Anne Applebaum Discusses The Rise of Fringe Parties

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Are we right to be concerned and do we trick ourselves when we call them fringe parties or are they fringe parties?

ANNE APPLEBAUM, COLUMNIST, THE WASHINGTON POST: So, it depends. From country to country they have different roles. But in some countries, they’re in the government. In Italy, they’re part of the ruling coalition. In Austria, they’re ruling — part of the ruling coalition as well. You could argue that the political parties running in Poland and Hungary are now more or less not so different from the other far-right parties in Europe, although, they have slightly different origins. So, yes, this is a real movement. Many of them began from different origins, different national contexts. But in the last several years, they have found some common themes and common language. And as you hinted in your introduction, many of them have common links to Russia.

AMANPOUR: So, that also is interesting because they have these common links, as you’ve been writing about, but they also seem to be struggling with whether to form alliances and to, you know, all band together, partly because of the — each other’s relations with Russia. So, some don’t like that proximity to Russia.

APPLEBAUM: Some of them don’t like one another. There are also some very musing differences. I mean, so there — you know, these are parties that have nationalist histories and they bring up old conflicts. And so, the Austrian nationalists try to get together with the Italian nationalists, and what happens is they start arguing over where the border should be. I mean, these are very old problems. Russia divides some of them. The Polish right does not want to be affiliated with Russia, but the Italian, French, German, all three very clearly are. And so, that’s one of the other divisions. So, they have trouble speaking with one voice, but they have begun to use very similar techniques, similar political technology.

Interestingly, very often imitating what Russia did in the United States. So, the tactics that we’re now all familiar with, you know, fake Facebook pages and automated Twitter botnets where they repeat messages over and over again and make themselves artificially amplified. We now see far-right parties in a number of countries doing that themselves, possibly with Russian help in some cases, but also attempting to affect contests in each other’s countries. So, there — it’s very interesting, you know, the Twitter-bots that will move from one language to the next, you know, so — a rumor that started in France after the Notre Dame fire about — it was really started by Muslims, this is deliberately spread to Italy. And there is an attempt now to create a kind of all European conversation, kind of all European conspiracy theories.

AMANPOUR: So, how worried should we be? If it’s not Russian — Russia directly, about the copycaters and this ongoing game of websites and social media accounts, you know, using the Russian playbook, trying to divide people, sowing discord.

APPLEBAUM: So, that’s certainly — there’s a Russian plague. I mean, obviously, there was a point in your earlier interview that’s worth repeating, which is that although we tend to pay attention to these things just before elections, the Russians actually have long-term tactics and long-term strategies.