her contact with the right-wing media mirrors the Greenwald-Carlson-and-Gabbard far-left and far-right overlap.
In a profile on Wagenknecht Greenwald interviewed her under the title the “German Populist Uniting the Left and Right.” Wagenknecht is almost indistinguishable from any American far-right politician or pundit. She was against vaccine mandates at the height of the pandemic, she is against immigration into Germany, and she is distrustful of the highly educated, elitist population of the party. One could almost think this is a description of Donald Trump, and the similarities do not stop there. Continuing the anti-imperialist talking point that now resonates with both the far-right and far-left, Wagenknecht echoes Trump’s gripes against NATO.
Wagenknecht has a long history with anti-imperialist, apologist takes on global policy. In a 2005 trip to Castro’s Cuba, Wagenknecht dismissed the allegations of human rights violations forwarded by the EU as “inappropriate” and “an unjustified interference in Cuban affairs.” The accusations, Wagenknecht affirms, are “ideologically motivated” and “quite hypocritical.” In the same breath, Wagenknecht laments the EU awarding Oswaldo Paya—a Cuban dissident who opposed Cuba’s one-party state—the Sakharov Prize in 2002, an award given to those to exhibit courage and freedom of thought to defend human rights.
Left and right moderates are still anti-authoritarians, but both of their extremes’ sudden meeting of the minds is a danger to the solidarity for liberalism that both parties can share in, and that is the schism that the Kremlin continues to pursue. Among the 13,000 demonstrators marching to Brandenburg Gate to protest Germany’s weapons contribution to Ukraine, there present were the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party, Sahra Wagenknecht, and Jürgen Elsässer, founder of the far-right German magazine Compact and a supporter of the Russian annexation of Crimea and Putin—in 2011 he also spoke his support for Serbia’s Slobodan Milošević.
This meeting is precisely what the Kremlin is seeking. According to a series of papers reviewed by the Washington Post, the Kremlin met with one person close to Wagenknecht and with party members of the AfD to consolidate an effort to curb Germany’s war contribution to Ukraine. The meeting of Wagenknecht’s far-left party, Die Linke, and the far-right AfD, is a strategic maneuver by the Kremlin to collect support around a pro-Russia candidate. Wagenknecht is this very candidate that pools together the tankie and reactionary anti-West sentiment in Germany. Recently, Wagenknecht is preparing to form her own party, one that could garner enough support to affect change in the German parliament in favor of the Kremlin. As a result, Die Linke has asked Wagenknecht to resign her parliamentary seat.
The alliance between anti-imperialist leftists and reactionaries is taking new forms with every new anti-West movement. Recently, in the same reactionary spirit as Tucker Carlson and the anti-imperialists’ disregard for authoritarianism, Tory MP Tobias Ellwood distributed a video showcasing what he believes were indicators of infrastructural progress in Kabul, Afghanistan.
“It feels different now that the Taliban has returned,” Ellwood says, with armed Taliban insurgents in the background, reminiscent of Uyghur Muslims claiming perfectly comfortable treatment at the hands of the Chinese state. “Security has vastly improved, corruption is down, and the Opium Trade has all but disappeared.” The security for the Taliban government and its almost 80,000-man army has almost but completely been affirmed by the global community, however, there is no security for any Afghan citizen from the whim of their Taliban overlords. Corruption is down in a one-party tyrannical theocracy? We should be glad MP Ellwood did not witness any hand-offs. As for the Opium Trade, we should be even more glad the Taliban affirmed the MP that they shut down their Opium production, otherwise one would have to believe the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime that opium cultivation has grown by 32% under Taliban control.
What could not be missing from Ellwood’s remarks is the staple of tankie and reactionary discourse: a jab at NATO.
“Why didn’t these game-changing programmes happen when NATO was here?” Ellwood asks. The British MP displays the same degree of naivete and generosity that anti-imperialist leftists once showed toward Castro, Mao, and Stalin, and the same fever of support for authoritarian regimes that reactionaries like Tucker Carlson exhibit for Putin.
In the same manner that Carlson lauded Putin’s strength, and that Trump celebrated Kim, Ellwood gushes over the apparent order under the Taliban. “You quickly appreciate this war-weary nation is for the moment accepting a more authoritarian leadership in exchange for stability.” Ellwood does not address that authoritarian regimes are never up for a vote and that there is as much leeway for a citizen to accept the regime as there are options for anybody at gunpoint.
Kremlin apologists and propagandists form a new kind of authoritarian thought process under the guise of anti-imperialism. Sharing in the values of strict noninterventionism, racist and xenophobic sentiments of the far-right have found company in the isolationist strategies of the far-left. This meeting is not serendipitous. Pundits and politicians that distribute Kremlin propaganda for either grift or a true anti-West agenda are nevertheless fulfilling the bidding of Putin. Yet, today, both camps’ tolerance for authoritarian propaganda has become more dangerous than ever because the despots of the world have caught on and have weaponized the far-left and the far-right’s anti-imperialist and anti-West sentiments.