Russia has bided it’s time and has won a famous victory. The democratic revival is over and autocracy is victorious. The re-election of Trump is their final triumph
There are 3 great inflection points in post war history: the creation of the rules based international order, NATO and the United Nations in the 1940s. The fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the early 90s and the fall of the rules based international order today
We thought that the fall of the Berlin Wall meant the end of the cold war and the end to authoritarian regimes. Communism in the Europe may have collapsed, but China’s ruling elite survived thanks to the brutal repression of pro-democracy protestors in Tianamen square. The ideology of communism might have fallen into the dustbin of history but the authoritarian systems it had created to sustain itself continued for decades afterwards, helped by the chaotic nature of the transition from communism to free market capitalism. In Russia and China, but also elsewhere; Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Zimbabwe. It spread to other hybrid states who blended authoritarianism with some democratic elements: India, Turkey, Hungary.
They don’t just want to relitigate the end of the cold war, they want to change the post war international order, replacing the rule of international law and respect for human rights.
The return of Trump is their ultimate validation, the proof that democracy doesn’t work.
These new authoritarian states are mostly unideological. They don’t really have a detailed political philosophy beyond a populist mix of nationalism and reactionary social conservatism. They are brutally pragmatic, they don’t need party machines, and do not hide their wealth and greed. Most of their global collaborations are for profit; business deals to evade sanctions, or to share surveillance technology.
What they have in common is a rejection of western values of democracy, individual rights, liberties, democracy, and the rule of law. A particular shared feature is a hatred of LGBT community that manifests as open persecution. their hatred of feminism isn’;t far behind. They represent strictly hiercachical societies based on gender, race, class, religion, and sexuality.
These countries are run as businesses, and their main aim is the enrichment of a small group who control the country and run it in their own interests. You can call this an oligarchy or a kleptocracy
Often these countries are sanctioned or otherwise limited in the way they can interact with the economic systems of democratic countries. There are exceptions to this – China for example is more able to trade freely even if it is subject to tariffs, and can operate as an intermediary for other sanctioned regimes. Some of the authoritarian Gulf states are the same.
They form a parallel financial system, in which authoritarian oligarchs move money around, with deals between nations resembling business deals rather than diplomatic treaties.
There is an important difference between authoritarian financial systems and those of democratic countries. In authoritarian regimes finance and the intelligence services work together. Putin’s great innovation was to bring together the surveillance, social control, espionage, and kompromat of the KGB with financial systems designed solely to enrich a small group of powerful people. The Chinese communist party has taken the same path.
But there are a few points in which these kleptocratic finance systems interface with the democratic world:
The tax havens of Caribbean islands are one of the key intersections, with secretive jurisdictions laundering funds from autocrats and oligarchs.
The City of London and it’s satellite tax havens is another, as are American states like Delaware which allow secretive financial transactions. Parts of the US and UK real estate market have become dominated by secretive owners from sanctioned nations.
In the case of the City of London this isn’t a new thing – African dictators, Greek Colonels, Indian Maharajahs, anyone who acquired money in such a way that they might be asked to give it back has used the City to stash their ill gotten gains. The Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers revealed the inner workings of these financial flows, but were too complex and too boring for people to be bothered getting angry about.
Tracing the growth of Russian influence in American politics is easy. Their campaigns to put Trump in the White House go back years and are well documented.
Russian Today, the sanctioned Russian TV channel produces English and Spanish language content which is then shared on line, and finds its way into the social media accounts of US conservatives. Chinese and Iranian State broadcasters produce the same language content, often branding it is coming from independent broadcasters in other countries. Pro-Trump web forums are full of content originating from authoritarian powers, all thinly disguised. The same messages are promoted from all angles; anti-vax, Covid conspiracies, deep state, biolabs.
Some of these same messages, often little more than conspiracy theories, are repeated in Congress by Republicans. Putin promotes himself as the leader of a group of powerful, traditional states withy reactionary values, which appeals to Republican politicians whose commitment to the Consitittional Republic is greater than their commitment to Democracy.
