Over 100 years ago, Russia became core of USSR and the pioneer of international struggle for workers’ liberation, poverty lifting, enlightenment, scientific progress and propagation of socialism and communism.
Now – in my humble and maybe biased by liberal propaganda view – Russia is one of the most reactionary, conservative, backward-looking, clerical country. Please excuse me posting some liberal, imperialist shit here, but seems that Kremlin officially admits going far-right: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/kremlin-finally-puts-together-ideology
Speaking locally, there seems to be evidence that Polish far-right party PiS (Law and Justice) is backed by Kremlin as well as the extremely influential priest, Tadeusz Rydzyk, founder and director of the ultra-catholic, conservative Radio Maryja station has/had ties with Polish and Russian security services before the end of People’s Republic of Poland and USSR (sic!). I have some generally available videos, but in Polish, sadly.
Could you tell me how far this is true? If so, what purpose had the late communist states and today’s Russia in spreading far-right propaganda? WTF went wrong?
It looks like this, I am just afraid that when the times will go hard, then Russia will turn fully into nationalism, chauvinism, etc.
Superficially, it seems like this. But I am somewhat suspicious. The government of PiS seemed extremely russophobic (what spy says he likes the country of the employer?) but still they imported enormous amount of fuels from Russia, e.g.: https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/polish-senator-russian-coal-still-flowing-into-poland/ Undoubtedly, the support for Ukraine was enormous, but at some point abruptly stopped. Maybe they were pushed by US at some point to support or they wanted to balance between these two powers, like Orban. When they sold Lotos, a big oil company, they bought petrol stations in Hungary, and the stations were literally Lukoil, and they use Russian oil to be sold there. They are also other circumstantial evidences of ties between Russia and PiS: https://www.veridica.ro/en/acf/the-russian-connection-in-poland
Like you said, all this matter is nuanced, and additionally obscured by propaganda from all sides. I just feel confused, so oversimplifications are possible.
The same could be said of any Euro country, the only difference being that unlike the Germans and other “better” Europeans who fully toed the anti-Russia line (and then knowingly bought their Russian fuels through middlemen like India) Poland acted with some sense of reality and business sense, because they weren’t fully economically suicidal.
The whole “Russia is to blame for all right-wing politics in the west” nonsense is absolutely, 100% tired and at least 99% stinking horseshit if you ask me. Whatever contribution Russia has given is just a drop of water the ocean compared to the already historically massive, well-funded, and deeply engaged right-wing political movements of the US and other Anglophone nations, of western and southern Europe, and of eastern Europe (much of whose right-wing parties are vehemently Russophobic in ways nearing the derangement of Ukraine). And similarly, it is but a drop of water in the ocean compared to the US’ meddling to promote these ideologies, both in recent years, and for many decades prior, and even well before the Soviets collapsed.
Does Russia have fun pouring a little fuel on the fire in the west? Probably (mainly in the recent decade if so), but the impact is miniscule compared to what already existed, and compared to the extensive and interconnected support, by various different western countries, NGOs, and corporations (many of them even liberals- for instance, Victor Orban is literally one of the graduates of a Soros scholarship), to cook up the most repugnant chuds. That hardly makes them an “international exporter of fascism” or anything (I’d argue they’re the opposite by and large, though that is more due to circumstance than anything else) and- while I don’t quite condone it, I can hardly blame them for doing so, for shits and giggles if nothing else- one lone Russian amidst a sea of western participants at the NRA, or mingling with the GOP, PiS, AFD, or what-have-you, and you have liberal tantrums and accusations aplenty, hell, even if Russia did nothing, the accusation of “Russian interference” (and Chinese) would be paraded around as part of the western “liberal/so-called-left’s” series of increasingly deranged reichstag fires.
Well, I admit that – for example – the far-right propaganda of Radio Maryja in Poland, backed by Russia or not, fall in a fertile ground – racism, antisemitism, clericalism were there since a long time before. One thing that I am «angry» on the People’s Republic of Poland is that they not eradicate religion and clericalism from Poland, as did the communist government in Czechoslovakia.