How Well Does Russia Understand the West?

June 5, 2025

I raise the question in the title because the Russian media looks askance at what it labels “a rise in the popularity of right-wing forces” in “recent elections in three EU countries.”  The Russian media describes as “right-wing” the awakened ethnic nationalities–the French of France, the Germans of Germany–as “right-wing.”  But President Putin of Russia describes Russia as Russian, even though the Federation is comprised of different nationalities.  Putin stresses that whatever the ethnicities of the Russian Federation, all are Russian.  This is likely the case as the non-Russian ethnicities have been part of Russia for a very long time, whereas in the West the newly-arriving immigrant-invaders are proving to be unassimilable hostiles.

Putin doesn’t regard Russian ethnicity, an ethnicity extended to the Muslim provinces of the Federation such as Chechnya, as right-wing. So why does Russia regard European ethnic nationality “right-wing?” Critical Mass: How Naz... Hydrick, Carter Plymton Check Amazon for Pricing.

The answer, I think, is that the American, European and British left-wing have conflated an ethnic consciousness that constitutes a national state with Nazism.  The Nazis were a socialist party, not a right-wing one.  But they were National Socialists which the left-wing contrasted with approved international socialism associated with the Soviet Union. Right-wing became anything to the right  of  Trotskyist International Communism. Nationalism was seen as a barrier to the spread of Communism, and thus it was evil.

Do Russians comprehend that European ethnic states are being over run by non-European ethniticies and that France is ceasing to be France, that Britain is ceasing to be British, that Germany is ceasing to be German?

The efforts of European peoples to defend their ethnicities is not right-wing. If Marine Le Pen is a Nazi because she speaks for the ethnic French people, so is Putin who describes Russia as Russian.

Russians should understand that the reappearance of ethnic nationalism in Europe is a demand for sovereignty and is compatible with Putin’s demand for Russian sovereignty.  Instead of falling into the narrative that ethnic nationalism is right-wing, hence Nazi, Russians should realize that ethnic European national states are allies who wish to be free of open borders that are overwhelming Europe with immigrant-invaders.

French President General Charles de Gaulle was the last independent European leader.  He refused Franch’s entry into the American empire and refused to submit France to NATO.  If European ethnic nationalism can be revived, it means the end of Washington’s European empire.  

The Best of Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, associate editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Business Week’s first outside columnist, columnist for the Scripps Howard News Service, contributor to the editorial page of the Los Angeles Times, and columnist for the main French and Italian newspapers, and for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles. He served in numerous academic appointments in US universities and was  appointed to the William E. Simon Chair for Political Economy at Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies where his colleagues were Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James R. Schlesinger (one of his former professors), and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Thomas Moorer. His article, “How the Law Was Lost,” was published in the January 1999 Cardozo Law Review.