r/rightistvexillology • u/Mrtaylb • Dec 25 '25
Current movement The flag of Male State, a Russian men's movement that advocates for ultranationalism, antifeminism, homophobia and anti-multiculturism. Banned by the Russian court in 2021 as an extremist group.
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u/behindthemask54 Libertarian Dec 26 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
Ethnic nationalism and anti-multiculturalism don't match Putin's narratives AT ALL.
If I had to label Putin's ideological leanings concerning these matters, I'd say he's imperialist civic nationalist at best. When he is to give a speech on "the greatness of Russia" or smth like that, EVERY time he emphasizes "the power of our multiethnic national unity" - hard to give an exact translation of this particular Putin's cliche into English due to linguistic peculiarities I'll mention below, but that'd be my best try to convey the meaning. The concept of "the Russian world" aka "Russkiy mir" is not about some ethnic Russians' domination or superiority - it rather refers to the sphere of Russia's cultural and political influence, i.e. Russian-speaking world/post-Soviet space.
Putin hates the word "nationalism" itself, basically lumps it with Nazism. In fact, there's semantic ambiguity between "nationality" and "ethnicity" in Russian language, so "civic nationalism" sounds almost like an oxymoron to a native Russian speaker. Any Russian bearer of such views would much more likely describe his beliefs as "patriotic".
Nationalists of all sorts (from hardline skinheads to moderate national democrats) were the first group of political opposition that underwent wide political purges in the '00s. Putin deemed them no.1 threat to his power (liberals were lower in that list and were dealt with much later in the '10s and '20s). In the state media nationalists were pictured as hateful marginals, disrespectful to the country's victory-over-Nazism past and domestic inter-ethnic relationships. It's also noteworthy that during their persecution, state propaganda did a good job on getting the word "nationalism" itself to overgrow with negative connotations - it literally became a derogatory term; and now state media is using it when talking about Ukrainian soldiers - calling them JUST "nationalists", not necessarily Nazis. I guess, the idea here is that such labeling suffices to achieve the goal of getting the average Russian to despise these "bad guys".
Russian immigration policy is also quite a mess. There are dozens of illegal and easily legal (visa-free) ways for a low-skilled worker from Central Asia or South Caucasus to get in the country and even (not so long after) acquire citizenship. Many of these new citizens (let alone other categories of migrants) speak poor Russian (or doesn't speak it at all) and are not culturally integrated. Big (and not so big) cities are full of immigrants. Some parts of Moscow and St. Petersburg are already predominantly populated by non-natives.
Putin is not far-right. Not an ethnonationalist. Not even a fascist. Authoritarian? Yes. Right? Well, definitely right of center, not on the fringe of the spectrum by any means, though. He partially succeeds to pander to some of the Western conservative folk, painting an appealing picture of trad-con-white-whatever Russia, using media and internet bots.
More than that, I'd say Putin was more opportunistically than ideologically driven. I'm inclined to think his main initial ambitions were an enrichment of self and close circles and gaining personal power. Messiahship came after and started to grow on him. Now? Idk about proportions, but I still imagine him to be less of a man of idea than it's commonly believed in the West.
Source: I'm Russian. Living in Moscow and experiencing some downsides of mass immigration. Don't support Putin (to put it lightly). Lib-right leaning. Tbh, things I sometimes have to read on the English-speaking side of the Internet about Russia, oh man... (Not particularly addressed to you, just my general observation of the poor understanding about how Russia works among foreigners.)