On a recent episode of his podcast, popular conspiracy theorist and antisemite Tucker Carlson told Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg, a former member of British Parliament, that Russia had a much larger economy than Britain and that the country was “thriving” economically under President Vladimir Putin.
Anyone subjected to Carlson’s unhinged views these days understands most of what he contends is patently untrue, usually laughably so. Britain’s nominal GDP is $4.3 trillion, whereas Russia’s is only around $2.66 trillion, despite having twice the population and vast natural resources.
But praising Russia is simply a way for “postliberals” such as Carlson to convince audiences that the decadent neoliberal Western nation is failing while authoritarians such as Putin are succeeding. We see a lot of praise of China on the Left. But on the Right, there is Russia.
Western Europe certainly has its problems. Economically, it’s fallen even further behind the United States over the past decades. It has foolishly opened its doors to millions of newcomers who refuse to assimilate.
But while an average household living in the poorest state in the U.S. is more prosperous than a household living in a major Western European nation, the Western European household is far more prosperous economically, culturally, health-wise, and in any other gauge you can conjure up than those living in Putin’s Russia.
By no measure is Russia thriving. Carlson’s defenders on social media argue that if you adjust for the cost of living, Russia’s economy ranks quite high globally. Well, the cost of living for hunter-gatherers on the Tanzanian plains or with Amazon tribesmen deep in the jungle is even lower. That doesn’t mean you’d want to live there.
The standard of living in Russia is well below that of any Western European nation. A few years back, Carlson went to Moscow to marvel at the clean subways — a propaganda project built by Stalin — and abundant supermarkets. There are, of course, upscale areas and fancy things to be bought in places such as Moscow and St. Petersburg — for wealthy people.
A viewer might have walked away under the impression that most Russians live in opulent apartment buildings with a view of the onion-domed Kremlin. In reality, they are far more likely to live in Stalinkas, Khrushchevkas, Brezhnevkas, etc.: grim concrete Soviet-era apartment complexes that still dominate Russian cities. Nearly 75% of Russians reside in apartment complexes. The average square footage of a Russian home is under 600 square feet — probably less space than the closets in one of Carlson’s homes. Most Russians do not have air conditioners, and heating is almost always controlled by the government.
The average Russian living in Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk, or Ufa, places with a per capita income of roughly $10,000 per household, would surely be thrilled to bask in the extravagant comforts of middle-class life in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, or any suburb of any American city.
Cost-of-living arguments are hollow anyway, considering that Russians spend a significantly higher percentage of their household income on basic necessities such as food than Western Europeans — twice as much as the average Briton. Russians have less.
And Russians who don’t live in cities live in the Third World. The country ranks 64th on the Human Development Index, edging out Malaysia, North Macedonia, and Azerbaijan, but trailing Romania, Turkey, and Kazakhstan. Roughly 20% of Russian households do not have indoor plumbing or sewage systems. In rural areas, that number is over 60%. A third of Russian hospitals do not have running water, and 40% do not have any central heating.
It’s no surprise that hordes of wealthy Russians seek medical care in Western European nations such as Britain, and never the other way around. Everywhere in the industrialized world, life expectancy has grown. Not so in Russia. A man “thriving” in Putin’s Russia now has a life expectancy of 68 years, lagging behind Egypt and Indonesia. The life expectancy of a man in the United Kingdom is approximately 79 years.
While some of the low life expectancy is due to subpar medical care, some of it is due to societal issues, and some of it to the war. Carlson, who believes President Donald Trump might be the “anti-Christ” for stopping the Islamic terrorist regime of Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, doesn’t seem very upset about Putin’s invasion of a neighboring European nation, which, like most things, he blames on the West. Sadly, there have been 19 casualties in our conflict with Iran. Western officials, however, report that around 500,000 Russian soldiers have died in Putin’s quagmire in Ukraine.
Then again, Iran’s military has been largely destroyed. Ukraine’s is going toe to toe with the alleged superpower of Russia.
In the end, of course, nothing excites the postliberal populist more than the idea of Putin fighting for Christianity against the decadent forces of secularism.
Have you heard? There are no gay pride parades in Russia.
There are also very few children. Despite pro-family incentivization campaigns favored by the postliberal American Right, Russia’s replacement rate is 1.3 — and even that number is somewhat misleading, considering areas in Muslim-majority republics such as Chechnya often have rates over 2.5, while ethnic Russian areas are often under 1. Russia also has some of the highest abortion, divorce, and suicide rates in the world. The number of Russians newly diagnosed with alcoholism or alcohol-induced psychosis is among the highest in the world.
That doesn’t sound like a thriving nation.
Putin might embrace the aesthetics and rhetoric of Christian Orthodoxy to feed his ambitions, but Russians are not religious. Regular weekly church attendance is around 5%-7%, no better, and even marginally lower than most of Western Europe. In contrast, somewhere around 30% of Americans go to church weekly, and around 40% monthly.
Carlson feigns to care about free speech and open inquiry, but neither exists for Russians in any real way. Russia is an authoritarian state. And fascism is what appeals to Carlson most.
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In his interview with Rees-Mogg, the podcaster, whose favorite “popular historian” is a Hitler apologist, wondered why Britain had even bothered fighting against the Nazis in World War II. Rees-Mogg rightly reacted by accusing Carlson of “verging” on defending Hitler. “I think this is not really what you want to be doing,” he said. No, it’s exactly what he wants to be doing.
But don’t be fooled. While Putin isn’t the first tragedy experienced by the Russian people, he is, nonetheless, a tragedy.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
