Strange Bedfellows: Putin and Europe's Far Right

The courtship between Eastern European far-right parties and Russia has been going on for years, of course. In 2008, Eastern Europe’s far right supported the Russian war against Georgia. In May 2013, leaders of Jobbik, the Hungarian far-right party with dubious fascist origins, met with Russian Duma leaders and academics at Moscow State University. The neo-Nazi Bulgarian Ataka party has vocally supported Putin and Russian foreign policy. In 2012, Ataka’s leader, Volen Siderov, traveled to Moscow, reportedly at his own expense, to celebrate Putin’s sixtieth birthday and express admiration for the Russian president’s strong leadership. After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, Siderov threatened to withdraw his party’s support from the coalition government if it supported further sanctions against Russia.

Until very recently, Marine Le Pen, de facto spokesman for the European far right, was unknown in Russia, even after she hailed Russia’s president as a true patriot and defender of European values. But after Le Pen praised Russia’s actions in Ukraine, while Angela Merkel and other centrist European leaders were condemning it, Putin invited her to Moscow along with other representatives of the FN and other European far-right parties to observe the March referendum on Crimea’s accession to Russia. When she endorsed the Crimean referendum as legitimate, others on the European far right, including Austria’s FPÖ and Britain’s UKIP, followed suit. Russian media and bloggers, meanwhile, embraced Le Pen’s endorsement. One blogger started a “Merci Marine!” Twitter campaign. After the European parliamentary elections on May 25th, in which Le Pen’s party took the largest share of votes in France, Russia’s president returned the compliment by publicly praising the right-wing leader’s success.

The relationship between Russia and Western Europe’s far right may be a marriage of convenience, but it also shows signs of genuine affection. Closer ties with rising political parties in the EU will give Putin more leverage against NATO. For its part, the European right sees the Russian leader as a staunch defender of national sovereignty and conservative values who has challenged US influence and the idea of “Europe” in a way that mirrors their own convictions.

For the Euroskeptic far right, endorsing the Crimean referendum was a carom shot that allowed them to reframe their defiance of the European Union and its growing influence over national politics, but it was also an endorsement of Putin’s nationalism and social conservatism. Le Pen derided the EU as an “anti-democratic monster” while in the same breath exalting Putin for doing “what is good for Russia and the Russians.” Meanwhile, the leader of Britain’s UKIP, Nigel Farage, sees Putin as a “brilliant” strategist who can outwit the West. When asked which world leader he admired the most, Farage’s answer was unhesitating: Putin.

http://pakobserver.net/detailnews.asp?id=252184