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The Russian government influenced the right wing in the West for years, if not decades. Russia was presented as a beacon of civilisation against the gays, against anti-racists, against anything "soft", against feminism. Putin published a photo of him riding a horse half-naked and the right wingers of the West immediately sprung into action and photoshopped their hero from a horse onto a brown bear (multiple times).
This adoration went far and was much newer than the bit of far left sympathy for Russia that went back to the Cold War.
(Far) right wingers just love(d?) Putin et al, for they were bullying all the people that right wingers love to bully and talk shit about. Gays, minorities, women, effeminate men.
The grim-looking Russian minister of defence was immediately believed to be a much better choice than some Western female ministers of defence, as if whether there's something dangling on your chest or between the legs was an indicator for how well you can (and want to!) tame and steer the selfish beast that is the military bureaucracy.
Now how well did that work out?
I told you guys, that Russian minister of defence is no beacon of competence at all just because he can look grim, he's rather part of a corrupt clique.
Russia has a shitty and uncompetitive economy (1)(2) that's unable to invent, design, develop, bring to market many new manufactured products or services. All it does (kinda) well is exploit natural resources, living off substance. The widespread corruption allows oligarchs to crush innovative competition with help of corrupt bureaucracies and courts, and basically steal upcoming businesses by making "irresistible" offers. The entire economic system discourages what a modern prospering economy requires.
Now it's become obvious that Russia is an antagonist to the West and Western values. It doesn't just attack some brown people and commits war crimes against them (which would not have irritated far right wingers the slightest bit), it does so against blue-eyed, blonde Christian people who fight admirably for their freedom.
Putin wasn't the only authoritarian who easily captured the imagination and followership of Western (far) right wingers. The obvious lying moron, a fat lard who would rather order a golf cart than to walk 400 metres and who usually only talked gibberish, was able to pull of the very same thing. That fat lard was photoshopped to ride a lion, and a very popular photoshop added his head onto Rambo's 1980's bodybuilder body, in total defiance of the obvious obesity.
They followed him because he hated, insulted, denounced, bullied the very same people whom they hate; mostly brown foreigners, brown people at home, women who are not totally submissive to men. He also simplified the complicated world to the level of 10 to 12 year olds (which reflects his knowledge about economy, geography, foreign policy and how to hire competent people).
What about the far right wing's bashing of feminism, the bashing of effeminate men, the bashing of Western culture as too soft and worthless for the defence of the country in hard times?
It proved to be yet more bullshit, designed to make the right wingers feel better about themselves (superior to others, especially in their own society). That's a typical symptom of how people who don't feel successful or useful. Instead of putting in the effort to become so they choose to ensure that others are lower on the social ladder, and then they kick everyone who's below on the social ladder to keep them below.
An anecdote about this is how a father and little son watched a KKK march and the father told the son to ignore the white cowls and look at the shoes instead - and they were poor men's shoes. Those KKK marchers wanted to keep the negroes down because they were fearful that else they might end up being at the bottom of society.
Meanwhile, said (far) right wingers are whining about being expected to get two tiny needle jabs and to wear some surgical mask over mouth and nose when among foreigners to fight off a pandemic that killed 124k people in Germany despite mostly unheard-of countermeasures and would have killed hundreds of thousands more if left unchecked.
They're strong, manly protectors of their society ("wolves"/"sheep") in their minds, but in reality they're selfish, whining, bullying, unpatriotic, hateful and pitiful people. Not one actual solution to actual problems came from their corner of the German society. The whole German right wing (not just looking at the far right) didn't produce a single solution to any major problem during the last 27 years.
It's all whining and hating by the far right and the right wing as a whole only fighting against efforts to do something about problems such as the push for renewable energies. They're useless pussies.
They're failing to cope with a society that's not simplistic and static. A society that requires knowledge and intelligent thought to recognise actual problems and challenges and requires the same to find or recognise solutions.
S O
defence_and_freedom@gmx.de
P.S.: To be fair, Ukraine has a very racist and anti-gay society. I very much doubt that this is a necessary or important ingredient for the readiness to fight an invader, though.
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