Flying false flags and fighting fake fires: How autocrats build their power

Can we stop them?

Mysterious bombers hit a Russian apartment block in 1999 (Wikipedia)

So faithfully is Donald Trump following the autocrat’s playbook it’s as if Vladimir Putin had written the script for him.

Here’s how the section on power grabbing goes.

The wannabe dictator turns a minor crisis into a major confrontation. He – it’s always a “he” – deploys the repressive power of the state in the hope that his opponents overreact. And if they don’t, he deploys more repressive power anyway.

He manufactures a crisis to justify more repression and – for this is the real aim of the exercise – to encourage frightened people to rally to him and see him as a strongman who can protect them from the forces of anarchy.

The great 20^th century American journalist H.L. Mencken said

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

History has proved him right. Putin came to power after a series of mysterious bombings of apartment blocks in Moscow and the Russian provinces in 1999. Putin, then the Russian prime minister, blamed them on Islamist terrorists from Chechnya – for, as every aspiring autocrat knows, sinister foreigners always make the best hobgoblins.

He received political credit for standing tall as a tough guy who could beat the terrorists. By 2000, he was Russian president – and has never let his grip loosen on power ever since.

And yet no one could ever prove that Islamists were behind the bombings. Russian historians and journalists claimed that they were a false-flag attack perpetrated by Russian state security services to boost Putin’s popularity.

If that seemed a far-fetched accusation to make in 1999, it seems considerably less far-fetched today.

As if on cue, Trump has now dispatched the US National Guard to Los Angeles. He is turning the everyday concerns of policing protest into a national crisis worthy of the deployment of military force.

Trump said he needed to call out the National Guard because of “numerous incidents of violence and disorder,” in protests against his tough immigration policies – that’s right, those sinister foreigners are proving their usefulness once again.

In truth, the disorder was not a threat to national security, and Trump’s reaction has ominous implications.

As the governor of California Gavin Newsom said, Trump’s deployment was escalatory, because the situation was already under control.

In other words, Trump wants more confrontations. Worse than that, he wants to give himself an open-ended power to deploy troops wherever and whenever he pleases.

Imagine how provocative that might be. Imagine what might happen if he deployed troops in election campaigns to intimidate voters.

I think it is fair to say that, whatever you imagine, Trump is ahead of you.

When asked by a reporter yesterday if he planned to send troops to Los Angeles, he answered: “We’re gonna have troops everywhere.”

In the Lowdown this week I talked to John Sweeney, formerly of the Observer and Panorama, and the author of books on Putin and the corruption of power, about how you stop the relentless march of authoritarianism.

With great difficulty is the depressing answer, which does not mean we shouldn’t try. For what other choice do we have?

You can listen here on Apple

Here on Spotify

On Amazon here or on any other app via this link

---

With Trump and Putin tearing our world apart, I am writing more than ever. Good journalism isn’t like clickbait: it takes time and money. I can only keep going because of the kind and generous support of subscribers.

You will receive access to all articles, archives, podcasts and debates. Annual subscriptions work out at £1.15 ($1.45) a week, which is a pretty good deal, even if I do say so myself!

Below are two pieces from behind the paywall on the macho, homophobic culture Putin fosters to bolster his rule.