The Newspapers, TV channels and Social Media owned by billionaires are helping Fascists across the West seize control.
Then the supposedly Leftwing mainstream parties helped Fascists across the West seize control by turning neoliberal (i.e. hard right), putting ever more money in the hands of the wealthy and cutting ever more public services, thus empoverishing the common people, reducing their opportunities and making their quality of life worse, which created the mood of despair on which the Fascist propaganda spread by the above-mentioned Newspapers, TV channels and Social Media owned by billionaires providing fascist-flavored "answers" and "solutions" for their ills found fertile ground.
Only after that comes the influence of foreign countries, not just Russia but in many countries of the West also Israel (and, especially, outside the West, China).
Democracy started failing in the West when the Pillar Of Democracy which is the Press got bought by the money elites, and when the dominant political strain became Neoliberalism which, quite literally, wants the power controlled by voters - the State - to refrain from controlling or even just regulating (what the Neoliberals call "interfering") in anything controlled by Money (which the Neoliberals call "Free Market", even though only markets with low barriers to entry can Mathematically be a Free Market, whilst all the others tend towards Monopolies and Cartels) or in other words, for the power of controlled by something were everybody is equal - the Vote - to sit below the power controlled by something were some are billions of times more powerful than others - Money.
Mainstream political parties spent the last 4 decades pushing a political ideology to turn Democratic countries from places where the Power of the Vote is the greatest power into places were the Power of Money is the greatest power - in other words, into Oligarchies - and, lo-and-behold, Democracies are about to fall (they're already way less Democratic than 4 decades ago, which is why things like Stasi levels of civil society surveillance already are or are getting pretty widespread in supposed "democracies")
Democracy to Oligarchy and when people who aren't oligarchs or their minions in the new system push back because their lives are worse, then comes Fascism were the Theatre of Democracy of Oligarchy is taken down and boot on people's necks stops being hidden.
IMHO, in all this the only foreign interference which is not late-coming opportunism is maybe America's in most of the West (because that was the current political and economic model was assembled and from were it was spread to the rest) and possibly Israel in some countries like America, Germany and possibly Britain.