The Internet Research Agency in St Petersburg produces prodigious numbers of social media accounts, aimed at influencing US voters. In the most recent Presidential Election “Blacktivist” social media account attacking Harris run by Russia. Jill Stein is promoted by Russia to take votes away from the Democrats, proving that the middle class left are just as easily played by autocrats as blue collar Republicans in MAGA hats.
The same content turns up on Reform and Farage forums and social media accounts in the UK, and from time to time among the British Left who are particularly easily taken in by the many subsidiaries of Iranian state media. The demands to withdraw the UK from International Human Rights courts in the name of sovereignty come directly from hostile foreign governments, and find their way from social media to the Reform Party and from there to whats left of the Conservatives.
Last month the US Justice Department revealed that Moscow had given $10m to Tenet Media, a Tenessee based group of conservative and pro-Trump influencers, who promoted pro-Trump and pro-Putin propaganda. The Canadian Government have claimed that right wing YouTube personalities Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson are also funded by Russian state media,
That same month, the FBI seized 32 internet domains used by the Russian government to spread disinformation targeting US voters.
The American Sunlight Project, published revealing a decade-old, global network of nearly 1,200 social media accounts that exist to amplify Russian propaganda and other divisive content
All of this means that lots of Americans, and lots of Brits who look to America exist in a social media world that is Trumpified, and whose trumpification is amplified by Russian, Chinese and Iranian misinformation campaigns.
Justin Trudeau, the Canadian President named Tucker Carlson and Jordan Peterson as on-line influencers funded by Russia
This is 6 years on from the 2018 Senate Report into Russian interference into the 2016 Presidential Elections and the convictions of Paul Manafort (Trump 2016 Campaign Chair), Rick Gates (Trump campaign advisor), Lt, General Mike Flynn (Trump National Security Advisor), Roger Stone (Trump ally and political operative), Michael Cohen (Trump Attorney), George Papadopoulos (Trump foreign policy advisor), among over a dozen convicted of collusion.
But in reality the links between Trump and Russia are economic. This isn’t a conpiracy it is an industry. Trump has long had business links with Russia, from Trump towers to purchases of Trump properties by anonymous property funds. If Trump wants to do business in Russia he does it on their terms and that meant doing business with Putin and his oligarchs. It also meant coming under surveillance, being exposed to Kompromat. Trump is a natural kleptocract whose return to the White House spares him jail time and bankruptcy
If Musk wants to do business in China he has to do deals with the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party. As does Jeff Bezos. Musk has regular conversations with Putin, and even though he is out of power, so does Trump, apparently following his own foreign policy against America.
And when Trump and Musk did business with Putin and other autocrats they got on well together. They found that they had more in common with the global networks of oligarchs and kleptocrats than with their own countrymen, even those they were elected to represent. There is no point in looking for the bribes paid to Trump, he did it all willingly. He saw them as people with the same values – both parties see international politics as the art of the deal – a way to make each other richer, than rather than in terms of traditional diplomacy. An autocratic community of interest. That doesn’t mean the KGB don’t have blackmail material on him, or that Putin doesn’t have a hold on him, but that ultimately Trump does dodgy deals with foreign powers because he has done exactly the same dodgy deals all his life.
Musk has his own personal ideology, a mix of libertarianism for himself and his rich mates, and authoritarianism for the rest of us who have to put up with the consequences of his toxic behaviour. But just like Trump he is at home with the global elite of autocrats who indulge their whims without democrat restraints.
It is all he knows.
But there is a deeper question here. It is easy to understand why Russia wanted to traduce America, to capture it for the global gang of kleptocrats.
But why did America fall for this?
