Russia, and the Global Far-Right Power Grab (in progress)
An infocomic
It's a somewhat arbitrary starting point that'll make sense in a moment:
We have two basic (rather steep) evidentiary burdens to establish in order to explain what's going on:
1. A pattern of far-right power grabs
2. It involves Russia
Becker found both in 2019 in Sweden.
Becker's sources map out an "ecosystem" of far-right, low-quality news websites, some of which were created by Sweden Democrats.
Portions of that website trace back to ad revenue from a strangely far-right auto parts retailer with Russian owners.
This is a recurrent pattern.
The history of active measures is rife with such instances; ideological insensitivity is a critical moving part, in my opinion.
Russia doesn't necessarily agree with the ideologies it amplifies - it hasn't been backing rightist causes for decades because it agrees with them.
@jobeckerhrw @RidT @brooklynmarie It's a more complex question to look at the far-right and its geopolitical/eschatological (really both) ambitions.
The Republican Party as we know it is the result of a series of historical "flips". The context of its relationship with Russia emerges from one such flip: this.
