As the impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the U.S.Senate got under way, it became clear that the Republican Party is not going to budge from its near-unanimous support of their president. The party’s rank-and-file approve Trump to the tune of 95% — the level of support ordinarily reserved for the Türkmenbasi, the Great Leader of Turkmens in post-Soviet Turkmenistan.
Republican elected officials, many of whom were on record during the 2016 presidential election campaign claiming that nominating Trump would be an unmitigated disaster for their party and country, have since became ardent trumpists — like some of the early Soviet supporters of Trotsky who were falling over themselves in slavish devotion to Stalin once he became Soviet dictator.
Why? The answer may give us a valuable insight into the way human societies function and into human nature in general.
I have often compared Trump to the dictators of the 1930s, and this comparison has been criticized by some Kyiv Post readers. They are correct of course. While Trump shares quite a few personality traits with Stalin and Hitler — notably, supreme narcissistic self-confidence wedded to considerable ignorance and combined with suspicion of expertise and intellect, as well as vanity, vengefulness and utter lack of empathy for other human beings — he is not a homicidal maniac, unlike the other two.
However, where the similarity holds extremely well it is in the nature of his following. Or rather in his remarkable ability to deprive his devotees of their ability to think independently, to analyze facts and to draw conclusions. Like Hitler and Stalin, he somehow makes his followers surrender to his will and to accept everything he says or does as some sort of a divine commandment.
There used to be a conventional view of Stalin’s rise to power in the Bolshevik Party after Lenin’s death. It suggested that none of principle contenders for the role of Lenin’s heir was taking the poorly educated, sickly Georgian seriously. They thought they could use him against their rivals and never expected him to harbor ambitions of his own. That was how he outwitted them and came out on top.
But Simon Sebag Montefiori sees a very different dynamic. Stalin emerged as a leader even before Lenin finally succumbed to his illnesses. Lenin’s comrades, far from disdaining him, deferred to him from the start. Moreover, they were practically mesmerized by him, allowing him to dismiss them from their positions, humiliate them and eventually jail and execute them and their families without any resistance.
This pattern endured throughout Stalin’s rule. One layer after another of his close associates went to the slaughter protesting their innocence and swearing allegiance to the tyrant.
For Stalin’s loyalists, it was always a huge surprise when they were awakened by the knock on the door in the middle of the night — even though they had watched hundreds of their predecessors shot, their wives sent to the Gulag and their children dispatched to the orphanages reserved for the children of the enemies of the people.
In fact, Soviet history of the period resembles a program the Nature channel. Stalin’s entourage was like antelopes and zebras who implicitly recognize the natural right of the lion to feed on them.
Even more fascinating is the story of Hitler’s hold on the National Socialist brass and Wehrmacht military commanders. True, his early successes dazzled them and made them believe that he could do no wrong. The political ascent of a small gang of street goons, the swift suppression of opposition, the economic miracle, the rapid rearmament accompanied by the cowing of the Western adversaries and, finally, early military successes were probably enough to make them think that he knew what he was doing.
But that lasted only until 1941. Andrew Nagorsky, a one-time Newsweek correspondent who has the distinction of being the last Western journalist to be expelled from the Soviet Union, titled his recent book 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War.
Maybe only a few Germans realized that the attack on the USSR was a disastrous mistake. By December, however, it became clear to everyone who had half a brain on their head. The Red Army dealt the Nazis their first defeat at the gates of Moscow and Hitler’s foolish claim that Stalin was all out of men to go on fighting was given the lie. At the same time, America’s entry into the war meant that Germany will lose — and lose disastrously.
Still, Hitler’s acolytes in the Nazi Party stuck to him even when the war started to go badly. Then there was the disaster of Stalingrad. Over 90,000 Germans were taken prisoner — of which only 6,000 would eventually get home. Then the Soviets crossed into Germany, pillaging and raping indiscriminately, while the Americans and the British devastated Germany’s beautiful cities from the air. A few military officers tried to get rid of Hitler in the 11th hour, but the party remained loyal to him to the end. They went to their graves still believing in their Fuehrer.
Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson wrote a book titled Everything Trump Touches Dies. Indeed, Trump has a knack for bankrupting businesses and getting associates into trouble. A long procession of his loyalists started to fill federal penitentiaries soon after he moved into the White House. His political operatives, supporters, lawyers and donors have been suffering a downfall one after the other. Several are very strong candidates for jail once he leaves office and investigations into his misdeeds begin in earnest. Yet, his Republican supporters are squarely behind him. It seems they are going to remain loyal to him to the bitter end.
Equally important the fact that Trump has run into the ground every honest business, every gambling establishment and every scam he has ever managed. His bankruptcies followed the same trajectory: first success, then a downward spiral and finally the whole enterprise ends in tears — especially as far as his investors and creditors are concerned. This is something to consider when we look at the US economy. The stock market is at a record, unemployment is extremely low; Trump devoted much of his address at Davos last week to boasting about American economic success. This is the euphoria stage of his business activity. However, just as his businesses, which were kind of a joke in New York for some 30 years, America has already become the laughingstock of the world. The tears part will come soon as well.
Why is it that Trump supporters, like Stalin’s admirers in the USSR and Hitler’s devotees in Nazi Germany, seem so squarely behind him? There are psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists who study the nature of religious and political cults. But maybe the answer lies deeper in human nature. We are, after all, a bunch of highly evolved primates. In a congress of orangutans ( a group of orangutans is indeed called a congress) once a leader asserts himself, all other members fall in with its decisions.
Perhaps these human leaders, supremely self-confident and anti-intellectual as they are, touch some kind of primal chord in our psyche, making us surrender to their will.
