Vladimir Putin may be near the end of his reign, but that end is unlikely to be today

benfell

Western neo-fascism


Fig. 1. Photograph by Joachim F. Thurn, August 1991, Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F089030-0003, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE


It is time for me to confess an error. While I have viewed white Christian nationalism, formerly Trumpism, a unification of the disparate tendencies of conservatism I identified in my dissertation with quite some alarm,[1] I have paid somewhat less attention to a larger political ecosystem which includes European far right movements as well as the Gilead project in the U.S. that have aimed for, and in some cases, established competitive authoritarian regimes, effectively locking out all opposition from power. While a number of authors have given this development its due, Ishaan Tharoor has been outstanding.[2]

This page is my attempt to catch up. It is missing much, particularly with Marine Le Pen in France, but I hope to remedy this over time. It is not that I had not heard of the rise of these political parties and their politicians. I have long been aware of Germany’s efforts to expunge extremism and especially Nazism. But I have been in denial, trusting that mainstream politicians would confine extremism to the fringes. That hope is no longer tenable.[3]

It is also possible to argue that I continue to err in failing to include such figures as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Narendra Modi in India, and the now-retired Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. My time is limited and I am trying to contain my scope.

I remain optimistic for now about the situation in the U.S. I think Republicans may well be headed for a historic defeat this November.[4] But such a moment clearly has yet to arrive in Europe,[5] even if Giorgia Meloni’s victory in Italy may not quite be all it appears[6] and Le Pen came up short in France.[7] While Vladimir Putin may be losing his gamble in U.S. politics, he may be winning it in Europe and so I remain deeply concerned for Ukraine.[8]

Michael Crowley, “Italy’s Hard-Right Lurch Raises New Concerns in Washington,” New York Times, September 26, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/26/us/politics/italy-election-biden.html

Yascha Mounk, “Italians Didn’t Exactly Vote for Fascism,” Atlantic, September 26, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/italy-election-far-right-winner-giorgia-meloni-fascism/671556/

Ishaan Tharoor, “The mainstreaming of the West’s far right is complete,” Washington Post, September 27, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2022/09/27/mainstreaming-wests-far-right-is-complete/

Gilead

Competitive authoritarian regime project


Fig. 2. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Mitchell during signing ceremony of the voting rights act. Yoichi Okamoto, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

“You do not have to have emergency powers or a military coup for democracy to wither,” Aziz Huq, a constitutional-law professor at the University of Chicago, told me [Andrew Marantz]. “Most recent cases of backsliding, Hungary being a classic example, have occurred through legal means.” [Viktor] Orbán runs for reëlection every four years. In theory, there is a chance that he could lose. In practice, he has so thoroughly rigged the system that his grip on power is virtually assured. The political-science term for this is “competitive authoritarianism.” Most scholarly books about democratic backsliding (“The New Despotism,” “Democracy Rules,” “How Democracies Die”) cite Hungary, along with Brazil and Turkey, as countries that were consolidated democracies, for a while, before they started turning back the clock.[9]

Mathew Ingram, “The social-media platforms, the ‘Big Lie,’ and the coming elections,” Columbia Journalism Review, September 27, 2022, https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/the-social-media-platforms-the-big-lie-and-the-coming-elections.php

Inquiry

Quantitative

Surveys


Fig. 3. Graph showing the deterioration of response rates by the Pew Research Center, February 27, 2019, fair use.[10]

Perry Bacon, Jr., does not address[11] that when the response rate, which should be ninety percent of a representative sample or more,[12] is instead in the single digits,[13] pollsters have a self-selecting sample that cannot represent non-respondents, particularly when, due to non-response, we have no idea, none whatsoever, how members of that self-selecting sample differ from all those non-respondents. This completely invalidates the methodology and I don’t care what rhetoric pollsters deploy to excuse themselves—the claim that polling works regardless[14] is belied by all the instances in which it doesn’t[15]—or what statistical magic they think they can employ to get around this problem—an absence of data remains an absence of data. This is a non-methodology that persists because we are desperate for an imaginary certainty of numbers,[16] and because people have built entire careers around this non-methodology.

No one addresses this point. Because to do so would be to admit that they are fundamentally full of shit.

