The same playbook Russia is using to weaken the EU: Frighten people with xenophobia to make them act against their own interests.
Yup, it is rightwing political groups that are most likely to align ideologically and politically with russia, thus turning to them in times of heightened xenophobia makes no sense on any level, no matter how bigoted since by far the greatest threat to European stability is russia.
What I’d be interested in, is how hard would it be for the right wing/extremist/populist groups if russia would collapse and not be there, supporting any of this any longer. Would it just continue because those claims are already around? Or would they lose ground?
Interesting question.
Imho the problem is in the meantime it’s no longer only Russia but also the US and China who use right wing populism to destabilize the EU as exonomic and social competing system. If Russia should fall the tec bros and China will still finance disinformation campaigns.
Example of China using this?
At the same time Russia has to import Indians by the plane load and drop working ages to 12.
Russia is dead, they just wont go without making everything worse for everyone.
Yeah it works everywhere. Because the counterbalance is competent news media and
The counterbalance is showing up in solidarity with immigrants in every way you can, immigrants must be seen as part of the never ending project of building up the unique strengths of a country rather than a dilution of it.
With diversity comes power, adaptiveness and fluidity of response to new challenges to a society, without immigrants things become brittle and break with sharp edges like glass.
What are they doing at a football game instead of fighting in the war? These Russian assets are all the same.
In English-language online spaces, some commentators known for peddling anti-Ukrainian content presented the rise of anti-immigrant sentiments not as a result of Russian disinformation, but of Ukraine’s supposedly inherent far-right tendencies — leaning into yet another Russian narrative.
The far-right tendencies aren’t inherent, but the far right dominates street politics, has hundreds of thousands of “normie” followers, is getting help from Reuters et all uncritically accepting their image as “senior commanders” of “respected units”, and threats and attacks on their opponents have become a continuous reality. Damn, this media is like gaslighting me. I’m not anti-Ukrainian, I’m Ukrainian. I just ask people to recognize a threat and do something about it, at least mention it by name and not pretend it isn’t there.
The antidote that the left and center have dangerously forgotten to emphasize is that fascists suck at war, they are obsessed with the imagery of violence without desiring to know how to conduct war as a profession.
This is the ultimate rhetorical rejection of fascism since fascism thrives under (fabricated and desperately hyperbolic) fears of some outside violent force… and yet even in that moment when people’s brains are most operating from a “fight or flight” mindset fascism still fails to give people what it promises in the drug of its propaganda.
In all of the cultural contexts I have experienced there is an implicit assumption that rightwing people and mentalities are more realistic about violence and better suited to understanding war. Think of the stereotype of a strong conservative man and likely you will think of something similar to what you kneejerk think of as a grizzled military general or a cowboy… but these mentalities are catastrophically suited to war since they are again obsessed with the aesthetics of war and violence and how it makes them feel to dress up in it, not the actual study of war as an academic and professional pursuit. Look no further than Pete Hegseth for Exhibit A.
You can temporarily train fascists how to conduct war intelligently, but they will always forget what you teach them in favor of fighting in a way that more closely aligns with their fascist obsession with strength and domination. Similarly you can have an army of veteran soldiers that is commanded by a fascist organization in a way that makes the experience of the veterans meaningless as they are discarded in futile military operations that are done to perform strength and force rather than win battles.
People must get this through their heads, we don’t need rightwing extremists to teach us how to kill just because they are obsessed with the imagery of killing.
