Rich are getting richer in comparison to the poor. Our money brain does basically this. Mammals are hardwired for a certain fairness and bad things happen when this is violated too much.
Since geopolitics switched to neoliberalism, Governments are unable to respond to the needs of their citizens. This has led to an increasingly fast-paced game of hot potato where any leading political party looks incompetent as economic disaster after economic disaster crushes more of their citizens. In this climate, the anger of Nationalism/Fascism becomes easier to swallow, since it has "answers" to your "problems".
That, plus moneyed interests need to keep climate change going in order to make all the money, so they embrace fascism rather than competent Government.
American far right has been winning a lot, which has given the European far right (a people that has been pretty silent since World War 2) the courage to step up themselves.
What's most distressing is that these far right people are swaying people who aren't far right.
I have a real bad feeling all our elections everywhere have been infiltrated by Russia, and by the time someone can prove it, it will be too late to do anything about it. Too many pro russia surprises everywhere.
Let's say that you hypothetically prove it. Then what? It's not like the average voter votes for this person because Putin has somehow managed to install a microchip in their brains. Moscow's money just gives these people a platform to stand on and launch their campaigns from. The rest is their own doing. And it's not only Russia that has these interests in mind. It's also the American right, hardcore evangelical groups that pour millions upon millions into these people.
What I'm trying to say is that the issue is systemic. Getting rid of Putin or hardcore American evangelicals won't solve the problem. The underlying problem is how capital has commodified and hollowed out the average person, increasing inequality, and creating multiple social crises. Until that problem is not solved, we'll keep seeing these hard-right reactionaries pop up out of nowhere.
I agree with you that it's systemic. If I look around me (I live in NL but I also see it across the border), people have just become more right-leaning. Talking about foreigners like they're the problem, blaming them for stuff, it's all part of "normal" conversation to them now. This really changed a lot the last 5-10 years, before that there was maybe the occasional nut job but everyone else was pretty moderate.
If anything, being locked in their houses for so long and the (at times pretty intense) discourse around getting vaccinated is what drove a big wedge between groups of people that were before able to discuss things in a somewhat civilized way. I don't think Putin had much to do with that but he sure profited from it.