One was Wednesday, when Donald Trump incited a violent fascist-type mob to storm the Capitol, violating law, order, decency, and protocol in an attempt to overturn his indisputable loss in the November election. In Moscow for the holidays, I regretted being away from my hometown, New York, ready to hit the streets in defense of the world’s oldest democracy. The second was in 1991, when hard-line Communists detained the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in a failed coup attempt to turn the Soviet Union away from democratic perestroika (restructuring). Then, too, I was on the other side of the world, in New York wishing I were in Moscow hastening the arrival of the new Russia. But these geographical disconnects made me think of some points of comparison.
Both dramatic events are not equal either in history or politics. Yet, the reasons they occurred may not be too different—the worldview of one part of the country is in direct opposition to another—and, as they were in Russia, the consequences in America can be long-lasting and profound.
In Russia, the attempted coup by those who wanted to preserve the Soviet Union in turn sped up the Communist empire’s demise, allowing for democratic changes to take hold. Yet democracy never came—the country failed to establish a functional system of rules, norms, checks, and balances, though free markets were running wild, resulting in a chaotic, and corrupt, transition. Diminishing economic protections and the complete dismissal of the Soviet past—even though people gave up communist ideology, many were not ready to cancel their life experiences—brought Vladimir Putin to the fore. His promise of order and national self-respect was welcome, never mind that over the years his government has become more corrupt than ever before and freedoms now are in short supply. Yet, many Russians still resent Gorbachev, wishing the coup against him had succeeded, thus preserving the Soviet Union. Some 75% now believe the Soviet era was the “greatest time,” which to some offered “stability and confidence.” A lot of it is imagined nostalgia, but Putin’s clever celebration of the past, including victory in World War II or Soviet achievements in space (it’s no accident that Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine is patriotically named after the Sputnik satellite), has a lot of fans.
America’s circumstances—its 200-year-plus history of democracy, constitutional law, and functional institutions—are different, but its divide may not be, and if American leaders mishandle the aftermath like Russia did, then the country could be in for even bigger turmoil down the road.
Joe Biden insists that “the scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not represent who we are” but “a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness.” This is a form of American delusion—of those who claim that Trumpism is “not us.” There is a side of American life that has an authoritarian streak, not unlike Putin’s nationalism. It feeds off searching for enemies everywhere and creating conspiracies to cover up its own shortcomings. It accepts torturing prisoners in “black sites” around the world, tolerates racist killings, or approvingly cites Hitler as Congresswoman Mary Miller did at a rally last week. Trump has masterfully stoked resentment within the white population against “the other,” often tweeting statements that look a lot like incitements to violence—long before his mobs stormed the Capitol. By constantly “saying the quiet part out loud,” he has given millions of Americans who have white nationalist views a license to act on their most nativist, despotic, and extreme impulses. What’s worse, many Republican politicians condoned this behavior with the Bolshevik thinking that any method putting the party on top will do.
Every nation has the government it deserves. With America’s self-assigned credo of being a shining city upon a hill, many people in the country—most of them white—tend to think of it as infallible and superior. Trump is this America’s son, although he has taken this idea of U.S. dominance to an entirely new and fictional level, essentially declaring that he is America.
His millions of supporters live in the realm of might and fight that he constructed for them. Refusing to recognize Biden’s victory, they will not be pacified by soothing speeches about America’s “moving on” without holding the guilty to account, and with members of their own party, the GOP, leading the way.
In 1991, Soviet coup leaders were charged with treason, only to be later lauded as patriots encompassing the attitudes of those who felt marginalized and wronged by sweeping societal changes. America has witnessed a similar process, but unlike paternalistic Russia where guilt depends on the whim of the authorities, it has laws. Trump’s legal effort to overturn the election has been defeated. The president’s supporters loved his message of “law and order.” By that very logic those who violently rebelled against recent court decisions must accept real-life consequences—prison sentences, job losses, and so on. The shock and disbelief—even embarrassment, the shining city acting like an anarchic autarky—that so many felt witnessing the Capitol riot scenes should pull America back into reality. This is not some bad TV we are watching.