Sarcastic, sneering and sadistic: The voice of modern power

What Putin and Trump's propagandists have in common

Sep 22, 2024

a group of people holding signs with pictures of men — Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

In the US town of Springfield Ohio far-right terrorists are calling in bomb threats to schools. State troopers are guarding pupils and public officials because Donald Trump told a…

What?

A lie?

“Lie” is too weak a word for our time of demagogues and dictators. You and I tell lies, as do ordinary politicians. Most of the time, to paraphrase François de La Rochefoucauld, our lying “is the homage which vice renders to virtue” – we pretend to be better than we are.

We are not hearing white lies or self-serving fibs, however. We are witnessing a radical assault on truth and a crude assertion of unconstrained power. Everywhere threatening and derisive voices warn those who insist on sticking to the facts that they will be treated as the enemies of the people

Let’s stick with Trump for a moment longer. In his debate with Kamala Harris he baselessly accused Haitian migrants of eating the pets of the people of Springfield. The lie had already been taken up by his running mate J.D. Vance. The officials who ran Springfield and the Republican administration of the state, which is Vance’s own state, no less, said the story was just not true. All that lay behind it was a rumour on social media.

Yet instead of correcting the falsehood and moving on, right-wing influencers backed Trump and Vance’s lie without restraint. They scrambled to justify the fake news, and turned on their critics with unconstrained aggression.

As far as I can tell, not one said words to the effect of “Trump and Vance had this story wrong and they should do the honourable thing and correct the record. But Republicans can continue to believe that immigration is too high and that progressives have lost control of America’s border.”

In other words, Trump’s supporters might have made a solid conservative argument. But instead, they rallied behind their leaders and turned with absolute ferocity on anyone who questioned them.

I interviewed Peter Pomerantsev this week, one of the leading authorities on Russian propaganda (I hope to broadcast our conversation soon.) Now teaching in the United States, Pomerantsev describes how the type of politician he once saw in Moscow during Putin’s early years has now spread across the democratic world.

They mix “cynicism. self-destruction and aggression” – often quite brilliantly – for they are not stupid people. You hear the same tone everywhere today: a mixture of sarcasm, sadism and bitterness.

Take Vladimir Solovyov, a mouthpiece for the Russian leadership. He attacked Andrey Sidorov, Dean of the School of World Politics at Moscow State University. Sidorov had the audacity to say that Russia should not use nuclear weapons in Ukraine or against Western Europe. If Moscow went nuclear, he warned, the West would retaliate— because this is how deterrence theory works in practice.

This is not the approved Kremlin line. Russia remains desperate to convince the West—especially the nervous Biden administration—that it will use nuclear weapons if NATO pushes its support for Ukraine too far.

So, Solovyov upped the ante. He accused Sidorov of wanting Russia to follow America as if it were a lesser superpower. “That is your logic,” he sneered. A treacherous logic—and a dangerous one in a country where any criticism of the Ukraine invasion can lead to imprisonment.

When Sidorov asked why Russia would nuke Ukraine, when it said it was Russian territory, Solokov said Ukrainians were “lowlifes”, who deserved to die.

Inevitably, he then accused Sidorov of engaging in treason by supporting Zelensky.

This was Russian state TV, so the argument may have been staged as a warning to viewers. But the message was real enough: question the war, and you brand yourself a traitor.

Now, compare Solovyov to Trump's bootlicker, Stephen Miller. He was spinning for Trump after the debate when Trump lied about migrants eating pets.

The Trump campaign has other lies to peddle, including the claim that Nicolás Maduro’s socialist dictatorship in Venezuela is deliberately sending criminals to the US to terrorize law-abiding citizens. Miller told reporters that Venezuelan crime rates had dropped because of the Biden administration’s failure to stop the flow of gangsters, claiming rates had decreased “by over 60 percent.”

As luck would have it, José María Del Pino, a Venezuelan journalist, was at the event. He politely asked Miller why he believed the fake crime statistics coming from a Maduro regime that American conservatives typically condemn.

At first, Miller responded like a seasoned political operator—suit-and-tie, polished, in control. But he dodged the question. The reporter didn’t let up, and kept asking why Miller trusted those fake figures. Had he even checked them?

Of course, Miller hadn’t. The lies were useful to his cause. Instead of coming clean, Miller went on the attack. His composure fell away, and real menace replaced feigned politeness. He bellowed about children being raped and murdered by migrants, as if it were the journalist’s fault.

“Children are dead and you are wasting my time. Children are being raped. Do you have any remorse for the dead children?”

Asking the US far right to tell the truth about immigration means that you are happy to see American children raped and murdered. Questioning Moscow’s propagandists makes you a traitor to holy mother Russia. The accusation is always that if you disagree with the strongman, you are the enemy, a fifth columnist, a saboteur.

Look at the faces of Solovyov and Miller. Look at how they move from calm as they expect to be taken at their word, to anger as they are challenged, and finally on to outright menace.

These are not the expressions of traditional rulers of society. They do not display the assurance of aristocrats or monarchs who are certain of their place in the world. They do not have the “sneer of cold command” that Shelley saw on the face of a pharaoh. There is nothing cold about them. They are boiling with rage.

Nor are they like traditional democratic politicians who are calculated and careful not to cause offence.

Instead, they seek out offence. They know the weaknesses of liberal democracy. They know how to play on their core vote’s feelings of resentment at a world that has left them behind. And not only economically behind. Some of the richest people you are likely to meet have been radicalised by cultural change and a feeling that liberals are laughing at them. Inferiority complexes are everywhere ripe for exploitation.

Historians tell us not to misrepresent the 1930s by comparing today’s authoritarians with 20^th century totalitarians, and we must respect their warnings. The present can never be a perfect replica of the past.

But if you want to know what Stalinism looked like, watch Russian propagandists revive the language of the terror by accusing critics of treason. And if you want to know what fascism sounded like, listen to Trump’s creatures craft a blood libel for the 21^st century as they claim that anyone who questions them is allied with the killers of innocent American children.

They get away with it because, in our shameful times, their tactics work. The far right has taken over the US Republican party. There is no effective challenge to Putin in Russia.

It follows that the great task of our time is to teach them that their road leads to failure. Russia must lose in Ukraine. Trump must lose in the US otherwise the noise from sneering, sadistic voices will deafen us all.

Writing from London

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