Putin's apologists

Cathy Young is baffled by some Western leftists' excuses for post-Communist Russia:

Whatever is eventually learned about the start of the war, Russia's actions afterwards are not in doubt: the illegal invasion and partial occupation of Georgia; the looting and destruction of Georgian property and military equipment; the abetting of ethnic cleansing in Georgian villages by South Ossetian vigilante squads; the abrupt, unilateral recognition of the two separatist republics. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili may be no paragon of democratic governance or wisdom, but that doesn't change the basic fact of Russian aggression.

These facts are widely known in almost every place where the Russia-Georgia conflict has received attention. Almost. Which brings us to a particularly stunning passage in Greenwald's piece: "Americans are alone in this world in being lied to about what happened. Virtually the entire rest of the world...has access to the truth." Greenwald seems to have forgotten about Russia, where state-run television—the average citizen's main, and often only, source of news—went on a Soviet-style propaganda binge for weeks, and where the pro-government media has repeated outlandish claims of Georgian "genocide" in South Ossetia long after these tales were discredited.

There is something puzzling about the sympathy for Russia evident in many quarters of the American left—from Greenwald to Noam Chomsky to Alexander Cockburn and Katrina vanden Heuvel in The Nation (not to mention numerous commenters at sites like Salon.com and The Huffington Post). When Cold War-era leftists pleaded for a more understanding view of the Soviet Union, they were at least arguing on behalf of a power that, despite its abuses, at least outwardly embraced many "progressive" ideals: free medicine, housing and education, extensive social services, secularism, women's rights, relative social equality. The Putin/Medvedev Russia is the opposite of everything today's left supports: It's a land where billionaires flaunt their $20,000 watches and $350 million yachts, social services are slashed to a minimum, religion is entangled with the state, ethnic bigotry flourishes, labor unions are trampled, and homophobia is rampant and officially condoned.

Why the sympathy, then? A knee-jerk reaction that equates hostility to Russia with red-baiting? Or could it be that to some on the left, the cause of sticking a finger in America's eye is progressive enough?

For many, it's more about sticking a finger in Bush's eye, and it will be interesting to see what people like Greenwald will say when their guy is in the Oval Office. (St. Noam, of course, would talk up anti-American demagogues even if Cynthia McKinney were President.)

Damian P.

Posted by damian at October 26, 2008 09:14 PM