Trump and Putin in fantasyland

The Trump campaign’s comparison of the “lawlessness” of the former president’s legal troubles with that practiced by “Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the former Soviet Union, and other authoritarian, dictatorial regimes” isn’t just preposterous and arguably obscene. It’s also highly revelatory, suggesting another unflattering comparison to Trump.

Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, rightly said that “Comparing this indictment to Nazi Germany in the 1930s is factually incorrect, completely inappropriate and flat out offensive.”

Even if one assumes the worst and concludes that Trump is the target of a politically motivated conspiracy, the comparison with Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union is, frankly, ignorant — which may be worse than incorrect, inappropriate and offensive. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were totalitarian states that had no need to engage in elaborate court cases against their political opponents. The former would simply have arrested Trump and sent him to a concentration camp. The latter, especially under Joseph Stalin, would have shot him in the back of his head.

Far more interesting than this ignorance is the Trump campaign’s implied suggestion that Trump’s critics and opponents are Nazis. The parallel with Russian President Vladimir Putin should be self-evident by now. Although both Trump and Putin behave like Benito Mussolini, they have the gall to claim their opponents are Nazis. All that’s missing is for Trump to place all the blame for America’s ills on Putin’s favorite neo-Nazi — Ukraine’s Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

These bizarre beliefs wouldn’t be worth mentioning if it weren’t that they reveal something important about the two men: their absolute belief that they determine reality.

Andrew Sullivan recently wrote:

“My own view has long been that Trump is beyond truth and lies: his ego is everything; there is nothing outside it; it is the only reality he knows. If he were to acknowledge any facet of a reality that does not flatter his ego, he would have a psychic break. So he doesn’t. He is beyond accountability because he only lives in the moment, and reinvents the past at will. He is a truly postmodern man: no truth exists apart from his; and any alternative reality has to be attacked mercilessly.”

Russia’s illegitimate president doesn’t sputter, but other than that Sullivan could have been writing about Putin. He doesn’t just lie; he truly believes that he is Russia, that he defines reality, that he is always right, and that criticism of him is a repudiation of Russia and reality. Unsurprisingly, Trump and Putin claim to admire each other.

Whatever the future holds for Trump, one can state with great confidence that Putin’s future is bleak, precisely because his ultra-solipsism has lost touch with the real reality, and not the one in his head. The war is going badly, even as the murder of innocent Ukrainians proceeds apace.

The Russian economy is at best sluggish. The popular mood is glum. And, as the Prigozhin affair demonstrated, Russian elites are not unanimous in their love of the great leader. Sooner or later, the real reality will punish Putin for his political narcissism by having him be ousted by his comrades in arms.

Even all-powerful dictators can define reality in today’s world only up to a point. Eventually, people resist — by wearing chadors publicly and jeans at home, by marching in official parades while conducting critical conversations in their kitchens, by staying silent about war crimes while praying that their loved ones will not be drafted.

Total totalitarianism doesn’t just not work. It ultimately collapses, as the weight of hyper-centralization and hyper-control proves too heavy for its underdeveloped institutions.

Putin’s political system falls short of totalitarianism, but it meets the definitional criteria of fascism and, like other fascist regimes, it too will break down — and arguably already is breaking down. After all, the central feature of fascism is the all-powerful, invincible, infallible, charismatic leader. Putin arguably fit the bill some 15 to 20 years ago. Now he’s weak, prone to error and all too mundane. Small wonder that he’s lost his magic and will soon lose his head.

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”