Perry Bacon, Jr., “Polls are useful. They just can’t predict elections in swing states,” Washington Post, September 27, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/polls-accuracy-midterm-elections-perry-bacon/

Ukraine


Fig. 4. “Destroyed Russian military vehicles located on the main street Khreshchatyk are seen as part of the celebration of the Independence Day of Ukraine in Kyiv, August 24.” Photograph by Gleb Garanich for Reuters, August 24, 2022,[17] fair use.

Anatol Lieven and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft were wrong to favor Ukrainian capitulation to Russia in January.[18]

That said, it is interesting that Lieven thinks Vladimir Putin’s regime may be at an end. What he now wants is to save face for a successor regime by giving them something they can paint as victory.[19] I’m not fond of solving Russian political problems at Ukraine’s further expense: Ukraine has already paid a very high price.

There’s good reason to suspect that Putin may not long remain in power,[20] and there certainly is public unrest and an awful lot of draft resistance,[21] but frankly, I expect to see a lot more heat and smoke before Putin goes down. Lieven’s argument here is that this is not what happened when Boris Yeltsin capitulated to Putin,[22] but Putin is not Yeltsin, not by any stretch.

Lieven’s Quincy Institute misjudged Ukraine’s prospects at the beginning of the war.[23] I honestly have no idea why we should trust their judgment now.

Thomas Bolton, “Russian forces ‘palpably panicking’ in Kharkiv region, says Zelenskyy,” EuroNews, September 20, 2022, https://www.euronews.com/2022/09/20/russian-forces-palpably-panicking-in-kharkiv-region-says-zelenskyy

Robyn Dixon, “Russia moves toward annexing Ukraine regions in a major escalation,” Washington Post, September 20, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/20/russia-referendum-annexation-luhansk-donetsk-kherson-ukraine/

John Gambrell, “Ukraine, using captured Russian tanks, firms up its lines,” Associated Press, September 20, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-kyiv-kharkiv-3351d15af41ddde4176cb7cf72e74ac4

Matthew Luxmoore and Mauro Orru, “Russia Moves to Annex Occupied Lands as Ukraine Presses Offensive,” Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-moves-to-tighten-grip-on-occupied-lands-as-ukraine-presses-offensive-11663675647

Barbara Kollmeyer, “Putin’s partial draft announcement appears to spark scramble to leave Russia as flights fill up,” MarketWatch, September 21, 2022, https://www.marketwatch.com/story/putins-partial-draft-announcement-appears-to-spark-scramble-to-leave-russia-as-flights-fill-up-11663769382

Pjotr Sauer, “Putin flirts again with grim prospect of nuclear war – this time he might mean it,” Guardian, September 21, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/21/putin-flirts-again-with-grim-prospect-of-nuclear-war-this-time-he-might-mean-it

Zoya Sheftalovich, “Putin calls up 300,000 reservists, makes nuclear threat,” Politico, September 21, 2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/putin-announces-partial-mobilization-russian-reservists-nuclear-threat-conscription-ukraine/

Ishaan Tharoor, “Russia pushes the panic button and raises risk of nuclear war,” Washington Post, September 21, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/21/russia-referendums-ukraine-occupied-nuclear/

Julian Borger, “Russia’s nuclear threats ‘totally unacceptable’, says UN chief,” Guardian, September 22, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/22/russia-nuclear-threats-totally-unacceptable-says-un-chief-antonio-guterres

Robyn Dixon, Mary Ilyushina, and David L. Stern, “Putin faces fury in Russia over military mobilization and prisoner swap,” Washington Post, September 22, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/22/mobilization-putin-anger-russia-war/

Robert Mackey, “Russians Return to Streets to Protest Widening of Putin’s War on Ukraine,” Intercept, September 22, 2022, https://theintercept.com/2022/09/22/russia-ukraine-putin-war-protests/

Paul Sonne and John Hudson, “U.S. has sent private warnings to Russia against using a nuclear weapon,” Washington Post, September 22, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/22/russia-nuclear-threat-us-options/

Şebnem Arsu et al., “Putin Bets It All in Ukraine,” Spiegel, September 23, 2022, https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/no-more-illusions-putin-bets-it-all-in-ukraine-a-a94b78fd-a99b-4196-a0a6-0332057337ea

Pjotr Sauer and Dan Sabbagh, “Border queues build as people flee Russia to escape Putin’s call-up,” Guardian, September 23, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/23/border-queues-build-as-people-flee-russia-to-escape-putin-call-up

David L. Stern and Robyn Dixon, “With Kalashnikov rifles, Russia drives the staged vote in Ukraine,” Washington Post, September 24, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/24/ukraine-putin-referendums/

