‘Patriots,’ Populists, and Putinists
A ‘whole global movement,’ as Nigel Farage said, gaining in political strength
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In some mouths, “patriotic” means nationalist-populist Right. Consider the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, issued last month. The “growing influence of patriotic European parties,” says the document, “gives cause for great optimism.”
And what are those patriotic parties? Well, consider “Patriots for Europe,” founded in 2024 by Viktor Orbán (the Hungarian prime minister) and his friends. The group is composed of Orbán’s party, Fidesz; Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (in France); Matteo Salvini’s League (Italy); the so-called Freedom Party in Austria; and so on.
When Patriots for Europe was founded, Zoltán Kovács, Orbán’s spokesman, tweeted, “!! Historic moment !!”
Salvini, too, was thinking grandly. PfE, he said, would be “decisive in changing the future of this Europe.”
Vladimir Putin is of like mind. At a forum in Sochi this past October, he said, “We see nationally oriented political forces gaining momentum across Europe—in France and in Germany.” An encouraging development, from Putin’s point of view. He further said that “Hungary, of course, under Viktor Orbán, has long championed this stance.”
Some of us believe the following: If you’re looking for patriotism in Europe—or, indeed, a national orientation—look to the Ukrainians, who are fighting to repel an invader that wants to force them back into an empire.
When Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, addressed the Austrian parliament in 2023, members of the “Freedom Party” walked out.
These parties—what the Trump administration, Orbán, and the rest call “patriotic” parties—form a movement. A genuine international movement. Indeed, when Steve Bannon founded a nationalist-populist organization in Brussels, back in 2017, he called it “The Movement.”
Bannon is an American activist, but, like others of his stripe, he is internationally minded.
It was he who asked Nigel Farage to campaign in Alabama. What was Farage, the leader of the British nat-pop Right, doing at a rally in Fairhope, Alabama, in 2017? He was campaigning for Roy Moore, a candidate in the Republican senatorial primary of that year. Farage had just been in Germany, campaigning for the AfD.
(“AfD” are the German initials for the Alternative for Germany, that country’s main nationalist-populist party.)
In Fairhope, Farage said that the election of Moore was “important for the whole global movement across the West that we have built up and we have fought for.”
The whole global movement. (Moore was soon nominated by the Republicans but lost the general election.)
Being global, the whole movement has many elements, in many countries. One thing these elements have in common is admiration of Vladimir Putin and his dictatorship in Russia.
Farage is cagier, and smarter, than most. In 2014, he was asked which world leader he most admired. His answer: “As an operator, but not as a human being, I would say Putin.”
At the time, Farage was leading the UK Independence Party (UKIP). He has since led the Brexit Party, which has turned into Reform UK. Succeeding him as leader of UKIP, briefly, was Diane James. Asked about her political heroes, she named three: Churchill, Thatcher—and Putin.
(The other two were not available to comment on this spectacular grouping.)
Said James about Putin, “I admire him from the point of view that he’s standing up for his country. He is very nationalist. He is a very strong leader. He is putting Russia first.”
Those words could be a theme song for “the whole global movement.”
Nathan Gill has worked alongside Farage for many years: in UKIP, the Brexit Party, and Reform UK. He was the leader of Reform UK Wales. Last September, he pleaded guilty to accepting money from the Kremlin for making pro-Kremlin statements. He was sentenced to ten and a half years.
Why the Kremlin has to pay people, I have no idea. There are countless people willing to do the work for free—out of affinity. So it was in Soviet times as well.
The story of Marine Le Pen and Putin’s Russia has several angles and chapters. But perhaps a picture will be worth a thousand words—a three-segmented picture, or a triptych, if you like. A pro-Putin “influencer” from Russia, Maria Katasonova, presented Le Pen with an artwork: portraying Putin, Trump, and between them, Le Pen herself.
A trinity?
In her headquarters, Le Pen posed with this work, grinning.
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Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister of Italy, wears his heart on his sleeve, or chest: he has been known to don Putin shirts, showing the Russian dictator in romantic or heroic poses, à la Che Guevara. Salvini has worn such shirts in the European Parliament and in Red Square, Moscow.
In 2014, Salvini and his party established a “Friends of Putin” group in the Italian parliament. Three years later, they signed a “friendship and cooperation” agreement with Putin.
That phrase, “friendship and cooperation,” applies to “the whole global movement.”
About the Alternative for Germany, Thomas Haldenwang made a frank observation. This was in 2023, when Haldenwang was the head of the BfV, which is roughly the German equivalent of the FBI. AfD-ers and other such people push “Russian narratives,” said Haldenwang. They “sing from Putin’s song sheet.”
In Austria, the Freedom Party is a reliable chorus. The party was in government from 2017 to 2019 as part of a nationalist-populist coalition. The chancellor of that government, Sebastian Kurz, went on to work for Thiel Capital. The foreign minister, Karin Kneissl, works for Putin in Russia—at a kind of think tank in St. Petersburg.
After leaving government—Austria’s, that is—she joined the board of Rosneft, the Russian oil giant. She also blogged for RT, the Kremlin propaganda network.
The relationship between Viktor Orbán and Putin merits a book—and more than one such book is likely to appear in the future. For now, maybe a few notes will suffice.
As early as 2017, Orbán said, “We all sense—it’s in the air—that the world is in the process of a substantial realignment.” He made this statement when Putin came to visit him in Budapest. Putin, for his part, hailed Hungary as an “important and reliable partner for Russia in Europe.”
So it has been, under Viktor Orbán.
His longtime foreign minister is Péter Szijjártó—recipient of the Kremlin’s Order of Friendship. Putin conferred this award on him in November 2021, as Russian troops were massing along the Ukrainian border, preparing for an all-out assault.
Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was killed in prison on February 16, 2024. A funeral for him was held in Moscow on March 1. On that day, Foreign Minister Szijjártó was meeting with Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister. Pictures showed them laughing it up together—which nauseated some of us.
A couple of weeks ago, Orbán made a curious statement about the Ukraine war: “It’s not clear who attacked whom.” This is better—more moderate?—than President Trump, who has repeatedly alleged that Ukraine, not Russia, started the war.
Orbán is a favorite of Trump, Vice President Vance, the whole crowd: MAGA at large, which is to say the GOP at large. They really are a movement—all of these characters, all of these actors, across the globe—just as Bannon, Farage, and others have said.
In 2018, when she was foreign minister, Karin Kneissl got married. She danced with Putin at her wedding. Photos went around the world showing the foreign minister curtsying to Putin in her dirndl, looking up at him adoringly.
A picture may not be worth a thousand words, always—but that posture sums up a lot.
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Nigel Farage campaigning in Alabama for judge Roy Moore, the proven pedophile is just too much. They sure do love their children. American values?
Rise of populism is also eroding the political landscape Lithuania. While a populist government can be dangerous anywhere, it’s even more dangerous in the precarious position Lithuania is geopolitically and geographically.