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GUEST COMMENTARY - Most people perceive Donald Trump as a terrible individual, a terrible politician, and a terrible president. From a European standpoint, Donald Trump might indeed look like an all-new “Donald the Terrible”.
Europeans have known a handful of terrible rulers. From Germany’s Adolf Hitler, to Italy’s Mussolini, to Spain’s Franco, to Romania’s Vlad the Impaler (son of Dracul) and to Russia’s Stalin.
Not to be forgotten: Ivan the Terrible, Russia’s 16th century prototype of Donald Trump.
Not unrelated to Russia’s first Tsar – “Ivan the Terrible” (1530-1584) – the much more senile Donald Trump depicts a range of rather bewildering commonalities to the youthful, energetic and merciless punisher Ivan the Terrible.
Commonly, Ivan the Terrible is seen as having pushed Russia from Europe’s backward Hinterland towards a fledgling empire.
On this, Trump may well turn out to be the exact opposite. His electoral triumph may mark the decline of an empire. And yet, much of Trump’s behavior remains highly similar to that of Ivan the Terrible.
Both men have a lust for unrestrained power of the strong ruler. And both men are yearning for command. However, this might come with an immense human cost to people, society, and economy.
Coincidentally, the attribute “terrible” remains a fitting description to both men. Yet, both are also unreliable, defective, paranoid, and evil.
While Ivan is often seen as being a sadistic oriental despot, Donald the Terrible isn’t far off. He is a known bully.
Under Trump’s command, children were put in metal cages. This is un-American. His Capitol Hill riot killed five people. This, too, was un-American.
Ivan the Terrible preferred war, massacres, communal punishment, brutalities, and geographical conquer. Except for the Panama Canal, Greenland, and Canada that Trump wants to conquer, Ivan’s modern day evil twin – seemingly – prefers political vindictiveness, personal viciousness, and international trade wars.
While Ivan was a devoted follower of Orthodox Christianity, Donald only pretends to be. Yet, Trump has the support of America’s Christian fundamentalist right.
This is despite – or perhaps because of – his often displayed misogynistic sexual violence towards women and demonstrated contempt for Christian morality. Ivan the Terrible abused women in a similar way.
Both men might even agree on one of Ivan’s key ideas, I will not see the destruction of the Christian converts who are loyal to me, and to my last breath I will fight for the Orthodox faith.
Similarly, Donald Trump is dead set on something that shows even more traces of Ivan the Terrible. Ivan created the oprichnina. Trump might well have his own mini oprichnina of fanatical followers.
Ivan’s oprichnina was a kind of an early okhrana or KGB. Its members were answerable only to him, afforded him personal protection and truncated Russia’s traditional powers and rights.
Under far right Trumpism, this might well mean that democratically elected officials, civil servants, administrators, bureaucrats, politicians, CEOs and even billionaires must now be loyal to Trump or face the chopping board.
Showing this most recently was Mark Zuckerberg. He is already down on his knees in front of the grand master. Of course, this does not work the other way around. Loyalty to the Führer is a one-way street. The Führer can, and often will, still be cruel to you.
In Ivan’s Tsarist empire as in Trump’s crypto-fascistic autocracy, absolute loyalty to the despot lies at the heart of the regressive Russian state and Trump’s more neo-fascistic deep state. The great Sergei Eisenstein once noted,
Ivan the Terrible was very cruel.
You can show that he was cruel,
but you have to show why it was essential to be cruel.
The very same thing can be said about Donald Trump. Personal cruelty to anyone surrounding him remains essential to Trump – a known bully. Bullying is his trademark.
If you engage in the highly dangerous enterprise and take “Donald the Terrible” at face value, the democratic order is under his hammer.
“The Terrible” claims that Americans have had enough of being told what to think and how to talk. The far right detests political correctness so that its inhumanity and dehumanisation can run wild – verbally, and otherwise.
Perhaps rightly, Republicans claim that Americans are more interested in daily living expenses rather than, what the radical right calls, “woke ideologies”. After all, it was one of the Democrat’s very own who coined the phrase, it’s the economy, stupid.
