By Sergio Ramírez.

When in March of this year Comrade Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, the sole candidate for the presidency of Russia, overwhelmingly won the elections, the president of Honduras, Mrs. Xiomara Castro, an enthusiastic supporter of 21st century socialism a la Chávez, was quick to congratulate him. on behalf of all the member countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) “for their convincing victory.” Ten of those countries, including Chile, signed a statement to deny it. Others, like Mexico and Brazil, remained silent.

The sometimes blind, sometimes hidden, support that the old left gives to the Tsar of all the Russias, Comrade Putin, is surprising. And it is not only about the dictatorial or authoritarian left, in power in countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua or Bolivia, but also about a certain intellectual left, taking refuge in cloisters where the old tropical Leninism still exudes its mold on the walls, and in old orthodox thought clubs, both nostalgic for real socialism, of which Putin is the prophet destined to revive it.

the contra war broke out in Nicaragua , armed by the Reagan administration, they tried to overthrow the Sandinista revolutionaries, rather than as a Cold War skirmish, that battle was seen from the circles of the militant left as a blatant aggression by the old and protective Goliath against the beardless and weak David who only had stones in his salbeque to defend his small country.

That same left, which now has gray hair, erased from the hard drive that image of justice that the weak have in every unequal struggle, when in February 2022 Tsar Vladimir’s troops invaded Ukraine, and agreed with Goliath, or They looked the other way, feigning dissimulation, or asking in a cunning Solomonic way, containment “for both parties”, the invader and the invaded. David was a corrupt fascist.

Everything could be attributed to the anti-imperialist syndrome nurtured throughout the 20th century by the military occupations of the United States, and its support for military coups, which fixes on the retina an imperishable Goliath, which does not allow copying. The Goliath that falls to the lot of the Ukrainians, if he hits them on the head with the sledgehammer, it is for their own good.

And, furthermore, if Putin the vigilante, “the great leader of humanity” as Maduro calls him, is against the perverse North American imperialism, which remains unchanged in the letter of the manuals, the faithful anti-imperialists of yesterday, and the recycled ones of today , they must close ranks around the hero of the steppes.

For the old comrades who turn their eyes towards the thick and gray paradise of real socialism, more than the tsar who seeks to restore the borders of the ancient and mythical Rus of which Ukraine, oh manifest destiny, is a natural part, Putin represents the resurrection of the glories of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Aren’t the Kremlin walls still there? And Stalin himself, on Peter the Great’s horse, the bronze horseman, rides again, now with a naked torso.

But let’s see. Putin, apostle of the left? A strange character who is also, at the same time, the apostle of the most closed right, and who, like the double-faced Roman god Janus, can look at two opposite sides at the same time.

Aleksandr Duguin, the ultraconservative ideologue, is to Putin what Steven Bannon is spiritually to Donald Trump. Duguin invokes a “Russian-style fascism”, supported by an esoteric Nazism capable of giving way to a new European right, capable of carrying out a universal conservative revolution. Where do we put it then? Closer to Jair Bolsonaro, or closer to Nicolás Maduro? Or could it be that someone like Ortega also wants “a strong and solid State… a patriotic radio and television… that express national interests”?

They are strange amalgams, but it is clear that they are possible. Duguin is also interested in Satanism, and in the manifestations of occultism. And according to Bernard-Henry Lévy’s criteria, he is a typical anti-Semitic racist, to which we must add the homophobic criteria of Putin himself, whose laws prohibit any type of marriage between people of the same sex, and seeks to establish conversion centers forced for homosexuals. Books suspected of containing gay propaganda, even though they are classics of Russian literature, are subjected to censorship.

Authoritarian kingdoms are similar, as are happy families. And extreme ideological families are similar too. What is the distance between Duguin and Bannon? None. Bannon’s «movement» wants a populist revolution of global dimension, frontally combats migrations, gender ideology, LGBT rights, the legalization of abortion, declares climate change an absurd legend, and declares itself in open fight against «the cultural Marxism.

Peccata minuta the latter, which may well be ignored by the orthodox left. To be happy as a family, you have to know how to hide.

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Sergio Ramírez is a writer and Cervantes winner. His last published book is The Golden Horse (Alfaguara).

*Article published originally in El País (Spain)