Putin and the Rise of the Right

I recently read an article by Robert Kaplan on the shift to the right in Europe as reflected in the European Parliament elections. 

I won't go into full detail but essentially he was proposing that the fears and distaste for the Far Right/Totalitarian Regimes such as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and Franco had done much to discredit any attempts to emulate them in Europe, but that we were entering into a new phase in Europe which was no longer hampered by the horrors of WW II combined with the perception that the current political elites were failing their constituents.

From the end of World War II Western Europe was basically run by centrist governments, some left leaning and some right leaning but never venturing to far in either direction.

The politics of the centre led to the rise of the EU and its' evolution from a trade bloc towards a financial and political union.  Parallel to this development was the virtual collapse of the ethnocentric nationalist right wing parties as well as the far left "Stalinist" parties. 

Then the financial crisis hit.  And with it came the rise of populist parties promising a return to a past which was never as rosy as they portrayed and ignoring the fact that this nostalgia for the past was incompatible with the present and certainly not a viable vision of the future given the state of Europe today.

Despite that the ethnocentric nationalist propaganda found fertile ground amongst ethnically white populations which allowed themselves to be convinced that all their problems were caused by an influx of immigrants, primarily non-white, who were "taking our jobs, our social services, our health care and were responsible for all crime".

Add to that mix the increase in Muslim immigrants and suddenly you find that these right wing parties are bizarrely aligned to Russia in general and Putin specifically whom they perceive to be the protector of the ethnic Russians and even more importantly is aggressively anti-Muslim.

So a supposedly anti-fascist Mr Putin who conjured up a fascist West once again trying to oppress Holy Mother Russia as evidenced in the Ukraine finds himself being an icon for the truly fascist right wing parties of Western Europe.

In a similarly strange twist the fiercely anti-Gay Mr Putin has become an icon for the Gay community.

Politics does make for strange bedfellows.