Dutch Far-Right Leader Says Europe is Afraid of Vladimir Putin’s “Virility”

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin has long been known for his desire to become the ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter of a Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive (GNCA) alliance described in a Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report as follows:

Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Putin has expressed an inter­est in Rus­sia becom­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal cen­ter of a new glob­al con­ser­v­a­tive alliance, and Euro­pean far-right lead­ers have tak­en pro-Russ­ian posi­tions based on a sim­i­lar ide­ol­o­gy. Hun­gary is at the cen­ter of a devel­op­ing alliance between Euro­pean far-right nation­al­ists and Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives that Rus­sia could poten­tial­ly exploit for use in infor­ma­tion war­fare. This alliance oper­ates under the rubric of “Nation­al Con­ser­vatism,” cen­tered on nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, and oppo­si­tion to glob­al insti­tu­tions and rep­re­sent­ing a poten­tial­ly rad­i­cal change for the US con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment away from long-held Rea­gan-era philosophies.

Read the full report here.

On the 12th of this month, Hun­gar­i­an Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orbán deliv­ered his annu­al state of the nation speech in Budapest, where he both promised to keep rela­tions with Rus­sia and, in his com­ments on LGBTQ issues, mir­rored the posi­tions of Putin on the sub­ject. Nine days lat­er, Putin deliv­ered his own state of the nation, where he crit­i­cized West­ern cul­ture and moral­i­ty, claim­ing the West was pro­mot­ing the “destruc­tion of fam­i­lies,” “per­ver­sion,” and “abuse of chil­dren” as nor­mal. He specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned pedophil­ia as an exam­ple of how West­ern soci­ety had degenerated.

Now comes John Laugh­land, a leader in the Dutch nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty, the FvD., who has writ­ten an astound­ing defense of Rus­sia and its inva­sion of Ukraine in which he invokes some of the cen­tral tenets of Nation­al Con­ser­vatism and sup­port­ing Putin’s desire to place Russ­ian at the cen­ter of the GNCA. Laugh­land’s cen­tral claim is that Rus­sia is the “repressed shad­ow self of Europe, in the sense that she appears to embody every­thing Europe is try­ing not to be.” Laugh­land sees this shad­ow self in a vari­ety of areas:

• He sees the EU as ‘post-his­tor­i­cal” in con­trast to Rus­sia, which is “deeply root­ed in her history—warts and all.” He points to recent Moscow moments to “both the vic­tims of Stal­in­ist repres­sion and to St. Vladimir the Great who bap­tised the Kievan Rus” and com­plains, “It is impos­si­ble to imag­ine a stat­ue of Clo­vis being erect­ed in France in our day.”
• He says that the EU is based on “de-per­son­alised, ‘hor­i­zon­tal’ and sup­pos­ed­ly con­sen­su­al pow­er struc­tures (the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion and Coun­cil) while “Rus­sia appears to epit­o­mise ver­ti­cal pow­er where every­thing is decid­ed by Vladimir Putin.” He com­plains that “Europe pro­motes fem­i­nine or even effem­i­nate val­ues (tol­er­ance, peace) and sees only aggres­sive viril­i­ty in the Russ­ian president.”
• He sees Europe as “stu­dious­ly post-Chris­t­ian” in con­trast to Rus­sia which has “re-estab­lished the cen­tral place of Chris­tian­i­ty in its pub­lic life and dis­course in a way which is unthink­able in a Europe.”
• He views Rus­sia as a “mod­ern soci­ety” unlike “post-mod­ern: Europe. <“He writes that post-mod­ernism is obsessed with reject­ing “cat­e­gories and fixed” norms, cit­ing the

Laugh­land is a British nation­al and con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist with close ties to Rus­sia who is direc­tor of the Forum for Democ­ra­cy Inter­na­tion­al, an arm of the Dutch far-right, pop­ulist polit­i­cal par­ty known as the FvD. As GIOR has reported:

• In July 2022, Laugh­land was sched­uled to deliv­er a keynote at a pro-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da event spon­sored by the FvD, where the Russ­ian ambas­sador to the Nether­lands was expect­ed to participate.
• In Sep­tem­ber 2022, the FvD post­ed “A peti­tion for afford­able ener­gy in the EU.” seek­ing an end to EU sanc­tions on Rus­sia for its inva­sion of Ukraine.
• In Octo­ber 2022, Laugh­land pub­lished an arti­cle titled “The Amer­i­cans Did It,” attempt­ing to cast doubt on the idea that the Rus­sians were like­ly behind the sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage of the Nord­stream 2 gas pipelines.

In Octo­ber 2022, FVD leader Their­ry Baudet pro­fessed his sup­port for  Putin and said he hoped he would win the war in Ukraine.