Today, conservatism is experiencing a crisis on a global scale: Trumpists in America are trying to replace it with populism, and Russians want to appropriate it to disguise Putin’s fascism. We must fight for true conservatism without populism and fascism.
The Republican Party in the United States is increasingly being labeled as populist, and conservatives who have always advocated a strong foreign policy and defense of democracy around the world are now talking about saving money for peace. While Republican presidents Truman, Reagan, and both Bush considered strengthening the US position in the world to be the key to success, today’s conservative publics in the US are seized by a sudden bout of greed.
Despite the fact that the Republicans have always been the main hawks in American politics, Trump suddenly began to appeal to the interests and pockets of ordinary Americans. The Republican Party, which had voted with both hands for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, suddenly began to count how much American taxpayers were spending to help Ukraine. American conservative publics are filled with information about how much of their tax dollars a Texas farmer spends to support Ukraine. A party that has spent about $1.6 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks suddenly begins to regret spending 60 billion to defend a democratic ally against the United States’ main geopolitical enemy. And this is despite the fact that the lion’s share of these funds will remain in the United States and will be used to revitalize American industry.
The delay in American aid to Ukraine and Trump’s statements that he would not defend European allies and would even encourage Russia to attack them if they did not pay their bills showed a high level of geopolitical irresponsibility among American conservatives.
Another threat to global conservatism is Putin’s fascism, which has recently decided to call itself “conservatism” as well. The Russian dictator has launched a propaganda campaign in which he presents himself as a “defender” of traditional values who opposes liberal immorality. Worst of all, even reputable conservative influencers have begun to fall for this absurd propaganda.
Jordan Peterson, a popular conservative philosopher who has been called an “icon of conservatism,” has recently been disgraced by pro-Russian narratives. Peterson criticized racial and gender quotas and defended the classic conservative values of Western civilization. And then he suddenly began to see “defenders of spirituality” among Asian dictatorships. Peterson stooped to voicing Russian fascist propaganda messages that “Russia has its own sphere of influence” and nuclear weapons, so, according to the philosopher, “the West should respect this.” It is quite possible that Peterson’s views were influenced by Russian intelligence work. Inexplicably, the Canadian professor of psychology suddenly decided to improve his health and be treated for depression in Moscow and Belgrade (Serbia) with the use of psychoactive substances. But Moscow managed to use one of the most famous conservative philosophers to its advantage.
Today, the only strongholds of conservatism as an ideology of defending human freedom and constructive values are the British Conservatives and the Christian democratic forces of continental Europe. After all, the criterion of true conservatism is true commitment to Christian and humanistic principles. Conservatism is about freedom, dignity, and respect for human beings and society, not about zones of imperial influence and nuclear blackmail by bloody dictators.
Author: Valeriy Maydanyuk
