I recently heard a man describe Russian President Vladimir Putin as being “like Hitler”. He was explaining Russia’s “invasion” of the Crimea to one of his children. I know the man pretty well, and know that like the majority of persons nowadays he gets his information about world events mostly from Fox, CNN or MSNBC. I asked him if his Hitler comparison was due solely to the “invasion”. “No,” he said. “Putin’s also against freedom.”
Readers should know that a couple of years ago, about when the last television set I owned suddenly died, I decided I’d reached a stage in life where I probably haven’t so much time ahead of me that I could afford to waste a lot of it. There was also the matter of money. If he can seldom afford the very best of anything, a poor man is the last who should spend what little he has on the worthless. In my estimation that’s what most television programming has become, even as entertainment. I didn’t replace the dead TV set.
Since I did not, I don’t know if any cable news screamers are actually comparing Putin to Hitler, but the media vilification of the Russian president began long before the “invasion” of the Crimea. If it is traced back, it can be seen to begin when Putin, who had been enjoying a favorable press, took action against the Oligarchs, the dozen men who became overnight multibillionaires by buying Soviet-era government enterprises, sometimes for mere cents on the dollar, when they were privatized under the drunkard BorisYeltsin. Putin arrested them or drove them into exile when they began to wield the kind of power and influence in politics and government that we’re accustomed to CEOs and other rich men wielding in the U.S., where bankers responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown were bailed out with taxpayer money instead of going to jail. Most of the Russian Oligarchs happened to be Jewish. Anti-Semites might see that as the reason “anti-Semitic” was the first negative descriptive attached to Putin’s name when U.S. and European media began to blacken it, but whether that was coincidence or not, other epithets soon followed: “authoritarian,” “strongman,” “anti-democratic,” and so on. Lately prevalent has been “anti-gay”.
Whatever, if no television commentator has explicitly made the Putin-Hitler comparison, the years of media vilification obviously has resulted in some thinking in those terms, as witness the man I heard a few weeks ago. This seems to be logical. If Hitler was evil, and everybody knows he was, because he was anti-Semitic, anti-gay and anti-democratic, Putin must be “like Hitler”.
If that seems logical, it would also be the kind of political incorrectness that inspires hate mail to try to defend Putin. That is not what I am trying to do here. In fact, as readers will see, I could wind up deepening the view, at least in the eyes of some, that the man is evil.
What I am doing is reporting a speech Putin delivered last September 19 but to which my attention has only now been drawn. If readers also haven’t heard of this speech, it is because most U.S. and European media, print as well as electronic, regularly ignore the forum in which it was delivered: the annual gathering of the Valdai Discussion Club. Putin always attends. Last year’s was the tenth one.
Anybody wishing to read the text of Putin’s entire presentation, as well as his responses during a lengthy follow-up Q-and-A session, can google Valdai Discussion Club and find links to the website of the Russian Presidency, where the text is posted, as well as the Club itself.
Although the Club exists for the discussion of Russian political, social and cultural affairs, non-Russians participate. Participants last year included such luminaries as former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and former German Defense Minister Volker Ruhe. Also on the scene were recognized leaders of Putin’s domestic political opposition like Vladimir Ryzhkov and Yevgeny Roizman. (Apart from the quadrennial election debates when an incumbent is running for re-election, how often do U.S. presidents share a platform with political opponents?)
Even before he got into the substance of his talk Putin twice struck notes that I found myself underlining. The first was when he shared something of his vision of Russia’s future if only by defining the directions the country will not go, at least as long as he is in charge. “We have left behind Soviet ideology, and there will be no return. Proponents of fundamental conservatism who idealize pre-1917 Russia seem to be similarly far from reality, as are supporters of an extreme Western-style liberalism.”
The second striking note was when Putin acknowledged the importance of military, technological and economic strength in assessing the success of Russia as a country, but declared: “Nevertheless the main thing that will determine success is the quality of the citizens, the quality of society: their intellectual, spiritual and moral strength.”
Now here’s the section of the speech that really leaped out at me (Putin has allowed that “Russia’s identity is linked to events in the world” and is describing, as he sees it, a particular part of that world): “We can see how many of the Euro-Atlantic countries are actually rejecting their roots, including the Christian values that constitute the basis of Western civilization. They are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious and even sexual. They are equating large families with same-sex partnerships, belief in God with belief in Satan.
“The excesses of political correctness have reached the point where people are seriously talking about registering political parties whose aim is to promote pedophilia. People in many European countries are embarrassed or afraid to talk about their religious affiliations. Holidays are abolished or even called something different; their essence is hidden away, as is their moral foundation. And people are aggressively trying to export this model all over the world. I am convinced that this opens a direct path to degradation and primitivism, resulting in a profound demographic and moral crisis.
“What else but the ability to self-reproduce could act as the greatest testimony of the moral crisis facing a human society? Today almost all developed nations are no longer able to reproduce themselves, even with the help of migration. Without the values embedded in Christianity and other world religions, without the standards of morality that have taken shape over the millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity. We consider it natural and right to defend these values.”
I said I wasn’t going to try to defend Putin. I haven’t. All I’ve done, as I said I would, is report a speech he gave last September. However, the question does arise: Did Putin say anything that would justify comparing him to Hitler?
Hitler, like the Communists when they ruled Russia, wanted to eliminate Christianity’s influence in the life of society. He was against Christian values because they contradicted his ideas on race rooted in 19th-century biological and social Darwinism.
Our secular liberals, anxious to safeguard Thomas Jefferson’s and their own 18th-century Enlightenment imperative of a “wall of separation,” also want to keep Christian values out of the life of society, so they insist, in the name of “multiculturalism,” that the practice of religion be purely “private”.
Putin says he has a natural right to defend Christian values. We all have the same right since it is natural, but none of the rest of us is president of a major country. Putin is in a position to defend Christian values by defending Christian rights by law, and so he has. For example, he caused a law against blasphemy to be enacted last summer at the same time as the better-known measure, the one that grabbed so much attention, criminalizing gay propaganda. (Passage of the anti-blasphemy law followed the Pussy Riot incident.)
I’d say, based on what he says and does, and as seen strictly from the liberal point of view, Putin is not “like Hitler”. He is worse.
All who would hold that a government is oppressive when it does not tolerate the parade of vice or profanation of churches must agree with that statement. Only someone who believes Christianity is to be lived and not merely privately professed can construe it as a defense of the President of Russia.
Gary Potter is a prolific writer and speaker. If you enjoyed this article, you may also appreciate his live talks. CLICK HERE to see a list of topics covered by Mr. Potter.
