We’ve already noted that Ilana Mercer is among the WorldNetDaily columnists who have embraced Russian disinformation in the form of allegations that the U.S. is operating biolabs in Ukraine. That’s not the only time she has taken Russia’s side against the U.S. in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Mercer suggested in her March 3 column that it was “reasonable” for Russia to invade Ukraine because of its “security concerns”:
America is still the undisputed leader in attacking sovereign nations and killing their kids. Russia’s foreign meddling since the early 1990s is insignificant by comparison.
[…]We were warned. Surround Russia with NATO members, refuse to negotiate in good faith and Putin will go to war. Yet, the stance on both sides of the Atlantic has been dismissive, even contemptuous, of Putin’s reasonable, long-standing security concerns.
Mercer linked to a version of her Jan. 27 column, in which she insisted that “‘the struggle for Ukraine’ is a chapter in a series of U.S. orchestrated provocations, which began with the expansion of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) eastward to abut Russia’s borders” and declared that “Russia finds itself between Scylla and Charybdis – allow a buildup on its border, or act, for it has legitimate security concerns.”
Mercer then argued that Ukraine should simply have capitulated to Russia’s demands:
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky – who is the toast of the town simply because he did not skedaddle from the mess in which he mired his country – to this ass with ears goes a special award for recklessness. Not fleeing a situation largely of your making does not a hero make. Curiously, we Americans have offered Zelensky the coward’s way out, when we ought to have forced him to sit down with his foes.
[…]Ukrainians, for their part, are tireless and wily lobbyists in Washington, way more cunning than their American counterparts. For all intents and purposes, Zelensky, head of the corrupt American client statelet that is Ukraine, had tethered the fate of his country to America, NATO and the EU, constantly trying to bend these foolish and feckless entities to his will – too much of a clown to look out for his countrymen’s safety, rather than his own popularity in the West.
In her March 24 column, Mercer dismissed Zelensky as a “failed leader” because he didn’t capituate to Russia to stop its invasion:
To normies, a leader who doesn’t plead for the lives of his people is a failed leader. Diplomacy, negotiations, a cease-fire: that’s the nomenclature clear-thinking people ought to wish instinctively to hear when they see the immiseration of Ukrainians and their cities. To my knowledge, not before the war and not now has Zelensky initiated, or partaken in, or been urged to pursue serious, high-level talks with Putin.
And while there is some indication that Zelensky might be inching closer to acceding “neutrality for Kyiv and security guarantees for Moscow,” publicly, Zelensky has done nothing but snarl his contempt for Russia, roaring at the Kremlin to “hold peace talks now or suffer for generations.” This is not diplomacy, but yet more political posturing and provocation. (But then Zelensky, an actor, could be prepping to appear before the central, universal seat of asininity: Hollywood’s Oscars.)
The Hebrew Testament (though “Old,” it’s never out-of-date) is bedecked with examples of leaders pleading, even bargaining, for the lives of the Stiff-Necked People. Abraham haggled ingeniously with The Almighty over Sodom and Gomorrah. Queen Esther petitioned mighty King Xerxes (Ahasuerus) on behalf of Persian Jews, and Moses did the same for his enslaved people before Pharaoh. Another Hebrew has written that “he who saves you from war is better than he who sends you to war.” That’s what real leadership is about – uphold and fight for the people’s natural right to live peacefully.
By these reasonable and rational criteria, Zelensky and Biden are failed leaders for doing nothing but bait and goad the Russian Bear.
Mercer continued to lament poor Russia in her April 7 column:
All nations now are expected to have found religion on Ukraine. As I pointed out at the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, from COVID submission, we the zombie subjects of the new, global order – for citizens we are not – were directed to shuffle along, shipshape, into a new compliance, this time over Ukraine.
In other words, agree with the U.S.’s Disneyfied, angels-and-demons foreign policy, which has now thoroughly infected the world, or face the consequences.
And, unless Russia is made over in the cloying, sloganeering, self-righteously woke image of America – it will not be allowed to stand. Not in its current iteration. That’s the message transmitted by the Biden administration, echoed by the Republican Party.
After smearing Zelensky as a “puppet President,” Mercer cheered how Ukranian refugees are largely stayingin countries of similar ethnic makeup:
From the elephantine impact of the United States around the world, to the elephant in the proverbial room: Before our very eyes we see a peaceful, almost-seamless integration of millions-upon-millions of Ukrainian refugees into Poland, predominantly, as well as into surrounding countries such as Romania, Slovakia and Hungary. How so? No one will say what is so plain to see.
Those fleeing and those welcoming them with open arms are all almost exclusively of the same Slavic European racial groups, sharing similar habits, habitat and history. It’s both natural and easy to welcome people so like you into your midst. For their part, grateful Ukrainians are already begging their benefactors not for handouts but for … jobs. Clearly, in homogeneous, smaller societies, the trust quotient and fellow feeling among people is high.
“Social capital” is how social scientist Robert Putnam termed this. Social connectedness, as in the “networks of organized reciprocity and civic solidarity,” is high in these similar, smaller societies. If you doubt this statement of reality, just imagine the uproar that would have ensued if 3 million Syrian and Libyan refugees were preparing to flood Poland.
As befits someone who laments the end of apartheid, Mercer is not a big fan of swarhy, dark-skinned people hanging out with her fellow white Christians.
Mercer framed her May 5 column around a writer named Boyd Cathey — a far-right activist who helped racists take over the Sons of Confederate Veterans — who is defending Putin as a traditionalist:
Vladimir Putin, argues Dr. Cathey, has rejected the West’s culturally, racially and sexually decadent ways. For this reason, the Russian president has been targeted by the United States for an excruciatingly slow demise. Led by the U.S., the West is destined to bleed Russia dry, the eventual outcome being “regime change” in Moscow (yet another “color revolution”).
A trickier question for those of us on the Old Right is this: Putin is a Russian patriot. This, in-depth interviews with the Russian president amply evince. He adores and is deeply acquainted with the nation’s “ancient faith,” its history and traditions. But could it be that we of the Old Russell Kirk Right, nostalgic for the very same things absent in our own societies, are romanticizing the Russian people? This writer shares Dr. Cathey’s love of Tsarist Russia’s great culture before communism.[…]
Finally, although it is possible to justify Putin’s war with reference to the more statist scholastic Just War Theory – the libertarian axiom of non-aggression won’t permit such justification. Putin’s war in Ukraine is a war for which there are plenty of reasons, all of them vindicating Russia; Russia is in the right! Reasons for war, however, are not the same as justification for war. A war of aggression is seldom justified.
Yes, Mercer really thinks that Russia is perfectly justified in trying to destroy Ukraine. It’s telling that of thes columns, her other ConWeb outlet, CNSNews.com, has published only the April 7 column.