Anton Shekhovtsov

To promote their message about the decadent West, the Russian media have engaged with activists and politicians from the fringes of socio-political life in the West, namely the far right, far left, conspiracy theorists and isolationists who would be ideologically inclined to corroborate Moscow’s line of argument. In the course of time, the Russian media also established structural relations with the EU-based pro-Russian media managed by far right activists, and this article discusses these relations with a special focus on France, Italy and Slovakia.

The rise of the new right must be seen as a reaction to the growth of post-material and cosmopolitan attitudes since the Second World War. The washed up catch-all parties and post-modernism have left an ideological vacuum that has been infiltrated by right-wing extremist parties. Yet it is not they that primarily profit from the present crisis of the EU but national conservative politicians such as Orbán or Kacýnski.

The article discusses two far right movements that took part in the Ukrainian revolution in 2014. The author argues that, although the fact of the involvement of the far right in the revolution cannot be denied, the Russian media deliberately exaggerated this involvement to discredit the opposition to former President Viktor Yanukovych. Thus, the articles provides a more nuanced picture of the Ukrainian far right before, during and immediately after the revolution. This research draws on the interviews conducted by the author, video and photographic evidence, online and offline publications, results of public opinion polls, and secondary literature on the Ukrainian far right.

Dieser Artikel betrachtet die Entwicklungen in der ukrainischen rechtsradikalen Szene nach der Revolution, die im Winter 2014 den damaligen Präsidenten Wiktor Janukowitsch aus dem Amt entfernte. Der Autor diskutiert die Gründe für die Wahlniederlage der beiden rechtsradikalen Parteien, die an den jüngsten Präsidentschafts- und Parlamentswahlen teilgenommen haben, und stellt fest, dass diese Niederlagen nicht das »Ende der Geschichte« der ukrainischen Rechtsradikalen markieren. Im Gegenteil: Einige andere rechtsradikale Organisationen, die in der Vergangenheit in großem Stil in illegale Aktivitäten und Korruption verwickelt waren, haben in ihrem Kampf gegen eine liberale Demokratie in der Ukraine möglicherweise eine bessere Strategie entdeckt.

In the wake of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and Russia’s subsequent war on Ukraine, Russian political thinker Aleksandr Dugin has become an object of many western analyses of Russia’s foreign policy. Various media have called Dugin “the mad mystic who inspired Russia’s leader” or “Putin’s brain”. Indeed, the man behind Russia’s Neo-Eurasianism has received significant attention and his ideas have evidently entered mainstream political thought.

The radical rightwing party Svoboda rose to prominence in Ukraine's 2012 parliamentary elections as an alternative to the political establishment, writes Anton Shekhovtsov, expert on Ukrainian rightwing groups. But its role in Euromaidan may well amount to Svoboda's swan song.

Ukrainian civil society wants a truly independent Ukrainian and European nation. And Ukrainians understand that, in order to achieve this independence, they need to completely overhaul the political system. Anton Shekhovtsov on Euromaidan and the rebooting of Ukraine.

When Ukrainian postgraduate Pavlo Lapshyn was sentenced for racially-motivated murder and terrorism in the West Midlands, the response from Ukrainian media was to distort facts; from authorities to remain silent; and from British journalists to pin blame on UK society. These approaches obscure the uniqueness of the case, says Anton Shekhovtsov.

The article analyzes the “sacred” dimension of the Ukrainian “Orange revolution”, its festive or carnivalesque quality, and properties of a communal ritual. The author argues that Ukrainian citizens who protested against the stolen elections in Kyiv found themselves in the liminoid situation of temporary egalitarian utopianism. This situation resulted in the emergence of communitas, and engendered a powerful feeling of the birth of a civic-republican Ukrainian nation. The festive nature of the “Orange revolution”, sanctioned by the overwhelming confidence in fighting for the rightful democratic cause, reinforced the impression of renewing the society along Western liberal democratic patterns.

Shekhovtsov suggests that there are two types of radical right-wing music that are cultural reflections of the two different political strategies that fascism was forced to adopt in the 'hostile' conditions of the post-war period. While White Noise music is explicitly designed to inspire racially or politically motivated violence and is seen as part and parcel of the revolutionary ultra-nationalist subculture, he suggests that 'metapolitical fascism' has its own cultural reflection in the domain of sound, namely, apoliteic music. This is a type of music whose ideological message contains obvious or veiled references to the core elements of fascism but is simultaneously detached from any practical attempts to realize these elements through political activity. Apoliteic music neither promotes outright violence nor is publicly related to the activities of radical right-wing political organizations or parties. Nor can it be seen as a means of direct recruitment to any political tendency. Shekhovtsov's article focuses on this type of music, and the thesis is tested by examining bands and artists that work in such musical genres as Neo-Folk and Martial Industrial, whose roots lie in cultural revolutionary and national folk traditions.

