Duda Teixeira, Crusoé magazine
Interview with Stephen R. C. Hicks, Professor of Philosophy, Rockford University, USA
Link to Portuguese edition; English follows.
1. Is there a Putinistic ideology? Or is it just a messy gathering of thoughts?
Stephen Hicks: Putin’s expressed ideas do form a more or less coherent set of principles and plans, though he is a pragmatist who adapts them to circumstance and a rhetorician who chooses his public wordings to suit different audiences.
To me as a philosopher, what is noteworthy especially are the famous historical Russian philosophers Putin sometimes quotes in his speeches and writings, such as Ivan Ilyin and Konstantin Leontiev, and the contemporary Russian philosophers, such as Alexander Dugin, who is known to be influential upon Putin and his advisers. All of them are ideologists to the extreme.
Ilyin was an admirer of Mussolini’s fascism and Hitler’s national socialism. Leontiev was a conservative monarchist who hated Western liberalism. And Dugin also despises liberalism and is a principled and self-described fascist, in the true sense of that word.
2. Why does Putin talk so much about Nazism?
Because accusing people of being Nazis plays well in the West. If he can convince Western audiences that, for example, there are neo-Nazis and neo-fascists prominent in Ukraine, then he drives a wedge between Ukraine and the rest of the world.
In part also the Nazi specter is for domestic Russian consumption. “Nazi” conjures up painful memories and history lessons for many Russians about the time when the German Nazis turned against their Soviet Russian allies and invaded them. The threat of foreign invaders inspires loyalty to defend the Motherland.
But also National Socialism is a competitive threat to Putin’s brand of authoritarian collectivism, just as Western liberalism, and Chinese Communism are. So he’s signaling that it’s not just brute power politics at work but culture and ideals in conflict.
The extremely interesting question to me is this: It’s now the 2020s—so why are the same 1920s political philosophies clashing on the world stage a century later? Have we learned and accomplished so little?
3. Is Putin transforming Russia into a kind of Stalinist state? What does he have in common with Stalin?
“Stalinist” is over-stated. Putin is an authoritarian, not a totalitarian. Partly that is a difference of degree, but there is a mindset difference between (a) those who want to have a lot of power over much of a nation and (b) those who want to have complete control down to the level of remaking every individual’s existence. Some of the rhetoric of Putin’s ideologists is totalitarian, but his own rhetoric does not go that far.
Also it’s important that despite being in power for decades now, Putin’s internal repressions have been more focused on individual rivals and dissidents. Very quickly into Stalin’s regime, by contrast, Stalin was engaging in wholesale repressions and even genocide.
To me the greater danger are the precedents set for whoever succeeds Putin. The concentrated power and the debased culture he will leave behind will be an attractive opportunity for future potential Stalins now positioning themselves in Russia.
4. Which leader of the West is better countering Putin’s ideas? Joe Biden? Emmanuel Macron?
Neither, as both are left-leaning pragmatists. Though Macron is better educated and more intelligent and has been more aware of the threat and consistent in response. It’s not clear to me whether Biden is president or a semi-functional figurehead while the real decisions are made by others.
To counter Putin’s ideology one needs principled liberals—in the genuine meaning of that word—who will articulate and inspire individual responsibility, the separation of church and state, free markets both nationally and internationally, and rational science and technology policies. That’s what the West first stood for, rose to greatness on the basis of, and became inspiring to billions the world over.
Much of Putin’s appeal comes from the fact that he offers a vision with values and a strategy—however repugnant to liberals that vision is. For the West and the rest to counter that, a muddled and reactive mish-mash is unhelpful.
5. Should a country like Brazil, far away from the war, get involved in the war? What could be the rationale for Brazil to get involved?
Yes and No.
First, the No. The job of the Brazilian government is to protect the rights of its citizens. There is no current military threat to Brazil from the Russia-Ukraine war. And no matter how imperialist Putin’s fantasies may be, it would take the Russians a long time to get to South America. So the government’s response should be proportional to the actual threat.
Now the Yes. Russia is a major world power, and it is a nuclear power. So the whole world, Brazilian citizens included, have an interest in Russian power politics. Preserving a peaceful, liberal international order—as we’ve mostly been successful at doing for almost 80 years now—is to everyone’s interest, and that takes active effort by a majority of nations, Brazil included, diplomatically and with formal military agreements in place.
Brazil is also a major international player economically and culturally. Its future growth depends on the maintenance of a peaceful international order in which cross-cultural exchange can flourish. The spread of dictatorship and war would damage those prospects severely.
6. The US, a major capitalist country, is seen by the left as an imperial power. Does it make sense? Can capitalism contribute to stopping Russian imperialism?
The leftist narrative of imperialism is nonsense. Imperialism—the foreign policy of conquer and control—has been around for many millennia. In the modern world of the last few centuries it has been precisely the new and the most capitalist nations that have gradually institutionalized peace and mutually beneficial trade as the dominant international ethos.
About the USA in particular: The US is the world’s largest economy, and it has much capitalism. Yet it is in retreat from its more-capitalist origins: two decades ago it was ranked in the top five nations in the world for economic freedom, but it has been steadily falling in those world rankings. This year it fell to 20th, and is now a semi-capitalist country.
That said, the capitalist elements in the USA have made it an entrepreneurial powerhouse, and that constant innovation, including technological innovation, will make it effective against slow-to-change nations such as Russia. New tech beats old tech almost every time.
Also, war is very expensive, and the USA’s capitalist elements are amazing at generating wealth. The same holds for the capitalist elements of Europe and other parts of the world. By contrast, Russia’s under-achieving economy, due to Putin’s policies, cannot sustain expensive, long-term expansionist wars.
Related. Interview by Maria Clara Vieira, Editor, Gazeta de Povo, March 2022: “The fight with wokism will get ugly, but rationality will prevail”