Is Putin trying to prop up Europe's Far-Right ?

[Simfan34]

The irony!

[Simfan34]

The "degenerate, decadent Western society" tactic is slightly amusing and worrying at the same time- as I've seen a few people (and think highly of) I know express a degree of agreement with it. It's amusing in that while the Russians are now peddling right-wing nonsense when they spent most of the last century peddling left-wing nonsense, the general theme of the "degenerate, decadent Western society" is still there, but it's now the "degenerate, decadent Western immoral society" where it used to be the "degenerate, decadent Western bourgeois society". Or so is my impression of things, I don't know, I'm not an expert.

Something like this came up in a lecture of mine the other day, actually, I think. While "Putinism" might not energise university students or left-wing intellectuals the way Marxism did, it allows for things like Russia-I.R. Iran relations to exist, whereas they would have been impossible under the Soviet Union considering the Islamic Republic's inherent fear and intolerance for communism. It allows them to make friends they couldn't have before.

I'm curious to see how this develops, if Putin begins to cast himself as a defender of "the real Europe", "a Europe of Europeans, of traditions, of values, etc". That would be interesting. I would say that none of them would manage to win an election, but we already have Orban, don't we? I mean, the Hungarians, of all people. You'd think they'd be the last to entertain this sort of thing.

[Simfan34]

The only thing I know for (quite) sure is that Front National has had a "loan" from the Russian government, right?

There is something very ironic about this all.

[Simfan34]

He's funding parts of the far right but if we are to be fair he also strangely attracts sympathies from the far left for shady reasons. Look at Corbyn's advisor Seamus Milne - a guy who moderated RT debate with Putin and wrote puff pieces about him for the Guardian. The same goes for George Galloway, or parts of the French sovereign Left, Tsipras threatening to prostitute himself to Putin, etc. That the far right in Europe is pro-Putinist is no surprise - he is their only source of funding and their only potential political and gepolitical ally in the modern world. But the communists? Weird.

Putin's objectives as such have to be reinterpreted. I think he wants to demonstrate that democracy doesn't work, or more precisely that the paradox between liberalism and democracy that the West has towed for the good part of 3 centuries now will unfold. He therefore supports any rank and file populist in the hope of destabilising Europe. 

That doesn't seem surprising at all. Putin's Russia simultaneously postures as a conservative state acting in defence of Western civilisation against decadent liberalism and the spiritual (and diplomatic) inheritor of the Soviet Union's legacy, standing against "Western imperialism" and "fascism".

[Simfan34]

I'm curious to see how this develops, if PutinTrump begins to cast himself as a defender of "the real Europe", "a Europe of Europeans, of traditions, of values, etc". That would be interesting. I would say that none of them would manage to win an election, but we already have Orban, don't we? I mean, the Hungarians, of all people. You'd think they'd be the last to entertain this sort of thing.

Lol

European Civilisation? Trump has the taste of a newly wealthy Chinese mining magnate, not a potential standard-bearer of three millennia of Western Civilisation.

[Simfan34]

That's kind of offensive to Chinese mining magnates.

Fair point. The next step down would have been "Iranian crony import-export tycoon".