Right-wing populists are thriving — even when they’re friends of Putin

When Russia launched its attack on Ukraine, a wide variety of commentators believed there was at least one silver lining in this catastrophic cloud. Vladimir Putin’s assault on the liberal order, they hoped, would expose and delegitimize the illiberal, populist forces that have been surging for years. One speculated that the war in Ukraine could end the age of populism. Another, the scholar Francis Fukuyama, saw it as an opportunity for people to finally reject right-wing nationalism. Alas, six weeks into this conflict, such notions look like wishful thinking.

In Europe, two pivotal elections — in Hungary and France — tell the tale. As recently as a few days ago, it was possible to suggest, as an essay in the Atlantic did, that the Ukraine war was “upending European politics” by highlighting the illiberal and pro-Putin records of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Experts were quoted saying that Orban was “desperately trying to reframe the events" around the war and predicted the French would now see President Emmanuel Macron as “probably the only person … who can lead them through this crisis.”

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