Vladimir Putin has challenged liberals to defend liberalism. Liberalism is “obsolete”, Putin stated in an interview this weekend, before his arrival at the G20 in Osaka. Conflating immigration with crime, he insisted that “every crime must have its punishment”. No doubt relishing his timing with respect to Stonewall as much as the G20, he spoke of “core populations” who merited the state’s support. Sexual minorities, by contrast, deserve little more than provisional tolerance of their behaviour. Putin applauded national populists in countries across the liberal democratic west. He supported their upending of the rules-based liberal international order and its domestic counterpart of multicultural national societies. Putin’s rant is a perfect illustration of contemporary anti-liberalism…

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