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Both in this column and in a book that Clemente Rodríguez and the undersigned have just published (“Violent Times: Russia, Ukraine, China, USA and the new world disorder”), I argue that radical right-wing parties are not natural allies with each other. They seem so because they share enemies (what they call “liberal globalism”, immigrants, the left and Islam).
But the fact that ethnic nationalism is the fundamental core of their ideology has two implications: on the one hand, what they consider to be the interest of their own nation comes before any form of international solidarity. For this reason, despite their ideological affinities, Viktor Orban and Matteo Salvini clashed when the need to resettle immigrants arriving in Italy in countries such as Hungary was debated in the European Union. On the other hand, the usual enemy of a nationalism is usually another nationalism. And, for the Russian and Ukrainian radical right, theirs is also an irredentist nationalism. That is, they are nationalisms that are perceived as victims of the machinations of powerful rivals: Russia, in the case of Ukrainian ethnic nationalism; the West, in the case of Russian ethnic nationalism. For this reason, they tend to seek historical compensation at the expense of those rivals.
This comes about because, in NATO countries, the radical right (and, to a lesser extent, also the radical left) is increasingly opposed to sending aid to Ukraine. The first public symptom was demonstrations in the Czech Republic that, among other things, were opposed to sending more aid to Ukraine under the slogan “Czech Republic First” (inspired by Donald Trump’s “America First”). In turn, Trump does the same by declaring that “Democrats are sending another $40 billion in aid to Ukraine, while some American parents struggle to feed their children.” In other words, the argument is that the resources sent to Ukraine should go to the citizens of the country itself. An argument capable of arousing support in countries that are not only going through a recession, but also suffer (partly due to the war itself) the highest inflation in four decades.
This is a far more persuasive argument than the ones Trump used to make before the war, or the one Silvio Berlusconi still makes in private today. Days before the invasion, Trump maintained that Putin was “a genius”, that he had “captured a country in exchange for two dollars in sanctions”. For his part, even today Berlusconi supports Putin, as is made clear by recordings of a meeting with parliamentarians from his party that were leaked to the press (and in which, paradoxically, he maintains that if his opinion were leaked to the press “it would be a disaster”).
In the case of Trump, in turn, his position reflects the changes that are taking place among Republican voters. Thus, for example, while in a March survey only 10% of those who identified themselves as Republicans believed that their country was doing “too much” to support Ukraine, in October that proportion reached 29%. Already in a survey last July, 43% of Republicans were against sending more money to Ukraine.
That is, it is likely that you are operating the following sequence. On the one hand, the war worsens the problems of low growth and inflation that were already under way, and in turn, those problems contribute to the electoral growth of the radical right (for example, in Sweden, Italy and, soon, in the United States). ). On the other hand, a growing influence of the radical right in political decisions would make support among NATO countries for Ukraine tend to decline over time.
Source: Elcomercio
I, Ronald Payne, am a journalist and author who dedicated his life to telling the stories that need to be said. I have over 7 years of experience as a reporter and editor, covering everything from politics to business to crime.
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