State propaganda mischief and far-right parties in the US and Europe

Jo Becker has a useful story on international far-right networks and how they function in Sweden, The Global Machine Behind the Rise of Far-Right Nationalism New York Times 08/10/2019.

The story gives quite a bit of attention to an incident where a Russian television crew offered money to local immigrant youths to stage a disruption that they could then film. This is was in pursuit of amplifying a theme featuring in a propagandistic FOX News report to which Trump had given wider publicity:

First came a now-infamous comment by President Trump, suggesting that Sweden’s history of welcoming refugees was at the root of a violent attack in Rinkeby the previous evening, even though nothing had actually happened.

“You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden! Who would believe this? Sweden!” Mr. Trump told supporters at a rally on Feb. 18, 2017. “They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.”

There's always a strange problem with what could be called internationalist nationalism. If a party is pursuing a narrow nationalist, ethnopopulist program, that is not obviously consistent with a sense of international solidarity.

But this is nothing new. The fascist movements on the 1920s and 1930s in Europe and during the war had considerable interactions and mutually reinforced one another in various ways. Backing the internal enemy of a country whose government is considered hostile is hardly a new development in politics and statecraft. And as Americans should be learning from our many regime change operations, the results may actually damage rather than enhance the policy objectives being pursued.

It's also important to remember that far-right parties have made good use of the European Parliament and elections for it to promote their message. They have an institutional incentive to pursue alliances with each other at the European Parliament level, just like the pro-democracy and pro-EU parties. That in spite of some directly competing demands, like the Austrian FPÖ's (Freedom Party's) demands on the northern Italian area known as South Tyrol.

The article also shows how blurry the lines can be between state-directed propaganda operations, "normal" national politics, and the interaction of ideas among various components of civil society. An illegal campaign financial contribution is a discrete act that can be tracked and against which defensive and punitive measures can be taken. But whether propaganda and disinformation operations are effective in a given situation does depend largely on how resilient the target groups are responding to it. That is, how good the newspapers are, how good news consumers are in applying critical thought to what they hear, the leadership and framework provided by political parties and civil society groups.

A false or misleading report can set off reactions in the short run that have concrete effects on policy and politics. Although assessing what those is also a matter of critical judgment, although occasionally the effect of a particular story can also be measured through political polls.

When it comes to far-right demagoguery, "haters gonna hate." So there will be politicians attempting it for a long time to come. But effectively countering it without making unnecessary concessions to it is something centrist and even left parties in the US and Europe seem to be having a hard time mastering. The situation in the EU is compounded by the long-standing Dublin Regulation (legal text here), which in practice places most of the burden on processing refugees on EU members like Italy and Greece and allows some of the richest countries like Germany, Austria, and France to avoid proportional burden-sharing. And it gives centrist and left parties the option of being anti-immigrant but still posturing as "good Europeans" because they are "only" demanding the proper enforcement of the Dublin Regulation. A model of solidarity it's not.

Becker's article gives a lot of attention to Russian operations. But it's worth remembering that for all the common features of Putin's governance and his United Russia party to far-right groups in Europe and the US, there's little reason to believe Russia is pursuing an ideological agenda. It's an obvious power-balancing option for Russia to weaken the unity of NATO and the EU. Political chaos and incompetence in EU countries can serve those goals as well or better than having an overtly pro-Russian government. And not all the EU far-right parties are as pro-Russian/pro-Putin as those in Austria, Italy, and France. Viktor Orbán's Russia-friendly position doesn't make the anti-Russian Polish rightists happy, for instance.

Mark Galeotti writes of Putin's various propaganda efforts (Russian Political War, 2019):

To some, this multi- vectored challenge represents an extraordinarily complex and disciplined campaign, geopolitics as three- dimensional chess. And yet, it is clear that many, even most, individual initiatives are largely unconnected, often opportunistic, their moves shaped by local conditions, concerns and considerations. They connect only sometimes, and frequently clumsily. There appears to be no detailed masterplan, but rather a broad strategy of weakening the European Union (EU) and NATO, distancing Europe and the United States from each other, and generally creating a political and cultural environment more conducive for Moscow and its interests. [my emphasis]

A final comment. Becker's report writes about, "Alexander Dugin, an ultranationalist Russian philosopher who has been called 'Putin’s Rasputin'.” Dugin is often referred to as a favorite ideologist of Putin's. But here also, it's misleading to assume that Putin is following some "Duginist" ideology. But, as Galeotti observes, "Outspoken ‘Eurasianist’ Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin has ... at times been elevated to a virtual ideological spokesman of the state, then excluded when convenient." But Dugin does have important visibility in the European far right. Fabian Schmid in Russischer Neofaschist Dugin vor Akademikerball in Wien Der Standard 01/18/2018,  Dugin is considered to be a leading thinker of the so-caled Eurasian movement which postulates a "multi-polar world" and points to the alledgly "decadent West".
(my translation)
For Identitarians, a "mutipolar world" refers to the concept of having "pure" ethnostates. It's not any kind of libertarian multiculturalism, it's just the opposite.