Regardless of the final outcome, the 2020 US presidential election has confirmed that nearly half the electorate still prefers a politics of division and hatred to one of decency and unity. That is not Russia’s fault – and never was.
MOSCOW – The 2020 US presidential election challenges – indeed, it should lay to rest – the popular notion that US President Donald Trump is a lackey of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even if Trump loses, his performance – receiving millions more votes than he did in 2016 – suggests that it is he who is the master of propaganda, and that Putin is the one who should be taking notes. In fact, Trump’s campaign of lies could well become the new template for how failing democracies (and autocracies posing as democracies) choose their leaders in the twenty-first century.
There is no denying Trump’s mastery of social media, where he issues a predictable stream of semi-coherent yet emotion-packed rhetoric to cast doubt on established truths while smearing his opponents and puffing himself up. This digital black magic – which leading social-media platforms, as well as Fox News, duly amplify in the interest of profit – has become the core element of Trump’s style of “leadership.” As Putin’s own popularity continues to decline, he may well try to mimic it.
Beyond Trump’s signature methods of self-aggrandisement and democratic subterfuge is his unmatched use of propaganda to avoid any and all forms of accountability. To be sure, the world’s other autocrats are hardly novices when it comes to manipulating public opinion. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan uses holograms to appear, Allah-like, at multiple rallies simultaneously. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has worn bespoke jackets in which the pinstripes spell out his full name. And everyone is now familiar with Putin’s bare-chested horseback photo-ops.
Trump, however, has put all these efforts to shame with his approach to propaganda in its contemporary, all-encompassing “post-truth” form. He has both benefited from and aided a burgeoning political culture in which any debate, conversation, or event is framed by emotional appeals and completely disconnected from objective information. There is no wizard hiding behind the curtain here. Trump is a magician standing center stage, and just under half of American voters like what they see, or prefer the illusion to reality.
Consider Trump’s successful efforts to drive down Hispanic support for Joe Biden. In Florida, Trump managed to delude a portion of the Latino population (as he had done previously with poor whites) that he is their only economic hope. Identifying gaps between the progressive and center left of the Democratic coalition, the Trump campaign targeted Dade County’s large population of Cuban and Venezuelan émigrés with grim depictions of Biden as a Trojan horse for “socialism,” tapping into deep-seated hatred of the regimes in Havana and Caracas.
Though Biden still carried the bulk of Hispanic voters in the state, Trump succeeded in convincing a consequential segment that he and he alone would advocate for Cuban and Venezuelan freedom. Citing the Obama administration’s policy of rapprochement with Cuba, Trump’s campaign suggested that Biden would betray Cuban-Americans by rewarding the pariah island.
More broadly, Trump has masterfully stoked anger and resentment within the white population – particularly those without a college degree – often tweeting statements that look a lot like incitements to violence against African-Americans, Democratic politicians, and election officials. By constantly “saying the quiet part out loud,” he has given millions of white Americans a license to act on their most racist and extreme impulses.
Trump has also freed his supporters from the burden of considering scientific facts, or even rational thought. Thanks to the example Trump set, only in the United States is there any doubt about the need for face masks and social distancing during a pandemic. Only in America is taking necessary precautions to protect oneself and one’s neighbors seen as a sign of weakness or “socialism.” The virus is both a “hoax” and a genuine threat for which China alone bears responsibility. Never mind that the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic has been worse than that of any other government on the planet, leading to almost 240,000 deaths, and counting.
Of course, all politicians are tempted to blame others for their failures. The Soviet Union used to attribute its obvious decline on its citizens’ corrupt desire for American jeans and jazz. Instead of addressing their own shortcomings after the 2016 election, the Democrats chose to place all the blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss on Putin and Russian election interference. But the US did not destroy the Soviet Union; the Soviet system destroyed itself. And the Kremlin did not elect Trump; American voters did.
The 2020 vote tally makes this basic fact clearer than ever. Despite all the predictions of a “blue wave” that would crush Trump’s reign of corruption, mendacity, and incompetence, the margins in battleground states have been razor thin, and his Republican enablers in Congress survived – and even made gains in the House of Representatives. It turns out that almost half of the American public favors Trump’s divisive, anti-democratic style to Biden’s own appeals to competence, experience, and decency.
Writing about America in 1986, the French linguistic philosopher Jean Baudrillard described a kind of “hyperreality” in which myth, performance, and simulation becomes indistinguishable from the real world. Trump’s fanciful, nostalgic vision of making America “great again” relies on precisely this sort of epistemic collapse. Trump is the king of “post-truth” hyperreality, conjuring a world in which his supporters are the victims of various conspiracies and evil designs on their way of life, from which only Trump can save them.
Everyone has dark desires, of course, but most of us would never actually act on them. Such restraint is arguably the defining feature of a civilized person. But Trump has now convinced tens of millions of Americans to embrace their inner demons – truth, decency, and democracy be damned. Nihilism has descended on the republic, and Americans have no one to blame but themselves.
As we await the results of the US presidential election, we are again reminded of the uncertainty and fear that pervade the current era. Under such circumstances, Project Syndicate’s mission – delivering the highest-quality commentary on the world’s most pressing issues to as wide an audience as possible – is more important than ever. We remain committed to fulfilling it.
•Nina L. Khrushcheva, Professor of International Affairs at The New School, is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and the co-author (with Jeffrey Tayler), most recently, of In Putin’s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia’s Eleven Time Zones.
