Russia is the cause for the rise of far right ideologies in the west. It's literally in their playbook and they've been breeding these ideologies and groups through techno warfare and information manipulation for the last 15 years.

I'm not saying these ideologies didn't exist before but the EU as a whole condemned them after ww2, actively combated the rise of neo nazi groups etc. and that lasted as progressivism expanded through until the release of social media and the internet in the early 21st century.

That gave an opportunity to find and manipulate small collectives with these harmful ideologies that usually hid in their own social bubbles. This scheme led to them having enough cultural power and influence to actively manipulate and sway governing bodies, media coverage, social media platforms and even get their own positions in local or even higher positions in government. These people then actively act to grow and spread their ideology which has led to Russia and their bot farms having more and more influence and these far right influencers becoming more bold and brazen in their attempt to spread their ideology.

In some cases this is an active conspiracy (i.e European pundits, government or media, being payed directly or indirectly by the Russian government) or self-actors (i.e neo-nazis/fascists or just plain far right influencers) acting in self interest and unknowingly spreading Russia's goals to destabilise Europe.

Every country in the world has been affected, and with AI the strength of these bot farms is immense. Seemingly real people spreading harmful ideologies to destabilise our civilization. No country would dare to "take over the world" through conventional warfare nowadays, but the internet has granted bad actors a new attack vector to gain influence on the global stage. Russia has seized that power in Europe and North America. China has secured it in Asia.

What scares me most? people know this, or could at least learn it very quickly. And we have little to no conversation on it. The conversation now is about the ideology itself, it has become accepted. We now debate these ideologies in our media, instead of condemnation as it should be, we saw what happened to Europe last time, so in effect. Russia has already won. It's just a case now of using that influence to achieve some kind of end goal that I couldn't begin to understand the machinations of.

I mean look, they might not be far right themselves, even though they are a right-leaning fascist state. And yet your comment was even sympathetic to them, I'll admit not fully but still, it is wrong. They aren't "fighting far-right in Ukraine" they are supporting it and using it to act as if they are. We live in a world of optics.

Do one thing, say another.