Christian Heiens is a Virginia-based political commentator, historian, and analyst known for his sharp critiques of modern liberalism and progressive ideology. A James Madison University alumnus and former legislative assistant in the Virginia House of Delegates, he has built a following as an election modeler and co-host of the podcast Making the Argument.
So many on the Dissident Right in America were actually quite receptive towards Russia at the start of the war in Ukraine because they saw everything leading up to this conflict to be just a thinly veiled attempt to spread yet more gay race communism to another country on the periphery of a West which had been thoroughly hijacked by Progressives.
“We helped topple the Ukrainian government and then incited a war with Russia so we could queer the Donbass” was the logic.
And in contrast to this, Russia was seen as a countervailing force against Progressivism. It was the last European country to be insulated from the modern Neo-Marxist Left because, paradoxically, it had been dominated by the older Marxist Left for 80 years and thus was spared the corrosive social effects of Liberal modernity even as it suffered under the corrosive economic effects of Communism.
This gave some on the Dissident Right the idea that Russia, having been spared from DEI, transgenderism, replacement migration, oikophobia, and anti-White hatred, could actually be the savior of the West by defeating it in Ukraine. A Russian victory on the battlefield would end the relentless foreign policy objective of the EU and NATO to export Wokeism abroad, and once that train had been halted, its aura of inevitability would crumble, leading to an unraveling of the entire project and a return to an older more traditional Europe that loved itself rather than the modern Europe that appears hell-bent on suicide.
When you frame things this way, that the West is irredeemably captured by an ideology that seeks to weaponize the resources of the West to spread itself across the globe even as it dissolves the West itself from within, it’s easy to understand why so many in the DR were Russophiles in 2022.
But what has happened since then?
Right-wing Westerners found out that Russians on X are militantly anti-West, not merely anti-Progressive. Even worse, they’re pro-Third World and pro-Islam. Virtually without exception, Russian public figures are almost universally arrayed against the West as a concrete civilization with a concrete people.
They’re not fighting an ideological war against race communism like so many on the Right originally thought, they are perpetuating one…just of a slightly different variation than our Progressive parasites here at home.
They don’t see themselves as belonging to Western Civilization, despite being settled by Norse Vikings over a thousand years ago and adopting Orthodox Christianity in the early Middle Ages. They see themselves as a distinct Eurasian Civilization locked in a struggle with the West.
Just listen to what Alexander Dugin has to say about the West, about Europe, and about America compared to what he says about India. It’s clear he views his role in politics and his home country’s place in history not as one to save the West from itself, but rather as one to defeat and ultimately destroy it.
Well that’s great if the only thing you care about is ensuring that Progressives lose, but what about the rest of us who have nowhere else to call home? No other civilization or inheritance to call our own?
That’s why so many on the Right have turned against the Russians over the last few years. Sometimes, the enemy of your enemy is just another enemy.
Heiens described how this perception led some on the right to hope that a Russian battlefield victory would disrupt the perceived inevitability of progressive foreign policy goals advanced by the EU and NATO. A Russian success, in this view, might halt the global spread of “Wokeism” and create space for a return to more traditional European self-regard.
That initial receptivity has largely faded, according to Heiens, and it’s hard to disagree. Over the intervening years, interactions with Russian voices online (he mentioned X but Telegram also applies) revealed attitudes that went far beyond opposition to progressive social policies. Russian public figures, he observed, frequently express broad hostility toward the West as a concrete civilization and people, rather than solely toward its current ideological direction. Many display sympathy for the Third World and Islam while rejecting any shared identity with Western Civilization, despite historical ties such as Norse settlement and the adoption of Orthodox Christianity. Heiens pointed to thinkers like Alexander Dugin as emblematic: Dugin’s writings, in his assessment, frame Russia’s historical role as one of confronting and ultimately overcoming the West, not rescuing it from internal progressive capture. Russians, he concluded, often see themselves as a distinct Eurasian civilization locked in struggle with the West.
The practical implication, Heiens argued, is sobering for those on the Western right who had hoped for an external ally. Opposition to progressive ideology does not automatically translate into alignment with Western civilizational interests. “Sometimes, the enemy of your enemy is just another enemy,” he wrote. In a follow-up post, he drove the point home: no outside force, whether Russia, China, Iran, or others, will rescue the West from its internal challenges. External actors opposing the current Western order are not allies in liberating it from progressive dominance; they pursue their own interests. The only reliable actor, Heiens insisted, is the right itself. Western conservatives and dissidents must learn to take their own side rather than waiting for foreign powers to do so.
Heiens’ observation resonates within ongoing debates on the American right about geopolitics, cultural decline, and strategy. It reflects a broader post-2022 reckoning among some dissident voices who initially projected their own anti-progressive priorities onto Russia, only to encounter a different civilizational self-understanding. By framing the issue this way, Heiens underscores a recurring theme in his commentary: the necessity of internal clarity and agency. In his view, the West’s problems are ultimately its own to confront, without reliance on external saviors whose goals may diverge fundamentally from those of Western traditionalists or nationalists.
The historical currents that have led to the present impasse are complex, and some argue that opportunities for engagement were squandered early on. The narrative suggests that a critical juncture was missed when, for instance, the George W. Bush administration allegedly snubbed Vladimir Putin regarding eventual NATO membership. Such perceived slights, rather than ideological divergence alone, may have set a foundational tone of mistrust, making genuine reconciliation increasingly difficult as successive administrations pushed forward with perceived Western-centric foreign policy goals.
Furthermore, the current war in Ukraine, fueled by a protracted war of attrition, has effectively foreclosed any realistic path to reconciliation in the near term. Instead, it has solidified an inconvenient alliance between Russia and China, creating a united front that directly challenges the existing Western-dominated international order. This partnership, born of shared strategic opposition, presents a significant geopolitical reality that Western policymakers can no longer afford to ignore.
Ultimately, assessing Putin’s approach requires recognizing the political environment within which he operates. It can be argued that he represents the most “pro-West” stance Russia could realistically sustain, given its history and internal dynamics. However, this pragmatic compromise has evolved. Russia’s commitment to an anti-Western, multipolar future appears unwavering. The implication for the West is clear: clinging to the hope of external salvation, whether from Moscow or Beijing, is a strategic dead end. The true battle for the West’s future must be fought and won internally, through self-awareness and decisive action, rather than through alliances of convenience with powers whose ultimate aims are diametrically opposed.
One Response
Of course Russia says it wants to defeat the West, they are at war with it. What do they care (or even understand) that the current globalist West has cannibalized the traditional Christian West. The West as it exists right now is their enemy, and in war, the goal is to defeat the enemy. This mentality may have been lost in the West as, for instance, the USA has often talked about its recent conflicts as being against the government of a country but allied with the people of a country (e.g. fighting the Taliban, not Afghanistan). But that’s not how wars work. How much would Russia be anti-Western and pro-China/India/Islam if the West was actually Christian? Hard to say. But how much did the dissident right in the West actually believe that the Russians were our saviors, or that they were our civilizational examples to emulate? The Russian nation overall might not help the dissident right in our fight, but let us pray that any Christian brothers in Russia are able to overcome in their civilization’s ideological battles as we strive to overcome in ours; and in that, there may still be some allyship possible.