by Stefano Caprio

It is not at all clear whether "homeland" means the same thing for Trump's followers or Putin's subjects, whether it indicates the nativism of "blood and soil" or rather the "spiritual" union of those who have a shared vision of state, region, or the whole world. For now, the newly elected president of the United States has promised a solution to the Ukraine war by 20 January, the day of his inauguration (coincidentally the Orthodox feast of the Baptism of the Lord).

The world followed America’s electoral show, which produced the election of Donald Trump as the 47th president, amid lengthy discussions and different opinions on either candidate, in public and even among neighbours and relatives.

Now everyone is wondering what will be the impact of the very clear choice made by the US electorate: Ukraine has repeatedly expressed concern over losing military support, and even Taiwan fears that Trump has no intention of defending the island from China, having said that the US is like an “insurance company" that Taipei must pay to for protection. In Israel, most people were rooting for the tycoon, especially after Kamala Harris's criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza.

In Russia, Trump was by far the favourite in the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, seeing him as more amenable to the Kremlin's plans, and his victory at the time was greeted with a round of applause in the Russian parliament (Duma). However, what the Russians expected did not materialise, judging by the number of sanctions imposed on Russia during Trump’s first term of office.

After a few years of local and world conflicts, Russians are very sceptical about the possibility of a thaw, despite the assurances of the former and new president that he can easily stop the war counting on his "personal friendship" with Vladimir Putin.

According to pollsters, at least half of Russians saw little difference between Trump and Harris in this regard, considering that Russia’s relations with the United States, and with the entire West, are now at a dead end from which it will be hard to get out in the short term.

However, Donald Trump still elicits a lot of sympathy among Russians, despite the general "Russophobia" of the entire US establishment, and his approval rating stood at 26-27 per cent compared to 4-5 per cent for Harris.

Meduza's Signal newsletter reports that, if the Russians had voted in the US elections, Trump would have won 78 per cent of the votes; similar results would have probably occurred in Europe’s most traditionally pro-Russian allies, like Serbia.

Despite the sanctions imposed in 2017, Trump has regained popularity among Russians, more as a result of media narratives than actual political and policy decisions.

For Alexei Naumov, a young expert at the Russian International Affairs Council who is considered an important expert on the United States, Russians "irrationally believe in the possibility of agreeing on the world order, where everyone can live in peace and well-being.”

This view has been exploited by all populist-leaning politicians at home and abroad, offering “their kids" the simplest and most immediate answers to the most complex questions, and this is precisely Donald Trump's style.

According to the new US president, the world has been destroyed by career politicians, who broke away from "ordinary people", and the only way to restore justice is to screw everything up and build a new world together, which sounds very good to Russian ears.

Putin himself was not shy, and at the meeting of the Valdaj club in Sochi, he congratulated Trump, calling him "a brave man”, who in the face of great challenges “turned out to be a brave man” adding that he is ready to hear from him at least by phone.

The Russian president said that “all Western leaders called me every week, and then suddenly they stopped. If any of them wants to resume contact,” adding that Russia is in good shape.

Putin expresses the Russians' appreciation for a politician who is not so much "friendly", as “not subservient to the system", whose actions go beyond the usual limits of Western politics. In short, a bit of healthy confusion does not hurt a world gone mad.

Trump's enemies define him as "a fascist", as former presidential chief of staff John Kelly did, but "fascism" is one of the most abused terms in our troubled times as it was before; even the Russians did the same when they spoke of “nazi" Ukraine and "Western fascism", since “fascism” in Russia also includes Hitler's Germany.

George Orwell already wrote in 1944, after the fall of Mussolini's regime in Italy, that the very concept of "fascism" had lost its original meaning, becoming a sign of irreconcilability with the common principles of democratic society.

Orwell ironically observed that in Britain various groups, including farmers, youth hostels, astrology, homosexuals, fox hunters, women, dogs, and others were accused of fascism. Fascism is everything that is disliked in politics, and its opposite is always "democratic".

Trump himself, after all, made provocative remarks that refer to Hitler's own propaganda, which he admits to having “studied carefully”. Meanwhile, Trump's authoritarianism is still being defined.

If "Putinism" has now taken hold, it is still necessary to understand what "Trumpism" consists of. As Signal states, "all fascists are autocrats, but not all autocrats are fascists."

The newly elected president needs to bolster his power by controlling the Deep State, the great administrative machine of the federal state and the judiciary, as did the great dictators of the 20th century, like Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin and as Putin did with his "vertical of power", and this it takes time.

Sociologist Dylan Riley, of the department of sociology at Berkeley, notes that European fascist regimes were born in the 1920s from the right-wing reaction to the outcomes of the First World War, and the analogy with the current decade is noteworthy, following the end of the Cold War and the crisis of globalisation.

At that time, the threat of communist revolution loomed; today the sovereigntist sentiment against the claims of hegemony by one or the other side, from America to China, with Russia and Europe in the middle, is growing.

German historian Jan-Werner Müller of Princeton University offers another important insight. According to him, even the most reactionary forces have drawn an important lesson from the history of the past century: destroying democratic institutions is a sign of weakness rather than strength.

While this election year, inaugurated by Putin in March and concluded by Trump in November, formally marked the dominant figures chosen by regular, more or less respected democratic procedures (Georgia’s election has been contested more than elsewhere), what still needs to be understood is whether the world is really "moving to the right", assuming that the classic political dichotomy of two opposing sides still applies today.

What "homeland" means to Trump's followers or Putin's subjects is not at all clear, whether it indicates the nativism of "blood and soil" or rather the "spiritual" union of those who have a shared vision of state, region, or world.

What do Trump and Putin really have in common, with European peers like Orban and Le Pen or Asian like Modi and Xi Jinping, not to mention many South American and African leaders? The re-election of "Donald the Strong" could be an opportunity to unite the dots of the picture, and Putin has every intention of exploiting it.

One character who is contributing more than anyone else to this work of planetary convergence, with cosmic dimensions, is the super-billionaire Elon Musk, hovering above and below the rooms of the White House and the Kremlin, especially with his tools of communication, as well as economic and financial means. He triumphantly wrote: “As it turns out, X is not a bubble. It is signal” to understand reality.

This narrative ends up overcoming reality itself, and the impossible plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine now takes the shape of messages to send out, which Trump's advisers are reportedly already working on.

The latest version sees Ukraine's request to join NATO put on hold for the next 20 years, with a guarantee of an end to fighting, with the "freezing" of positions that would deprive Ukraine of 20 per cent of its territory, occupied by the Russians.

Even in Kyiv, people are beginning to turn to the "new vision". As Oleksandr Merezhko, head of the foreign relations committee in the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovnaya Rada, Верховна Рада), said, “Trump wants to be a successful president, so we need to convince him that Ukraine's success in the fight against Russian aggression will also be his personal success as president.”

Trump promised to find a solution by 20 January, the day of his inauguration, which coincides with the Orthodox liturgical feast of the Baptism of the Lord, when Putin will lower himself triumphantly into icy water, having won the battle to continue the world war, no longer "cold", but "frozen", for centuries to come.

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• russia
• america
• trump
• putin
• war
• homeland
• ukraine