We are constantly told that democracy is synonymous with the West. Western media consistently places Russia and its president Vladimir Putin in opposition to core European values.
We are told that Russia is a threat to the freedom of the Western world, that it is tirelessly plotting to subvert elections and create a new Russian empire. This scare-mongering around the threat posed by Russia is consistently used by the West to justify carrying out some of the most anti-democratic interventions in the affairs of European countries.
Georgia
Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi, has been rocked by violent protests since its recent parliamentary elections. These elections saw the incumbent Georgian Dream party win 54% of the vote.
The results have been decried by the opposition as fraudulent, with President Zourabichvili (a member of the losing opposition) calling the elections “totally rigged” by Russia.
The elections themselves were closely watched by over 500 international observers, including from the EU and NATO. These observers reported that while the playing field was “uneven”, with Georgian Dream party able to bring more resources to bear, they saw no election rigging or evidence of voting fraud.
Regardless, the opposition’s narrative has been picked up by western governments and media. The EU parliament passed a resolution condemning the elections, calling for sanctions against Georgian Dream members and a complete re-run of the election.
This ignores the fact that Georgian Dream is in fact very pro-NATO and pro-EU, being the party that inserted a pledge to strive for EU membership into the country’s constitution in 2018. During their campaign they frequently used European flags in their messaging and one of their election slogans was ‘‘with dignity to Europe’.
Why then have they attracted the ire of the West?
This is largely to do with Georgian Dream’s reconciliation with Russia. Following the 2008 war between the two countries over the Russian-backed but internationally unrecognised secession of South Ossetia, Georgian Dream has sought to ease tensions with Moscow in an effort to avoid further conflict. This has included lifting visa requirements for travel between the two countries.
At the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, the Georgian government avoided joining in on the West’s sanctioning of Russia. This made Georgia a hub for those in the west hoping to do business with Russia, particularly in car exports. Eventually the government agreed to comply with US and EU sanctions, but have remained sceptical of them.
Although Georgian Dream seeks to join the EU eventually, it also hopes to avoid being caught up in the conflict between Russia and the EU, as has happened to Ukraine. This has led Georgian Dream to fall out of favour with Brussels.
The west uses NGOs within Georgia that it funds to voice its displeasure with Georgian Dream. Georgian NGOs became prominent after Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze allowed international foreign aid agencies to enter the country with almost no restriction following the fall of the USSR.
These agencies set up local NGOs, which have come to play a massive role in Georgian politics. Today there are over 26,000 registered NGOs in Georgia, with about 95% of their funding coming from international sources like the EU, US and NATO. Many are responsible for providing services like education, but many openly intervene in Georgian politics.
Following the outbreak of protests across Georgia, 22 Georgian NGOs issued a joint statement lambasting the ‘Russian criminal regime’ and calling for the West to sanction members of Georgian Dream.
In 2024 Georgian Dream introduced the ‘Foreign Agents Bill’ which requires NGOs who receive more than 20% of their funding from abroad to disclose this. This was quickly denounced by the West, who have labelled it as a ‘Russian-style law’ and a ‘breach of human rights’.
However, Sopo Japaridze, a Georgian researcher says that the law is not really designed to tackle the current model of NGO’s:
“They [Georgian Dream] are perfectly happy with the continued flow of foreign aid and how the donor-NGO-industrial complex churns out policies and poorly run public services … Georgian Dream and most of the opposition parties are remarkably unanimous in their belief in technocratic, neoliberal, de-politicized governance.
“The Georgian government does not really care about the country’s sovereignty, and neither do the foreign donors, aid agencies, and local NGO elites”, she says.
Regardless of the laws inefficacy, the US State Department quickly suspended its Strategic Partnership with Georgia and the EU accused Georgia of ‘democratic back-sliding’.
Romania
We can see a similar situation playing out in Romania currently. The results of the first round of voting in the recent Romanian presidential elections were declared null and void by the Romanian constitutional court, who accused Russia of rigging the election in favour of the winner, Călin Georgescu.
Georgescu is a far-right politician who has openly praised Romania’s past fascist leaders and is very much a part of Europe’s far-right trend. He would not look out of place in Le Pen’s National Rally or Meloni’s Brothers of Italy.