In the context of the rise of radical right-wing parties in most European countries, the enduring absence of a far-right group in the Ukrainian parliament seems paradoxical. However, recent developments, namely the victory of the far-right ‘Freedom’ Party (All-Ukrainian Union ‘Freedom’, Vseukrayins’ke ob’’ednannya ‘Svoboda’) in the 2009 Ternopil regional elections seems to attest to the gradual revival of the radical right in Ukraine. The article considers the far-right legacy in Ukraine and the reasons why it failed in the post-Soviet period, and then focuses on the history of the Freedom Party and discusses its prospects at the national level.

Applying Roger Griffin’s methodological approach to generic fascism, the article analyses individual – socio-political, cultural and esoteric – themes within Dugin’s doctrine, treating them as elements of a larger integral concept of rebirth that constitutes the core of Neo-Eurasianism. The article highlights the highly syncretic nature of this ideological core, a direct result of the ‘mazeway resynthesis’ that has conditioned Dugin’s worldview. It argues that this process has been necessitated by his self-appointed task of envisioning a new stage of history beyond Russia’s present decadent and ‘liminoid’ situation, one that he sees only coming about as the result of a ‘geopolitical revolution’. The variant of Eurasionism that results has the function of a political religion containing a powerful palingenetic thrust towards a new Russia and new West. In conclusion, it is suggested that the new order aspired to by Dugin could only be realised by establishing a totalitarian regime.

Russian political thinker and, by his own words, geopolitician, Aleksandr Dugin, represents a comparatively new trend in the radical Russian nationalist thought. In the course of the 1990s, he introduced his own doctrine that was called Neo-Eurasianism. Despite the supposed reference to the interwar political movement of Eurasianists, Dugin's Neo-Eurasian nationalism was rooted in the political and cultural philosophy of the European New Right. Neo-Eurasianism is based on a quasi-geopolitical theory that juxtaposes the 'Atlanticist New World Order' (principally the US and the UK) against the Russia-oriented 'New Eurasian Order'. According to Dugin, the 'Atlanticist Order' is a homogenizing force that dilutes national and cultural diversity that is a core value for Eurasia. Taken for granted, Eurasia is perceived to suffer from a 'severe ethnic, biological and spiritual' crisis and is to undergo an 'organic cultural-ethnic process' under the leadership of Russia that will secure the preservation of Eurasian nations and their cultural traditions. Neo-Eurasianism, sacralized by Dugin and his followers in the form of a political religion, provides a clear break from narrow nationalism toward the New Right ethopluralist model. Many Neo-Eurasian themes find a broad response among Russian high-ranking politicians, philosophers, scores of university students, as well as numerous avant-garde artists and musicians. Already by the end of the 1990s, Neo-Eurasianism took on a respectable, academic guise and was drawn in to 'scientifically' support some anti-American and anti-British rhetoric of the Russian government.

Как бы там ни было, главным источником сегодняшней “популярности” темы украинского национализма в постсоветских СМИ является то явление, которое влиятельный киевский еженедельник “ краïнський тиждень” охарактеризовал как медийную “гитлеризацию” украинской политики.

Due to the fact that the Cambodian authorities banned the main opposition party in 2017, Western states declined to send any observers to monitor the parliamentary elections in Cambodia held on 29 July 2018. On the contrary, for the first time since 2002, Western institutions sent several missions to monitor the elections in Zimbabwe that were held on 30 July 2018 following the coup d’état in 2017.

As the Cambodian authorities needed friendly Western voices that would approve of the parliamentary elections, Cambodia’s National Election Committee accredited several minor Western missions, including a “senior delegation of the international observers” consisting of around 30 monitors and represented predominantly by European and American politicians, that were coordinated and seemingly guided by the Cambodian, pro-government Civil Society Alliance Forum.

While there was no lack of Western monitoring of the elections in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission accredited a mission of the little known and shady organisation called Association for Free Research and International Cooperation (AFRIC) that sent around 40 observers – some of them were from European countries – to monitor the Zimbabwean elections.

The “senior delegation of the international observers” (in the Cambodian case) and the AFRIC’s observation mission (in the Zimbabwean case) offered positive – and sometimes clearly politically charged – assessments of the elections in both countries, and their statements were widely disseminated by the state-controlled media to give an impression of overwhelming Western satisfaction with the conduct of the elections.

Neither the “senior delegation of the international observers”, nor the AFRIC’s mission was transparent about the principles or methodologies they employed for observing the election processes in Cambodia or Zimbabwe. They did not comply with the “Code of Conduct for International Election Observers” endorsed by all relevant international election observation organisations including ODIHR/OSCE which states that “international election observation missions must be of sufficient size to “determine independently and impartially the character of election processes in a country and must be of sufficient duration to determine the character of all of the critical elements of the election process in the pre-election, election-day and post-election period.”