With that and with the fact that the media reports’ every minor jerking of Trump, he was able to mass mobilize young people, women, and particularly workers at lowered educational levels for his re-election.
With 2.3 millions more Americans voting for Trump than for Harris (49.9% to 48.4%), the Democrats have – not extremely clearly, but still – lost the public vote.
American capitalism was happy. It would have been either way – Reps or Dems. The day after the Trump election (with 1.5% ahead of Harris in the popular vote), financial capitalism’s prime index – the Dow Jones stock index – shot up by 3.5%. It was the highest level ever.
Meanwhile, Germany’s equivalent to the USA’s Dow Jones – Germany’s DAX – fell by 1.3%. European capitalism did not like the right-wing populist Donald Trump.
Joy of the future of capitalism here – panic over there. Worse, a Munich tabloid headlined, hate has won. A litany of negativity followed. It was familiar even to the educated – albeit in a restrained form.
American voters had chosen a racist regime, led by a primitive, lying, and convicted sex offender pretending to be the Messiah.
Trump’s America is a swamp where you can shoot people if they disagree with you. The inevitable conclusion of all this was that Europe must say goodbye to a Trumpist USA.
Optimism in the US met sadness and disbelief in the EU. It followed an established USA-vs.-Europe pattern. In short, that’s the way Americans are. And that’s the way we, Europeans are.
They only have a civilization, but Europeans have a culture. They chase the big buck and go after quick riches. By contrast, we, Europeans are enlightened, sensible, and reasonable.
Today, reactionary Trump can indeed be seen as a bizarre, malicious and as a power-hungry outlier. The Terrible may well be a new type of “politician” – a mixture of a doggy businessman, nasty showman, and far right demagogue.
This is the kind of politician that has never existed before him in presidential history since 1788. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Carter, Obama may shine – to some degree.
The worst that can be said of many others, is heartlessness (Reagan) or war-mongering (Reagan and LBJ) or insignificance (the rest). Trump is certainly a rather uniquely cruel monster that one might not find a second time in the list of US presidents.
Despite all this, the question remains: why did Trump win with a majority of 1.5% of the popular vote? If he is a racist – which he is – why did a scant half of Latino men vote for him?
Worse, roughly a quarter of all black men did as well. Once, America’s Jewish people voted up to 90% for the Democrats. This time it was just 70%. Overall, there might be five types of Trump voters:
1. Preservationists (20%) with a low level of education, a racist outlook on immigration and an imagined American identity. They also believe that the political system is rigged.
2. Staunch Conservatives (31%) holding so-called “traditional values” like pussy grabbing and having a quickie with porn-workers. Simultaneously, Trump continues to play the faithful husband. His conservative values are represented through his three wives: Ivana Trump (1977-1990), Marla Maples (1993-199), and Melania Trump (since 2005). Plus, there are also: Jill Harth (1992), Katie Johnson/Jane Doe (1994), E. Jean Carroll (1996), Summer Zervos (2007), Alva Johnson (2016), Jessica Leeds (1980s), Kristin Anderson (1990s), Stacey Williams (1993), Lisa Boyne (1996), Cathy Heller (1997), Temple Taggart McDowell (1997), Amy Dorris (1997), Karena Virginia (1998). The list of sex-partners goes on. And not be forgotten: Stormy Daniels (plus hush-money to fool the public and secure Trump’s 2016 election).
3. Anti-Elites (19%) voting for the elitist Donald Trump who represents nothing but the American elite.
4. Free Market-Believers (25%) who voted for the Trump/Musk team. Meanwhile, Musk runs “his” very own two monopolies – “X” for short propaganda messages and soon TikTok for short propaganda videos. And finally, the
5. Disengaged (5%) who have no clue about politics and what Trump means for America and the world.
Worse, if the right-wing demagogue is an outright macho, why did Trump take the majority of women voters? Are all these fascist voters? Or did they fall into a category labeled:
they don’t know what they do?
Alternatively, many Trump voters might have fallen into something like an UK-style Brexit trap. It turned out to be Brexit-regret-it in the end.