Robyn Dixon et al., “Russian mobilization prompts backlash as Ukraine annexation effort plows ahead,” Washington Post, September 25, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/25/russia-ukraine-mobilization-referendums/

Edward Helmore, “Jake Sullivan: US will act ‘decisively’ if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine,” Guardian, September 25, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/25/us-russia-ukraine-war-nuclear-weapons-jake-sullivan

Yaroslav Trofimov, “Pushing East of Kupyansk, Ukrainian Forces Expand Offensive,” Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/pushing-east-of-kupyansk-ukrainian-forces-expand-offensive-11664111037

Ishaan Tharoor, “The right-wing turn against Ukraine may be around the corner,” Washington Post, September 26, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2022/09/26/ukraine-west-right-wing-fatigue-italy/

Julia Ioffe, “Putin’s Male Fragility,” Puck News, September 27, 2022, https://puck.news/putins-male-fragility/

Anatol Lieven, “Putin’s regime may fall – but what would come next?” Guardian, September 27, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/27/putin-regime-fall-ukraine-west-negotiate

  1. [1]David Benfell, “I cannot yet tell you my 2024 forecast was wrong,” Not Housebroken, September 10, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/08/13/i-cannot-yet-tell-you-my-2024-forecast-was-wrong/; David Benfell, “My 2024 forecast,” Not Housebroken, September 10, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/03/10/my-2024-forecast/↩
  2. [2]Zack Beauchamp, “Ron DeSantis is following a trail blazed by a Hungarian authoritarian,” Vox, April 28, 2022, https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/4/28/23037788/ron-desantis-florida-viktor-orban-hungary-right-authoritarian; David Broder, “The Future Is Italy, and It’s Bleak,” New York Times, July 22, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/opinion/italy-draghi-meloni-government.html; Roger Cohen, “Emmanuel Macron Defeats Marine Le Pen for Second Term as French President,” New York Times, April 24, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/world/europe/french-election-results-macron-le-pen.html; Yascha Mounk, “Italians Didn’t Exactly Vote for Fascism,” Atlantic, September 26, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/italy-election-far-right-winner-giorgia-meloni-fascism/671556/; Jennifer Rankin, “ECJ dismisses Hungary and Poland’s complaints over rule-of-law measure,” Guardian, February 16, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/feb/16/ecj-dismisses-hungary-poland-complaints-eu-rule-of-law-measure; Zsuzsanna Szelényi, “How Viktor Orbán Built His Illiberal State,” New Republic, April 5, 2022, https://newrepublic.com/article/165953/viktor-orban-built-illiberal-state; Ishaan Tharoor, “U.S. conservatives yearn for Orban’s Hungary,” Washington Post, August 4, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2021/08/04/american-conservatives-orban-hungary/; Ishaan Tharoor, “The Orbanization of America: The U.S. right walks in Hungary’s path,” Washington Post, May 17, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/17/viktor-orban-american-right-illiberal-orbanization/; Ishaan Tharoor, “The Orbanization of America: Florida shadows Hungary’s war on LGBTQ rights,” Washington Post, May 18, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/18/cpac-hungary-lgbtq-orban-florida-desantis/; Ishaan Tharoor, “The Orbanization of America: How to capture a democracy,” Washington Post, May 18, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/18/orban-democracy-trump-united-states-elections-hungary/; Ishaan Tharoor, “Italy is on its way to being run by ‘post-fascists,’” Washington Post, July 26, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/26/italy-meloni-post-fascists/; Ishaan Tharoor, “Orban at CPAC brings the ‘far-right international’ into focus,” Washington Post, August 4, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2022/08/04/orban-hungary-far-right-international-cpac-conservative/; Ishaan Tharoor, “Sweden’s election marks a new far-right surge in Europe,” Washington Post, September 16, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/16/sweden-election-far-right-democrats/; Ishaan Tharoor, “The mainstreaming of the West’s far right is complete,” Washington Post, September 27, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2022/09/27/mainstreaming-wests-far-right-is-complete/↩
  3. [3]Ishaan Tharoor, “The mainstreaming of the West’s far right is complete,” Washington Post, September 27, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2022/09/27/mainstreaming-wests-far-right-is-complete/↩
  4. [4]David Benfell, “Spring in November?” Not Housebroken, September 26, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/09/19/spring-in-november/↩
