A CULTURE OF FEAR The decline of Europe in Russian political imagination

Holger Molder

Introduction

We are living in a challenging era, a post-truth world where successful image-building followed by a massive production of a ‘culture of fear’ becomes a crucial element in international politics (Furedi, 2002; Glassner, 2000). Under such conditions, every international actor can create their own worlds, move in and start fighting against other imaginary worlds, which do not fit with a constructed parallel universe. Finally, the world may easily turn into an extremely unstable international system, which challenges the fundamental paradigms adapted during the post-Cold War period when permanent peace and stability have been highly valued and aimed for in Europe. According to the Oxford Dictionary, ‘post-truth’ describes the situation ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief’, (English Oxford Living Dictionaries, 2020). Strong beliefs powered by emotions perfectly characterise the identity politics that are becoming increasingly more visible throughout the twenty-first century.

The post-truth environment is perfect for conspiracy theories to victoriously adjust and flourish as the image of truth relies on beliefs rather than on facts. Conspiracy theories became a part of international politics a long time ago and have always played a central role in world politics (Aistrope & Bleiker, 2018: 167). Moreover, human history is full of narratives that represent weird, but popular, political theories in which the gaps in facts are filled with self-constructed images. Brian Keeley (1999: 116) concludes that the successful implementation of conspiracy theories is built on popular beliefs that the audience likes and admits without critics and this could describe the situation where the post-truth world intends to be. The increasingly market-oriented contemporary society is prone to the process called Hollywoodisation, in which the reality is constructed according to the most successful narrative strategies of the Hollywood movie industry. Hollywoodisation in international politics implies that actors interested in destabilising the international system are building new realities by effectively promoting information campaigns, fabricating fake news and producing conspiracy theories, which have proven to be well-adapted supportive tools to spread a culture of fear among the potential recipients.

The EU in turn symbolises the virtue of a value-based liberal-democratic community imagined by Immanuel Kant in his ground-breaking essay ‘Perpetual Peace - A Philosophical Sketch’ (1795). At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the image of peaceful and stable Europe manifested by the EU faced powerful ideological challengers in the post-Cold war Kantian system of international relations based on liberal-democratic values (Molder, 2010; Molder & Sazonov, 2018). Russia and China are probably the most remarkable contenders promoting a status conflict with the West, but the United States under the administrations of George W. Bush and Donald Trump undermined (and continue to undermine) the leading role of international institutions and put national interests over the two basic freedoms of Kantian society - freedom of fear and freedom of want, first coined by US President Roosevelt in 1941 and codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948. The image of Europe as weak, vulnerable and declining has been strongly emphasised by ideological contenders of these fundamental freedoms. The Western experience during the last decades clearly demonstrates that liberal-democratic systems tend to be more vulnerable to populist challenges (producing more fear and insecurity) than authoritarian and totalitarian systems are, because of their openness and freedom of expression.

In promoting the divisiveness in Western society, pro-Kremlin ideologists have established a credible alliance with the Trumpist wave in the United States, as well as with the conservative and populist movements in Europe, many of them mobilising power from anti-migration and anti-Islamic sentiments. Populist movements anticipate no future for liberal democratic principles which have formed the basis of the European value system. According to alternative right conspiracy theories, shared by supporters of the Putin regime in Russia, the future of Europe is threatened mostly by liberals, migrants, and homosexuals, who together are responsible for Europe’s decadence. In this chapter, the author prefers to use the term ‘alternative right’ to the more common use of‘far right’ or ‘new right’ (the issue of terminology is addressed in the introduction to this volume), keeping in mind that the image of‘alternative politics’ against the current social and political order by rejecting mainstream conservative politics has been strongly emphasised by these movements. Even if alternative right movements often position themselves on the right side of the political spectrum, their political agenda frequently turns to populist policies that have traditionally been occupied by left-wing movements. Fundamentally, these are ultraconservative nationalist movements, which sometimes express white supremacist values, but not necessarily.

Several recent works have significantly contributed to the studies of the culture of conspiracy theories in the Russian Federation and its influence on the political and security establishment (i.e., Borenstein, 2019; Yablokov, 2018; Kragh, Andermo & Makashova, 2020). The Russian political and military elites have been for a long time prone to ambivalent conspiracy allegations. The Putin administration builds its image vis-a-vis a declining Europe as a meaningful alternative, a strong empire, promoting conservative and traditional values. This chapter focuses on the role of Russian influence operations, explores how conspiracy theories are supporting the construction of the image of Europe and how these claims have been operationalised in narrative-building based on cultural, historical, and religious myths. Support to various conspiracy theories blend well with the war of narratives (see Molder, 2016) characterising the period under the Putin administration and make Russian identity-building strongly dependent on the image of the West and its decadence. The chapter examines their ability to reach the targeted European public audience, often using support from alternative right and alternative left political movements which opposed to a European liberal democratic political culture and social order. The European so-called migration crisis since 2015 has been one of the primary objectives of Russian influence operations in destabilising EU’s social and political environment, promoting a culture of fear and consolidating alternative movements against the political establishment.