A recent report stated that the UK will be £311bn (€375bn, $390bn or $390,000,000,000) worse off by 2035 due to leaving the European Union.
A sheer unimaginable sum. With that sort of money, you can buy Morocco, Algeria or Lebanon.
Back in the USA, the classical power foundations of the Democrats are crumbling. The three core reasons for this may well be:
1. the economy – not real numbers but what people feel or are made to believe,
2. racism: the trumped-up issue of migrants converted into racism to set them against us, and
3. ideology: the far-right culture war’s wokeness.
All that played into Trump’s hands. Despite Trump’s idiot.cracy – a democracy run by an idiot – his outright fantasies, paranoia, delusions, right-wing demagogy, and so on, the American economy did rather brilliantly around the time of Trump’s election.
Inflation was down while economic growth was up. Yet far right propaganda overtook economic reality.
Voters hardly read economic statistics. Trump voters might not even understand them. But voters see rising bills for food, gasoline, cars, and housing.
Meanwhile, people also remember the quasi-opening of the border with Mexico under Biden, which brought millions into the country. They, too, are presented as the enemy in Trump’s propaganda orbit.
Contrary to Trump’s nightmarish misconceptions, these are workers that America needs. The old dictum “population is prosperity” might still apply.
In the background of Trump’s military-style deportation plan looms a Brexit-like labor shortage that is dragging the UK down.
Meanwhile, the classic clientele of the Democrats has been presented as those who suffer. And some do indeed suffer. For example, from crime – assumed or otherwise.
However, and according to the latest FBI report, crime in the ghettos of the big cities has “declined slightly”.
The idea of “Defund the Police” did not help either. People are made to watch the “daily-crime-porno-like” evening news show on TV – or worse, on Facebook, Musk’s Twitter (X), soon-to-be-Musk’s TikTok, etc.
The same propaganda entices many to focus on quick fixes and not on the long-term prevention of crime and violence. To the simple minded, “defund the police” simply took money away from the police.
Meanwhile, affluent districts remained, more or less, untouched by crime.
More importantly, the Trump election campaign moved people from class struggle (reality) to culture war (ideology).
Trump’s poorly educated voters were made to believe in an ever-tightening belt steaming from progressive policies that they could not understand. Meanwhile, global warming was pushed off the table altogether.
Trump simply told them that the leash was in the hands of a progressive-liberal elite who dominates America. This has re-directed voters away from the real culprits: capitalism, corporations, corruption, and greedy bosses.
Invented in neoliberal and post-modern universities and disseminated by the prevailing media, the postmodern free-market credo was turned against the state.
Not capitalism but the state, now presents the enemy. Corporations, environmental vandalism, bribery, the corrupt business elite, and the moneyed-up lobbyists have simply disappeared from the crime scene.
Worse, voters were told that progressives enforce something called the correct faith. The overall propaganda message became, they dictate what people are allowed to talk about.
Gender indoctrination, cancel culture, LGBTQ, trans-propaganda in schools, same-sex toilets, social justice that serve the progressive elite but not the little people had replaced capitalism, harsh working conditions, escalating job insecurity, the abyss of global warming, mass poverty, wage theft, rising and widening inequality, and the lack of social mobility – the rich stays rich, the poor remains poor. In short, racism and conservatism overlaid class and capitalism – once again.
Unforgettable is Hillary Clinton who – perhaps rather correctly – called Trump supporters a basket of deplorables. And Barack Obama, who had, rightly, indicated that Trump voters cling to guns or religion.
Trump’s victory shows that even the most well-meaning ones lost the culture war. More than ever before, this now takes place inside filter bubbles.
On November 5, Kamala Harris was not woman enough to drag her party into the middle. The far-right filter bubbles and Trump’s media propaganda machine won the day.
Seen from an historical perspective, the Social Democratic Roosevelt coalition, which was formed in the 1930s and 1940s and has set the tone since then, experienced a late Waterloo on this election day.
The pro-Trump battle cry was, we can’t take it anymore! Too bad they were the majority. The Democratic Party of Kamala Harris should have realized the shift in tectonic plates long before Election Day.
