10-15 years ago, before Donald trump’s first bid for the presidency in 2015, fascists hated Obama and other western leaders of that era and worshipped Putin because they viewed him as the ultimate alpha male. They were like:
« I wish our countries had a tough leader like him, he’s a great role model for all of
of us »
The Russian dream really had a mass appeal among the alt-right types. They thought Russia was a pure, culturally/ethnically homogeneous and wholesome country led by a strong, competent and masculine straight white male leader. In their delusional minds, Russian society was paradise on earth, the last refuge of the white man- a pure, wholesome, exclusively white and traditional country without non-white immigrants, foreign influence, decadent culture, feminism, drug use, abortion rights, gays, materialistic culture, transgenders, and woke leftist politics. These cacs wrote about leaving feminist, culturally ruined, socially entitled, and morally corrupted American/western women behind and going to Russia to find a beautiful and traditional blonde woman with blue eyes named Svetlana or Olga for marriage lol.
These tea party/birther movement types deeply felt emasculated by the rise to power of Obama and wanted to get their dominance and masculinity back after that. It was Ironic coming from self professed American patriots. The cognitive dissonances and mental gymnastics from these hypocrites was pathetic. That’s why they vicariously lived through Putin at the time. But as soon as Trump became president in 2016, many of the far right people took their distances from him for obvious reasons. They got their own « strongman » now. No need to blatantly cheer for a foreign dictator when you have an American one doing the same thing. The optics were better as supporting trump was not seen as unpatriotic compared to supporting Russian leader Putin.
They believed that « based » Russia was a beautiful alternative to the weak and decadent West. These kind of people love authoritarians that remind them of Mussolini and hitler so Putin with all his macho posturing was catnip to them.
The truth is always much more uglier than the fantasy. In fact, Russia is a dysfunctional country with massive economic and social inequalities between people. This country has bad weather, it has a extreme continental climate - dreary, cold bitter winters and suffocating hot/humid summers. Late stage capitalism has reached its final form there, Social trust between citizens is low, there is a massive brain drain from Russia to foreign countries, political disfranchisement is widespread, corruption is deeply and culturally entrenched in the social fabric , social mobility is next to impossible, housing market sucks, massive doctor shortage/healthcare infrastructure is outdated, suicide rate is high, weak worker rights/weak trade unions, Abortion rate is high, drug use is high, alcoholism is high, gays have a strong presence there, plenty of women are selfish goldigging sluts,most people are not as socially conservative as advertised, most people left the Christian orthodox faith behind, etc
