RUSSIAN WORLD Russia and Trump’s United States

The spectacle of the American elections was followed around the world, until the election of Donald Trump as the 47th president, with extensive debates and opinions about one candidate or another, in public and also among neighbors and family. Now everyone is wondering what the consequences of the very clear decision of the American electorate will be: Ukraine has many times expressed its concern about losing military support; Taiwan also fears that Trump has no intention of defending the island from China, given that he said that the US is not a “free insurance company” and that Taipei must pay to receive help. In Israel, the majority was betting on the tycoon, especially after Kamala Harris’ criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza.

In Russia, Trump had been by far the favorite in the 2016 election over Hillary Clinton, because he was seen as the most willing to back the Kremlin’s plans, and his victory was greeted at the time with thunderous applause in the Moscow Duma. However, the Russians’ expectations were not met, judging by the enormous number of sanctions imposed against Moscow during his first presidency. Following recent years of local and global conflict, Russian public opinion is highly skeptical about the possibility of a thaw, despite the old-new president’s claims that he can easily stop the war and that he has the “friendship Vladimir Putin’s staff. According to pollsters, at least half of Russians did not see major differences between Trump and Harris in this regard, considering that Russian-American relations, and with the entire West, are now relegated to a dead end that will be difficult to overcome in the short term. term.

However, the figure of Donald Trump still arouses a lot of sympathy among Russians, despite the widespread “Russophobia” of the entire American establishment, and in this sense the approval rating was between 26-27% compared to 4- 5% Harris. Also according to the virtual results reported by the column Meduza Signalif Russians had voted in the US elections, Trump would have won with 78% of the votes, and similar results would have occurred in more traditionally pro-Russian European countries, such as Serbia. Since 2017, despite the sanctions, the figure of Trump has regained popularity among Russians, more due to the media story than due to specific decisions at the political and administrative level.

The young expert of the Moscow International Affairs Council Alexei Naumov, a renowned “Americanist”, explains that Russians “irrationally believe in the possibility of agreeing on a world order, where everyone can live in peace and well-being.” This sentiment is exploited by all politicians with a populist tendency inside and outside their country, proposing to “their boys” the simplest and most immediate answers to the most complex questions, and this is precisely the characteristic style of Donald Trump. According to the new president in Washington, the world has been destroyed by career politicians, who are distant from the “common people”, and the only way to restore justice is to blow everything up and build a new world together, which which sounds very good to the ears of Russians.

Even Putin himself expressed his opinion, and from the meeting at the Valdaj club in Sochi he praised Trump, defining him as “a brave man, who in the face of great challenges has known how to behave like a man” and declared that he is willing to listen to him at least by phone. The Russian president recalled that “up until a certain point, all Western leaders used to call me every week, and then suddenly they stopped… If they don’t want to, no problem, as you can see we are in top shape.” Putin expresses Russians’ appreciation for the politician “not subordinate to the system”, not too “friendly”, but whose actions go beyond the usual limits of Western politics. In short, a little healthy confusion doesn’t hurt a crazy world.

Trump’s enemies consider him “a fascist,” as former presidential chief of staff John Kelly said, but “fascism” is one of the most abused terms in these turbulent years and even before, as the Russians themselves do. regarding “Nazi” Ukraine and “Western fascism”, considering that the term “fascism” in Russia also includes the history of Hitler’s Germany. George Orwell already stated in 1944, after the fall of Mussolini’s regime in Italy, that the very concept of “fascism” had lost its original meaning, becoming a seal of irreconcilability with the common principles of democratic society. Orwell wryly observed that in Britain at the time, “peasants, school administrations, astrology, homosexuals, foxhunters, women, dogs” and other random categories were branded as fascism. Fascism is everything that is not liked in politics, and its opposite is always “democratic.”

On the other hand, Trump himself has added fuel to the fire with provocative phrases reminiscent of Hitler’s propaganda, which he admits to having “carefully studied.” However, Trump’s authoritarian attitude is still being defined; If “Putinism” has already been affirmed, it still remains to be understood what “Trumpism” consists of. As stated signal“all fascists are autocrats, but not all autocrats are fascists.” The new president needs to reinforce his power by controlling the Deep State – the Deep State -, the great administrative machinery at all levels of the State and the Judiciary, as the great dictators of the 20th century did at the time, from Mussolini to Hitler and Stalin and as Putin did with his “vertical of power” , and that takes time.

Sociologist Dylan Riley, from the Berkeley Department of Sociology, recalls that European fascist regimes were born from the conservative reaction to the results of the First World War in the ’20s, and the analogy with the current decade is very significant, after the end of the Cold War and the crisis of globalization. At that time, the threat of the communist revolution loomed; today, sovereign sentiment is rife against the claims of hegemony of one side or another, from the United States to China, with Russia and Europe in the middle. German historian Jan-Werner Müller of Princeton University proposes another important observation, according to which even the most reactionary forces have learned an important lesson from the history of the last century: the annihilation of democratic institutions is a sign of weakness. , more than strength.

If formally the electoral year, which Putin inaugurated in March and Trump concluded in November, has consecrated the dominant figures through more or less respected normal democratic procedures (in Georgia they have been more contested than elsewhere), which still What remains to be understood is whether the world is really “shifting to the right”, as long as the classic political divisions of the two opposing sides remain valid today. It is not entirely clear what “homeland” means to Trump supporters or Putin’s subjects, whether it indicates “blood and soil” nativism or rather the “spiritual” union of those who have a shared vision of their own state, region or the entire world. What do Trump and Putin really have in common, with the European leaders of Orban and Le Pen or the Asian leaders of Modi and Xi Jinping, not to mention the numerous South American or African leaders? The re-election of “Donald the Strong” could be an opportunity to unite the lines of the cadre, and Putin has every intention of taking advantage of it.

A character who is contributing more than anyone to this work of planetary conjunction, up to cosmic dimensions, is the super-millionaire Elon Musk, capable of flying above and below the rooms of the White House and the Kremlin, especially with his media, along with their economic and financial projects. He himself triumphantly declared that “X is not a bubble, but an effective way of understanding reality.” The story ends up surpassing even reality, and the impossible plan to end the Russian war in Ukraine now takes shape in the messages that are disseminated, according to which Trump’s advisors are already finalizing the details. The latest version supposes the rejection of Ukraine’s entry into NATO for the next twenty years, with the guarantee of the cessation of armed confrontations, a formula for “freezing” the conflict that would in any case continue to deprive Ukrainians of 20% of its territory, occupied by the Russians.

Even in kyiv, people are beginning to orient themselves towards the “new vision”, as the head of the Verkhovnaja Rada Commission, Aleksandr Merežko, expressed with cautious optimism: “Trump wants to be a successful president, but success means that Ukraine must become for him a story of success, not a story of defeat. The new president has promised to find a solution before January 20, the day of his inauguration, which coincides with the Orthodox liturgical feast of the Baptism of the Lord, when Putin will triumphantly immerse himself in the icy water, having obtained the continuation of the world war, no longer “cold”, but even “frozen”, for the next centuries.

“RUSSIAN WORLD” IS THE ASIANEWS NEWSLETTER DEDICATED TO RUSSIA. DO YOU WANT TO RECEIVE IT EVERY SATURDAY IN YOUR EMAIL? SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER AT THIS LINK