Does this concern us Europeans? Firstly, almost everything that emerges in the USA reaches – sooner or later – Europe albeit often a little cooled down.
Not only pop-culture, rock music, hamburgers, sneakers, hoodies, Hollywood, slang – “cool” instead of “gut”, “Hi” instead of “Grüss Gott”, “Mom” instead of “Mutter”, “High Five” instead of “We were great!”
Meanwhile, Europe imports American culture and even imitates their university model (B.A., M.A.). It used to be the other way around: Harvard, Stanford, and Johns Hopkins copied the German system of teaching from research.
Worse, progressive parties have neglected their classic clientele in the USA as in Europe: the working class, the petty bourgeoisie, and the “downtrodden” (Hillary Clinton).
In 1912, Germany’s social-democratic SPD party was the strongest faction in the Reichstag – Germany’s parliament.
Today, the social-democratic SPD only comes to a miserable 15% to 17% in recent polls. Even Germany’s Neo-Nazi “AfD” party is ahead with 19% to 20%.
Worse, Germany’s conservative-Neo-Nazi bloc (CDU+AfD) could hold a majority of 51% in the upcoming election. Neighboring Austria might be the future model for Germany, if not Europe.
Lastly, the far right – if not neo-fascist – counterrevolution has long since begun. The rise of right-wing parties from Portugal to the Netherlands, from Austria to Hungary, from Italy to Germany to Sweden, and beyond show this.
Yet, Europe is not America. Europe has an election system defined by proportional representation that washes many parties into a parliament, forcing each other to a compromise. In America’s majority systems, the winner takes all.
Worse, Trump has conquered the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. His Supreme Court is dominated by reactionary judges. This is what Europeans – and many Americans – have to worry about the most.
Such an accumulation of unrestrained power is rare – even in US history. In short, Trump has a free hand at least until the 2026 congressional elections.
In the meantime, he can fill about 3,000 government offices with his oprichnina-like stooges and lackeys.
At the same time, the counterweights are missing. Donald the Terrible is free to enforce what his extreme rhetoric promises. His country and the rest of the world should be afraid. Especially Europe.
Worse, Trump’s principle is unpredictability. This is the top maxim of The Terrible’s foreign policy agenda. Getting others out of step and leaving them in the dark is Trump’s signature strategy.
This applies to trade policy as well. Trump seeks to impose tariffs of 20% to 60%. He neither understands nor care about what problems trade barriers will cause – almost by definition.
In the first incidents, these barriers will increase domestic prices hurting those who voted for him. No more cheap stuff at Walmart. Secondly, the retaliation might even be more decimating – particularly to America’s exports.
Unpredictability, to be away from the abyss, and have a safety retreat are the essences of Trumpian tactics. This is paired with a hefty dose of intimidating and bullying behaviour.
In truth, Trump might not have any principles. According to Trump’s own sister, Donald the Terrible has no morality, no ideology, and certainly no guiding philosophy.
He’s like a naughty child. From that, it follows that many of the self-appointed so-called “Trump experts” who produce “Trump insights” on the assembly line, might practice humility.
No matter whether triumphant Trumpists or depressed Cassandras, they simply don’t know. Nevertheless, plausible warnings still apply. With the Republicans having won the House of Representatives, the separation of powers is de facto lost. Not to mention the Trump majority in the Supreme Court.
Worse, there is no longer any reliance on the so-called adult in the room. This often refers to an anonymous person in Trump’s first White House. People like Vice President Mike Pence (“hang Pence”, as Trump refers to him) and former Secretary of Defense General James Mattis are gone.
Now, only Trumpist orthodox disciples (Trump’s oprichnina) are added to the list. No more brakes.
Meanwhile, the isolationism of the 1920s and 1930s is not coming back. No matter what Trump trumpets out. In the end, America can ill afford the loss of the European continent with 500 million people and the second largest economy in the world – Trump or no Trump.
(Born on the foothills of Germany’s Castle Frankenstein, Thomas Klikauer is the author of over 1,000 publications including a book on Alternative für Deutschland: The AfD – published by Liverpool University Press.)
