US Extremists Have Picked a Side in Ukraine: ‘Lol Putin Is Brilliant’

Far-right personalities have declared Russia a beacon of anti-wokeness and Putin a strong ethnonationalist.

White nationalist livestreamer Nicholas Fuentes has made no secret of where his loyalties lie in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

“I wish Putin was president of America,” he mused to his 45,000 subscribers on Telegram on Wednesday morning. 

Fifteen hours later, Russian forces invaded Ukraine. And Fuentes, who’s hosting a far-right conference in Florida Friday night, was psyched. 

“I am totally rooting for Russia,” he wrote the following morning. “This is the coolest thing to happen since 1/6.” 

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Wednesday night, far-right personalities have declared Russia a beacon of anti-wokeness and Putin a strong ethnonationalist. In their minds, Ukraine is just a corrupt pawn in a vast “globalist” conspiracy.

Religious fundamentalists and white supremacists, inspired partially by the writings of a Kremlin-linked ideologue, have hailed Putin as a white Christian crusaderon a mission to restore traditional values. 

One day before Russia invaded Ukraine, former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and Blackwater founder Erik Prince celebrated Putin for his anti-LGBTQ policies on a podcast. “Putin ain’t woke, he is anti-woke,” Bannon said. “The Russian people still know which bathrooms to use,” Prince added. 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxd7zn/us-extremists-putin-nicholas-fuentes