The Pathetic Lives of Putin's American Dupes.

A tragically large number of left-wing Westerners in the 20th century deluded themselves about the horrors of Soviet communism. As awful and unforgivable as it was, the process by which they made themselves into dupes was at least explicable: They loved socialism, and one country in the world was implementing socialism, so they persuaded themselves, and for a while, it was working.

Today’s Russia dupes are a smaller, more pathetic lot. Above all they are just plain weirder, because they lack a clear ideological motive for their stoogery. Soviet Russia not only commanded a vast propaganda network, but embodied a doctrine with international appeal (and which had originated outside of Russia). Vladimir Putin’s Russia follows no model except Russian nationalism. To the extent it employs a non-nationalist philosophy, its main idea is that gays have weakened Europe. And yet the dupes still come.

The most prominent intellectual apologist for Putin is Stephen F. Cohen, Princeton professor, Russologist for the left-wing Nation. Cohen is a septuagenarian, old-school leftist who has carried on the mental habits of decades of anti-anti-communism seamlessly into a new career of anti-anti-Putinism. The Cohen method is to pick away at every indictment of the Russian regime without directly associating himself with its various atrocities. Is Putin persecuting gays? Well, Cohen wants us to know that various Ukrainians nationalists dislike gays, too. And also Barack Obama’s claim to snub Sochi because of gay rights is probably not on the level. Is Putin bullying and killing journalists? Eh, says Cohen, “Every time a journalist breaks a leg, they say the Kremlin did it.” Accidents happen.


The primary hub of Russian propaganda in the West is Russia Today, an English-language Kremlin-funded propaganda outlet. Joe Pompeo reported last fall how RT has actually acquired a devoted following in the West, in part through relentless viral YouTube sharing of its reports. Cohen, of course, appears regularly on RT. (Is RT biased? Well, he says, so is CNN: “I’m highly suspicious about the narrative I’m getting on CNN. It seems to be the flip side of RT.”)

The demise of communism has left a void in the place where socialist fervor once animated the Soviet dupes. In the absence of any positive motivating force, Putin’s Russia, which has positioned itself as America’s main rival, has sponged up whatever motley collection of outsiders it can find. Russia is not the vessel for their ideological fantasies, but merely a placeholder for their accumulated discontent.