Many of the members of the “senior delegation of the international observers” in Cambodia and the AFRIC’s observation mission in Zimbabwe have a history of involvement in various pro-Kremlin efforts that include, but are not limited to: (1) previous participation in politically biased and/or illegitimate electoral monitoring missions; (2) legitimisation and justification of the actions of the Russian Federation directed at undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity (illegal visits to Russia-annexed Crimea and occupied territories of Eastern Ukraine); (3) criticism of the EU European sanctions imposed on Russia; (4) cooperation with the Russian state-controlled instruments of disinformation and propaganda (RT, Sputnik, etc.); and (5) disseminating pro-Kremlin narratives on social media (Facebook).

The mission of the “senior delegation of the international observers” in Cambodia was directly coordinated by several Russian actors, in particular, by Aleksey Chepa, deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, and Oleg Bondarenko, Director of the Foundation for Progressive Policy that is engaged in advancing the Kremlin’s foreign policy interests in Europe.

While there has been no evidence so far that Russian officials or experts were directly involved in coordinating the AFRIC’s mission in Zimbabwe, it is important to note that the head of the mission, Jose Matemulane, studied in several Russian universities from 2002 until 2012, disseminates pro-Kremlin propaganda on the social networks and maintains contacts with various Russian actors.

As the holding of “general elections” in the internationally non-recognised Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) ran counter to the Minsk agreements, the international community considered them as illegitimate and did not send any observers to monitor them.

Aiming to fill the void of legitimacy, the “authorities” of the DPR and LPR claimed to have invited 48 and 45 “international observers” respectively from Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Kongo, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Syria, Turkey, USA and Yemen, as well as from “Abkhazia”, “Palestine” and “South Ossetia”.

We have identified 39 “observers” in the case of the DPR and 43 – in the case of the LPR. Out of the identified individuals, around half of them were politicians and state officials. Other “observers” were predominantly businessmen, students, journalists, and far-right and far-left activists and conspiracy theorists. None of the observers were transparent about the methodology they employed for observing the election processes and, therefore, did not comply with the “Code of Conduct for International Election Observers” endorsed by all relevant international election observation organisations, including ODIHR/OSCE.

The overwhelming majority of non-Russian “international observers” have already been involved in various pro-Kremlin efforts that include, but are not limited to: (1) previous participation in politically biased and/or illegitimate electoral monitoring missions in Russia and elsewhere; (2) legitimisation and justification of Russia’s actions directed at undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity; (3) criticism of the sanctions imposed on Russia in relation to its aggression towards Ukraine; (4) cooperation with the Russian state-controlled instruments of disinformation and propaganda (RT, Sputnik); (5) membership in pro-Kremlin movements, groups and organisations.

“International observers” were highly visible in the media space of the DPR and LPR: more than one-third of all news stories published on the voting day mentioned “international observers”.

“International observers” were invited to the DPR and LPR in order to provide a sense of general legitimacy and normalcy to the “elections” in the eyes of the domestic and Russian audiences.

Aiming to provide legitimacy to the otherwise illegitimate “elections”, the media of the DPR, LPR and Russia disinformed their audiences about the real international perception of the “general elections”, as well as promoting the following five major narratives: (1) the “elections” did not run counter to the Minsk agreements, and, therefore, were legitimate; (2) the “elections” were characterised by a high turnout and active participation; (3) the “elections” took place in a calm and orderly manner; (4) the life in the DPR and LPR is safe and peaceful; and (5) the international community should recognise the “elections”, as well as independence and sovereignty of the DPR and LPR.

The Russian organisation National Social Monitoring (NSM) coordinated by Roman Kolomoytsev invited 10 international experts to attend the regional elections in several Russian oblasts during the so-called single voting day. They were not officially accredited by Russia’s Central Election Commission (CEC) as election observers, but the Russian media and individual members of the CEC often referred to them as observers.

Neither the CEC nor the NSM published a full list of the invited international experts; however, using OSINT methods we have identified 9 out of 10 international experts from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain. Among them there were political activists and politicians (including one Member of the European Parliament), lawyers, businessmen, an academic and a former diplomat.

The majority of the invited international experts have a history of participating in various pro-Kremlin efforts such as (1) taking part in the politically biased election observation missions in Russia and Ukraine, (2) attempting to legitimise the illegitimate electoral processes in Transnistria and Crimea, (3) illegally visiting Russia-annexed Crimea and justifying the annexation of this Ukraine’s republic, and (4) regularly providing pro-Kremlin comments to the Russian state-controlled media.

The analysis of Russian media reports on the Russian elections on the single voting day and profiles of the international experts suggests that they were invited to Russia for two main reasons: (1) to boost the legitimacy of the elections with the Russian audience as the main addressee, and (2) to promote the allegedly positive image of Russia on the international stage.