Conservative levels brutal comparison between J.D. Vance and 'Free Mumia' cranks

Since taking office, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) has taken a consistent stance of opposition against military aid to Ukraine — and according to conservative-leaning analyst Cathy Young writing for The Bulwark, he has been spewing Russian propaganda that could have come straight from the Kremlin in service of that position.

In one of the most recent examples of this, Young wrote, Vance defended Tucker Carlson's interview with despotic Russian leader Vladimir Putin, in a tweet that read, "In 2021 the Putin regime arrested independent journalist Duglas Makki for making memes in the run up to an election. Just a flagrant violation of human rights. Tucker shamefully refused to ask Putin about it. I'm sure real journalists would ask about something like that."

This is a reference to Douglass Mackey, a far-right commentator in the U.S. who was sentenced to seven months in prison for an illegal scheme to trick Black and Latino voters into not voting. In so doing, he likened this to Putin summarily jailing and killing political dissidents.

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"Why does Vance know or care about Mackey?" wrote Young. "Because he’s a cause célèbre on the right.The narrative pushed by Carlson, erstwhile presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, and many others is that Mackey’s prosecution was not only a dangerous assault on free speech but an outrageous demonstration of double standards."

"To see how despicable the moral equivalency is," Young continued, "one need only look at some of the real cases of people persecuted and imprisoned in Russia for speech critical of the war against Ukraine or of the Putin regime."

For example, journalist Maria Ponomarenko was sentenced to six and a half years for simply saying that the Russian strike on the Mariupol Drama Theater killed innocent children. Magazine editor Boris Kagarlitsky got a five-year terrorism sentence for pointing out that the Ukrainian strike on the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Russia to Crimea was a legitimate military target.

"Back in the late Cold War, obnoxious leftists used to respond to critiques of the Soviet regime and its gulag with claims that the United States, too, had 'political prisoners' — offering as examples the likes of Leonard Peltier, the Native American activist serving a life sentence for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, the black activist and journalist sentenced to life without parole for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer," wrote Young. "But now we have seen a stunning role reversal: It’s the MAGA right, including a sitting senator, that excuses and defends the Kremlin’s political repressions by trotting out faux 'political prisoners' in America, be it Mackey or the January 6th rioters. The America-hating shoe is solidly on the other foot."

Read the full piece here.