How Putin Won French Conservatives

Last month, a delegation of 10 French members of parliament, mainly from the center-right main opposition party Les Républicains visited Russia and Crimea in a trip destined to “understand how the population really lives” and fight “disinformation from Western media.” The visit was organized, and apparently funded, by the “Russian Foundation for Peace,” an organization headed by Leonid Slutsky, a Duma member of the ultra-nationalist LDPR, Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s party. Slutsky, who has been sanctioned by the E.U. and U.S., praised the visit as “the largest delegation of Western politicians and parliamentarians since the “Crimean Spring.”

During the trip, MPs defended the Crimea annexation, claiming its inhabitants were “happy to be back into Russia” and “relieved not to experience the war.” An image of a senator buying in Moscow a T-shirt saying “Obama, you’re a douchebag” in Cyrillic added ridicule and insult to the debate.

Russia’s outreach to right-wing movements all over Europe has been well reported. In France, Marine le Pen’s National Front has received a $11.7 million loan from a Russian bank, as an apparent reward for her far-right party’s support of Russian stances in the Ukrainian conflict. But is striking to see pro-Putin sentiment spreading in such spectacular fashion in a mainstream West European center-right party.

In fact, support for Putin has become part of an ideological package of a part of the French conservative right, embodied by the best-selling book The French Suicide by right-wing editorialist Eric Zemmour. Tapping into a mood of national angst and obsession with decline, Zemmour describes a country whose elites have fallen to liberalism, American pop culture, and multiculturalism, allowing immigrants, especially Muslims, to develop their own culture in impunity. Zemmour can in no way claim to be a foreign policy expert. Yet, he “admires” Putin. In a debate with May 68 leader turned Green politician Daniel Cohn Bendit, Zemmour went further, saying he’d rather be led by Putin than Cohn Bendit.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/18/the-inevitable-putin-le-pen-alliance-is-so-on.html