Similarly to those parties, he has gained popularity by appealing to those who feel like they have been left behind by mainstream political parties. Romania is one of the poorest countries in the EU and has been subjected to crippling austerity since the transition to capitalism in 1989. Georgescu has been able to successfully capitalise on this anger, promising to strengthen Romania.
However unlike figures like Meloni, who declared that “Italy is at the forefront of NATO’s challenges”, Georgescu is an open critic of NATO and the EU. During his campaign he frequently criticised his liberal opponent Elana Lasconi for her hawkish statements, and he frequently used Ukraine as an example of the west’s militarism in Eastern Europe, declaring that “the situation in Ukraine is clearly being manipulated, triggering a conflict in America’s interest that will contribute to the expansion of the US military complex”.
No matter how much the west loves a good fascist, Georgescu is clearly not NATO-member leader material.
Following the election the Romanian intelligence service disclosed documents which they alleged showed proof of Russia’s interference in the election. These documents describe the Telegram and Discord channels which were used by Georgescu supporters to boost his campaign. They were largely used to coordinate promotion of Georgescu on TikTok, which is said to have played an important role in his victory – he did particularly well among young Romanians.
The intelligence service pointed to a ‘Russian-style’ use of social media, but do not actually produce any proof for the alleged interference that led to the election’s results being annulled.
The US has openly supported the measure in a statement, warning that Romania “cannot be turned back by foreign actors seeking to shift Romania’s foreign policy away from its Western alliances”. It is curious that similar uproar is not made about other, more NATO-friendly, far-right leaders across Europe.
Ireland
Although not to the same extent as Georgia and Romania, Irish politicians have also played into this Russia scare-mongering to justify their own anti-democratic measures, namely increased militarisation.
Clare Daly and Mick Wallace are constantly smeared as “Putin’s puppets” for their criticism of western imperialism. We were recently subjected to a whole media saga when British intelligence services revealed that a member of the Dail had allegedly been recruited by a Russian spy to undermine Ireland’s relations with the UK and EU.
Of course, this story was taken at face value by the Irish media and political establishment. They did not dare doubt the word of the same intelligence services which collaborated with loyalist paramilitaries in the six counties, or question how British intelligence would have gathered this information on Irish officials in the first place.
Instead the story was used to drum up fear and paranoia about Russian interference in Ireland, and about the need to align closer with the West.
It is telling that Irish politicians who openly pledge loyalty to different, Western-aligned, foreign countries, such as the 7 senators and 2 TDs in the ‘Friends of Israel’ Oireachtas group are not subjected to similar levels of scrutiny.
Irish politicians and media have also frequently played on fears of a theoretical Russian invasion of Ireland, or the cutting of underwater cables to justify militarisation and the removal of the last vestiges of our supposed neutrality through PESCO and NATO programs.
I haven’t written this article because I am a starry-eyed believer in Western liberal democracy, far from it.
I haven’t written it because I love Putin, Georgian Dream and Călin Georgescu – I don’t.
I wrote it because we are constantly told that democracy is a sacred value of Europe and the west. We are told that it is only Russia that interferes in elections and European politics. And indeed they do. Russia, like other states in the west, is an imperialist power, and will use what measures it can to benefit it in its competition with its western rivals.
But does Europe not do the same – and on a far larger scale – when it floods money into Georgian NGOs who call for sanctions against the government; when they threaten to withhold EU membership for Georgia if Georgians don’t vote correctly; and when they support cancelled elections in Romania on spurious claims of Russian interference?
When the West talks about promoting democracy, what they are really talking about is promoting militarism and western hegemony. Some of the West’s closest allies include Saudi Arabia and the UAE, hardly shining examples of liberal democracy.
As the Western imperialist bloc ramps up its militarism and threats of war against Russia and China we will undoubtedly see the veneer of democracy slip more and more. Countries who hope to avoid the path of Ukraine, which has been devastated by the inter-imperialist conflict raging there, will be isolated and subject to ‘Russian-style’ interference from the West.
The next time you hear a Western leader talk about nefarious Russian interference, think about what they are really getting at. To do otherwise is to do the imperialists’ work for them.