Liberalism is multifaceted & attractive, but ‘it’s eating itself,’ says Russian president

Though it’s attractive in general, liberalism has overreached on multiple issues, such as immigration, and is now “eating itself,” Vladimir Putin said, just days after he’d suggested that the ideology has failed Western societies.

Liberalism still remains “multifaceted” and there’s no need to be arguing about its overall attractiveness, the Russian president told reporters on Saturday, during a final press conference at the G20 summit in Japan. In the meantime, the philosophy has its own setbacks, he pointed out.

The liberal ideal has started to eat itself

In Putin’s view, liberal approaches to immigration is a real problem. “In some European countries, parents are told that girls should not wear skirts at schools,” he asserted, adding that “people are living in their own country ... why has it come to that?”

His latest remarks summed up what he’d told the Financial Times in a much-talked-about interview this week. Speaking to FT’s Lionel Barber and Henry Foy, he called liberalism “obsolete” and said it has now come into conflict “with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”

However, it does not mean that liberal ideals – just like any others – should be outlawed or suppressed, Putin stressed. Even if it appears to have failed, it “has the right to exist and it should even be supported in some domains.”

The President happened to be discussing the FT interview with some of his counterparts at the G20 summit in Osaka.

“Some colleagues, I don’t want to call them by name, talked about this with me,” Putin recalled, saying that, while some leaders were unappreciative of his views, others “supported them in general.”

Putin doesn’t reject liberalism as such, even if he’s critical about aspects of it, the Kremlin spokesman said. He remains “close to the liberal ideal,” but at the same time he opposes it being aggressively instilled on others.

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