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Right-wing extremists are using the war in Ukraine to spread conspiracy theories, echo Russian propaganda and drive a wedge between groups of refugees, according to analysts in Germany.
A report by the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, which monitors extremism on platforms such as Telegram, identified five ways in which the far right had spun the crisis to suit its political narratives.
It said the far-right scene had developed competing views on whether Russian President Vladimir Putin was a figure to be admired or a pawn in a wider conspiracy after he ordered the attack on Ukraine.
“The bogeymen remain the same, but current events are re-interpreted accordingly,” analysts said in their 14-page findings.
One example of this, they said, was a theory shared on Telegram that the war was part of an imagined Jewish conspiracy, possibly aimed at reducing the world population or establishing a new world order.
The attraction of this for neo-Nazis is that they “do not have to choose one side or the other, but spread their traditional stereotypes of the enemy”, researchers said.
A second narrative is that a caricatured global elite wants to distract people from the coronavirus pandemic, which has long spawned its own web of conspiracy theories.
One extremist magazine in Germany argued that the “corona narrative” of the past two years was falling apart and that elites had concocted the war in Ukraine as a new way of stirring up fear.
While those interpretations regard the war as a bad thing, a third school of neo-Nazi thought welcomes the opportunity for a fight and for possible alignment with Ukraine’s far-right Azov Battalion.
The Azov group is fighting against Russia and is often invoked by pro-Kremlin media to back up Mr Putin’s claims that the invasion is designed to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine.
That claim is rejected as nonsense by Ukraine and its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Jew whose grandfather saw three of his brothers killed during the Holocaust.
But since the war broke out, the Azov fighters have appealed for new recruits in far-right channels, including in English and German, analysts said, leading to fears of European extremists going to fight for the group.
On the Russian side, a fourth far-right narrative lauds Mr Putin as a fighter against the modern West, which extremists see as tarnished by the rise of liberal social norms.
One post on Telegram said that “if Putin marches into Berlin … men will be men, electricity will be cheaper, Islamisation will be ended”.
A similar strand of pro-Kremlin opinion tries to justify Russia’s invasion by echoing its propaganda about Ukraine developing biological weapons or having no right to sovereignty.
The Kremlin’s theory that Ukraine is developing sensitive weapons was described this week as “just another lie” by the head of Nato.
Russian state media “continues to enjoy a great popularity in the conspiracy theorist scene”, the German report said.
A fifth line of argument focuses on Ukrainian refugees and distinguishes them in what analysts say is a racially motivated manner from the typically non-European arrivals in previous flurries of migration.
A branch of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party said the country was right to take in “genuine war refugees” from Ukraine but that space should be freed up by deporting earlier migrants.
Such a viewpoint “spreads the narrative of refugees who only have a right to temporary safety if they are white”, the analysts said.
Almost 3.3 million people have fled Ukraine since the war broke out, according to the UN’s refugee agency, with Poland taking in more than half of those and many others crossing into Romania, Moldova, Hungary and Slovakia.
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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