US Far Right Adores Vladimir Putin’s Christian Nationalism More Than Freedom and Democracy

Right Wing Watch ✒ Lauren Witzke, the Republican Party’s nominee for U.S. Senate from Delaware in 2020, gushed with praise for Vladimir Putin this week after the Russian dictator unleashed a military invasion against Ukraine.

Peter Montgomery

While somewhat shocking given the timing, Witzke’s admiration of Putin’s “Christian nationalism” has a long precedent among U.S. Christian right leaders, who embraced Putin as a “savior of Christian civilization” during the Obama administration.

Shortly after Donald Trump became president, far-right activist Pat Buchanan praised Putin as “a God-and-country Russian patriot” and champion of Christianity “against the Western progressive vision of what mankind’s future ought to be.”

In 2018, prominent Trump-aligned dominionist Lance Wallnau brushed aside Putin’s tendency to kill journalists and run the country “like a mafia state,” and praised Putin’s anti-LGBTQ policies as having been “shaped by Christians,” adding, “I fear more liberals in America than I fear Putin in Russia.”

At an infamous 2018 press conference with Putin and Trump, the U.S. president said he was more inclined to believe Putin than U.S. intelligence agencies that had concluded the Russian government had interfered with the 2016 election.

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