Why European fears over gas supplies plays into Russia’s hands
Russia has reopened the Nord Stream pipeline after 10 days, supplying gas to Europe through Germany. Despite reduced volumes, the resumption of gas supplies will be greeted with some relief. The shutdown was due to scheduled maintenance work but it has been a fraught period, with the trading of threats and accusations of bad faith, the widespread reporting of doomsday scenarios, and inevitably the proliferation of conspiracy theories.
Lea Gerster, an analyst at the Berlin branch of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a global non-profit research and policy organization, told me that populist conspiracies tend to spread when people's livelihoods are being impacted. She sees a common theme: "the government or people who support Ukraine want us to freeze for peace."
It’s similar, she says, to the rhetoric around immigration, when the people who buy into conspiracy theories believe that politicians are deliberately leading the country into a dystopia for their own opaque, “globalist” interests. "It's beyond regular criticism,” she says. “It's more like attacks to completely reverse policy. And in this case, it seems that they really want Russia to be appeased.”
Right-wing social media communities have latched on to the legitimate anxiety and concern people feel about gas prices and the cost of living to claim that the crisis has been triggered to enable the pushing through of certain ideologies. Many of these commentators, some mainstream politicians included, are arguing that Germany is hurting its own interests by making an enemy of Putin.