This didn’t just start in 2016. A cohort of authoritarian right wing billionaires have spent a long time and billions of dollars to re-shape US politics: Leonard Leo, Dick Uihlein, Charles Koch, and Jeff Yass in particular. Leo has been particularly active re-shaping the US Supreme Court. There plans to make America an oligarchy, stripping away progressive legislation going back to the 60s which dealt with civil rights and individual liberties. Initially they were horrified that Trump in 2016 had taken advantage of all of their hard work to push himself into the Presidency. But as Trump became more enamoured of the idea of a kleptocracy and his links the a global authoritarian network grew they became more excited at the idea of helping Trump to hold the White House, and when it was lost regain it.
Instinctively they wanted someone more sober, more continent, but Trump would do to get their hands on the prize.
They have been rolling the pitch for this for a long time. But this is only part of the US conservatives long march from reality into a world of overheated conspiracy and suspicious fantasy, going all the way back to Nixon, Goldwater and McCarthy.
Trump’s unpredictability, erratic style, and less-than-coherent thinking will create chaos, politically and economically. Ukraine will be handed to Russia who will carry out pogroms and set it’s sights on Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The US will withdraw from NATO and signal it’s content for international law. One of the hallmarks of the new authoritarian regimes is brutality. Iran represses it’s people at home and spread nihilistic violence abroad through Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthi. China exterminates the Yuighar, Russia pours 100,000s of it’s diminishing supply of young men into a mincing machine in Eastern Ukraine, poisons dissidents on the streets of the UK.
Economically tariffs will act as sanctions on the US population driving up prices, while deporting millions of workers will hammer businesses and drive up labour costs. Musk will be let loose to slash federal government and sell of it’s assets
The combination of all 3 will be chaotic. But that is the plan. From the chaos of the fall of communism rose the Kleptocrats of Russia. A similar period will be need to cement the rule of the Kleptocrats and transfer state assets to their ownership.
I don’t expect Trump do all of this himself. He is venal and lazy. He will spend time playing golf and posting on social media while Vance, Elon Musk, and some other oligarchs reshape America. Musk, Peter Theil and their chums may preach libertarianism but total freedom for the rich has consequences for the rest of us, consequences which will require authoritarianism to make us put up with. Their version of libertarianism is simple – the rich can do what they like, while the rest of us can do what we are told.
One of the principles of liberal democracy is the independence of the law – that all are equally bound by it, and the judiciary is politically neutral. This principle has already been stretched to breaking point by the Supreme Court and politically appointed activist judges. Any pretence of political neutrality will end with the quashing of all charges against Trump, including those he has already been found guilty of. Freedom of speech and assembly will end for opponents of the regime, independence of the press is already flimsy evidenced by the Washington Posts cowardly refusal to endorse Kamala.
And like all authoritarian movements the credulous willingness to believe nonsense is a central virtue. The lies of a stolen election in 2020 have become a loyalty test for modern Republicans who display all of signal of an authoritarian kleptocracy make alliances with other autocratic states around the world. Outrageous claims about political wrongdoing will be used to persecute opposition politicians.
If there is no distinction between truth and lies, reality and fantasy there is no disctinction between right and wrong, law and crime.
“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. … Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”
American Conservatives have undertaken a long march into an authoritarian fantasy world. From McCarthy’s reds under the bed, to Goldwater’s paranoid consiracites, Nixon’s racism and criminality, Reagan’s retreat into cinematic fantasy, George W Bush’s blurring of the real and the fake. Trump is the final stop on that journey from Reds Under the Bed to in bed with the KGB. This has been a long time in the making.
Turns out the shining city on the hill was the Kremlin after all.
Post Script
For those eager to trace the history of American authoritarianism this is Dan Smoot, a key figure in the McCarthy era, explaining why Democracy is a bad thing for Conservatives. This is the best insight into why so many on the US right were keen to bring America’s 250 year experiment with Democracy to an end, and why they worked for so many decades to achieve it.
https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/press-releases-2024/4011-odni-pr-24-24
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/report_volume5.pdf