As you may have heard, Vladimir Putin has “won” another “presidential” “election” in Russia. So he will be “serving” a sixth “term.” It’s amazing they even bother to go through the charade, these dictators.
In 2018, General Sisi, in Egypt, handpicked his “opponent.” His “opponent” endorsed him. Sisi managed to garner 98 percent of the vote. (Why permit the other 2 percent?)
Naturally, President Trump congratulated Sisi on his “victory.” The next year, he hailed Sisi as — now I am quoting Trump — “a great leader” and “a real leader.”
Putin, too, held an “election” in 2018. Trump’s advisers put together a briefing book, resorting to all caps: “DO NOT CONGRATULATE.” Trump congratulated Putin, naturally.
And the next year he hailed Putin as “a great guy, “a good person,” and “a terrific person.” (“Terroristic person” would have fit.)
Putin once had an opponent in Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov was assassinated in February 2015, 200 meters from the Kremlin wall. Moscow is one of the most surveilled places in the world — but amazingly, all the cameras were turned off at that moment. The moment of Nemtsov’s murder.
(Funny how that happens.)
Putin had another opponent: Alexei Navalny. Navalny suffered “sudden-death syndrome” in February 2024. (That’s what they told his mother: that he had died of “sudden-death syndrome.”) Still another opponent of Putin’s is Vladimir Kara-Murza — who for many years worked alongside Nemtsov. Putin now has him in a Siberian isolation cell.
Moreover, Putin has abolished Russia’s independent media and civil society. He keeps “winning” these “elections” and being congratulated.
By whom? This year, the White House denounced Putin’s charade, and so did other democratic governments. With regularity, these governments denounce the dictatorship that Putin has imposed on Russia. They also denounce his invasion of Ukraine, and his attempt to annihilate and subsume that country. Some even support the Ukrainians with arms.
But Putin has his friends and congratulators: Xi of China; Kim of North Korea; Raisi, the “president” of Iran; Lukashenko of Belarus; Ortega of Nicaragua; Orbán of Hungary . . .
The headline from the Associated Press reads, “Hungary’s Orbán congratulates Putin on widely criticized Russian election win.” (For the article, go here.) The headline from Reuters reads, “Hungary’s Orban congratulates Russia’s Putin on re-election.” (Here.)
Viktor Orbán is probably Putin’s No. 1 ally in Europe, if you don’t count Lukashenko. Orbán is a favorite of Trump’s, naturally — and the feeling is mutual. (I wrote about this in a post earlier this month.) Orbán has endorsed Trump for reelection — an unusual step for a foreign leader to take. The two huddled recently at Trump’s place in Palm Beach.
Over and over, Trump calls Orbán “a great leader” and “a great man,” as he did while campaigning in New Hampshire two months ago. During his term as president, Trump called Xi Jinping “a great leader,” “a very good man,” and “a very special person.” He called Kim Jong-un “a great leader” — also describing him as “very honorable.”
To “old” conservatives like me, this is grotesque. It is the antithesis of everything we ever stood for or sought to defend. To young people, it’s hard to explain how dramatically things have changed in our politics.
The “New Right” tells the “old” conservatives, daily, that we “don’t know what time it is.” Oh, we know, all right: We just think it’s a lousy time, and look forward to better. We don’t think that tried-and-true values are dictated by the clock.
Viktor Orbán is probably the favorite leader of the American Right, after Trump himself. He is a star of CPAC. In 2022, he spoke at a CPAC jamboree in Dallas, saying, “I’m here to tell you that we should unite our forces.” (They did not need to be told.) The next year, he welcomed CPAC to Hungary. He is set to do it again next month.
The Heritage Foundation, too, has locked arms with Orbán. Heritage hosted him a couple of weeks ago, the day before he had his huddle with Trump in Florida.
What does any of this matter? Why does it matter that Viktor Orbán, virtually alone among Western leaders, congratulated Putin on his “election” “victory”? As I have so often in the past, I quote a lyric from Lyle Lovett: “It may be no big deal to you, but it’s a very big deal to me.”
Some of us thought of the Republican Party as a freedom party, or at least freedom-oriented; we also thought of the conservative movement as a freedom movement, or at least freedom-oriented. That was, indeed, the attraction, or a major one: a commitment to freedom, a commitment to Western values, or, if you like, human ones.
“The West” is a geographical term but also a political and spiritual one. Such nations as Taiwan are Eastern, of course, and one would never want to deny them their particularity. On the contrary. But they are also Western, in that they embrace, or strive for, freedom, democracy, and human rights.
(I do not wish to take this East–West thing too far. A Chinese activist once told me, “Communism is not Chinese, you know. It came from you in the West — Marx and Engels.”)
In any event, such leaders as Trump and Orbán are in the West, obviously. But are they “Western,” in that other sense? Are they of the West?
Former congressman Steve King (R., Iowa) was “New Right” before it was cool. In 2017, he tweeted, “History will record PM Orban the Winston Churchill of Western Civilization.” In a comment of my own, I said, “Personally, I would accord that honor to Churchill.”
Vladimir Putin is one of the most despicable and dangerous tyrants of modern times. I see no reason of realpolitik to congratulate him on an “election” that was no such thing — just another exercise of dictatorial control. Putin exiles, imprisons, or murders his critics. He erases international boundaries through violence. We have seen all this before. The Free World ought to oppose Putin mightily.
As in Soviet times, some of the bravest people in the world are Russian. I think of those Russians who, a few days ago, took their “presidential” ballots and laid them at Navalny’s grave. You can bet the cameras were working to record them.