Neither Putin Nor Russia Are “Based”

“For a start, American conservatives are either unaware of or ignore that Russia has the highest abortion rate in the world and the third highest divorce rate.”

Cultures and subcultures evolve over time and develop according to their own internal logic and external inputs. This process has sped up exponentially in the digital age, with cultural memes developing and dying in a few weeks or months, sometimes (rarely) resurfacing, often using the same terms in different contexts. One of the most common memes on the Right, now falling out of favor, has been the idea of certain ideas, beliefs, people, and a whole range of other categories being “based.” This word, used by many including myself, is representative of the shallow, banter-driven nature of online discourse and means “cool in an edgy, in-crowd way.” It began in anti-woke spaces and has since entered mainstream conversation and has died the death of the sad and lame in “normieville.” It was often applied by some on the dissident right to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Russia he dominates, an application that betrays a willful ignorance of certain facts about that nation.

Some recent articles have considered the unfortunate trend of some on the Right to either excuse and downplay President Putin’s pathologies or actively praise his regime and the Russia it controls. Some of the pieces are better than others, but it is true that figures such as J.D. Vance, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and others have frankly beclowned themselves on this subject. Vance made the reasonable point that Democrats have ignored the southern border of the United States and its immigration problem, but he then proclaimed his complete lack of interest or care for what President Putin was up to, saying “Spare me the performative affection for the Ukraine” on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. Speaking of which, Bannon has said that “Putin ain’t woke,” reinforcing the point further by saying “He’s anti-woke” and, therefore, deserves respect and praise for standing up to cancel culture.

Tucker Carlson meanwhile called Ukraine a “pure client state of the United States State Department” and downplayed the likelihood of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling it a “border dispute,” despite hundreds of thousands of men and thousands of tons of material arrayed along the border. He further asked: “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?” Carlson conveniently ignored the fact that the Chinese Communist Party had not called him racist either. In any case, those who support a sovereign nation’s right not to be completely steamrollered by an imperialist power are “low-IQ stooges.”