Putin is New Joh Bjelke-Petersen

 

A lot of people like to speculate about what Putin is like or what he tries to achieve with his war in Ukraine. Typical descriptions cast him as some kind of mysterious autocrat who believes in some Duginist drivel about Russia's exceptional path or so on.

However, they all fall short of getting this enigmatic dictator of Russia. That is because they look for answers in the wrong places. 

Western politician, most similar to Putin is Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a long-time former Premier of Queensland.

Sure, Putin occasionally says something to make people think this way, but it all is nothing more than a ruse to disguise what he really is. In reality Putin and his cronies are corruptioners who plunder Russian public money and divert these funds to their secret bank accounts in offshore tax heavens.

The only thing Putin really care about is to avoid answering in court incomputable questions about millions of cash in bags, that friends ostensively left. Or about that palace he built using this money, that Navalniy made a video about.

The only reason Putin started war in Ukraine is to distract the public from the palace issue. If anything, Putin wants to avoid answering for his palace in court.

However, there are more parallels between these two politicians than immediately apparent. Both Putin and Joh have very similar style of authoritarianism, similar base of support and similar approach to politics.

Joh was and Putin is rather popular with right wing segment of the population. Some of these keep justifying Joh even nowadays. 

Both Joh and Putin are right wing populists who use conservative, traditional and less educated segments of population as their base. Both have bitter enemies among the more progressive and educated segments of population. Both used riot police to suppress protests from these people.

Both are called strongman, both build reputation of law-and-order politicians who oppose various "dangerous radicals". 

As I mentioned before, both run institutional corruption. 

Joh used clever electoral tricks that border on fraud to rid himself of partnership with Liberal Party and tighten his grip on power.

Putin's tampering with elections and spoiler parties virtually eliminated all effective political competition in Russia.

Joh wanted to control media and flow of information to prevent people from learning the truth. The truth about his bags of cash eventually led to his downfall.

Putin actually realized Joh's dream and took control of all sources of information in Russia.

It is hard to tell if Putin is actually aware of Joh or figured his own way completely on his own. However, what is rather clear is that parallels between these two leaders are very extensive. Because of that in order to understand Putin one should study Joh Bjelke-Petersen.