  5. [5]Ishaan Tharoor, “The mainstreaming of the West’s far right is complete,” Washington Post, September 27, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2022/09/27/mainstreaming-wests-far-right-is-complete/↩
  6. [6]Yascha Mounk, “Italians Didn’t Exactly Vote for Fascism,” Atlantic, September 26, 2022, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/09/italy-election-far-right-winner-giorgia-meloni-fascism/671556/↩
  7. [7]Roger Cohen, “Emmanuel Macron Defeats Marine Le Pen for Second Term as French President,” New York Times, April 24, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/24/world/europe/french-election-results-macron-le-pen.html↩
  8. [8]David Benfell, “Vladimir Putin’s [T/t]rump card,” Not Housebroken, September 26, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2022/05/21/vladimir-putins-t-trump-card/↩
  9. [9]Andrew Marantz, “Does Hungary Offer a Glimpse of Our Authoritarian Future?” New Yorker, June 27, 2022, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/04/does-hungary-offer-a-glimpse-of-our-authoritarian-future↩
  10. [10]Courtney Kennedy and Hannah Hartig, “Response rates in telephone surveys have resumed their decline,” Pew Research Center, February 27, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/27/response-rates-in-telephone-surveys-have-resumed-their-decline/↩
  11. [11]Perry Bacon, Jr., “Polls are useful. They just can’t predict elections in swing states,” Washington Post, September 27, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/polls-accuracy-midterm-elections-perry-bacon/↩
  12. [12]This according to Valerie Sue, the professor in my first research methods class, at California State University, Hayward (now East Bay), Fall 2003.↩
  13. [13]Steven Shepard, “Report: Phone polls aren’t dead yet,” Politico, May 15, 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/15/pollsters-phone-polls-238409; Courtney Kennedy and Hannah Hartig, “Response rates in telephone surveys have resumed their decline,” Pew Research Center, February 27, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/27/response-rates-in-telephone-surveys-have-resumed-their-decline/↩
  14. [14]Steven Shepard, “Report: Phone polls aren’t dead yet,” Politico, May 15, 2017, https://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/15/pollsters-phone-polls-238409; Courtney Kennedy and Hannah Hartig, “Response rates in telephone surveys have resumed their decline,” Pew Research Center, February 27, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/27/response-rates-in-telephone-surveys-have-resumed-their-decline/↩
  15. [15]Dan Balz, “2020 presidential polls suffered worst performance in decades, report says,” Washington Post, July 18, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020-poll-errors/2021/07/18/8d6a9838-e7df-11eb-ba5d-55d3b5ffcaf1_story.html; David Byler, “Polling is broken. No one knows how to fix it,” Washington Post, July 22, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/22/polling-is-broken-no-one-knows-how-fix-it/; Mona Chalabi, “The pollsters were wrong – again. Here’s what we know so far,” Guardian, November 4, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/commentisfree/2020/nov/04/the-pollsters-were-wrong-again-heres-what-we-know-so-far; David A. Graham, “The Polling Crisis Is a Catastrophe for American Democracy,” Atlantic, November 4, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/polling-catastrophe/616986/; Steven Shepard, “Dem pollsters acknowledge ‘major errors’ in 2020 polling,” Politico, April 13, 2021, https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/13/dems-polling-failure-481044↩
  16. [16]Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, John Wilkinson, trans. (New York: Vintage, 1964).; Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (New York: Vintage, 1993).↩
  17. [17]Reuters, “Ukraine puts destroyed Russian tanks on display in Kyiv,” August 25, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/news/picture/ukraine-puts-destroyed-russian-tanks-on-idUSRTSALV9Q↩
  18. [18]Anatol Lieven, “Diplomats & experts: negotiate, or expect ‘drastic escalation’ by Russia,” Responsible Statecraft, January 20, 2022, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/01/20/diplomats-experts-negotiate-or-expect-drastic-escalation-by-russia/↩
  19. [19]Anatol Lieven, “Putin’s regime may fall – but what would come next?” Guardian, September 27, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/27/putin-regime-fall-ukraine-west-negotiate↩
  20. [20]Julia Ioffe, “Fear and Loathing in Moscow,” Puck News, September 13, 2022, https://puck.news/fear-and-loathing-in-moscow/↩
  21. [21]Şebnem Arsu et al., “Putin Bets It All in Ukraine,” Spiegel, September 23, 2022, https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/no-more-illusions-putin-bets-it-all-in-ukraine-a-a94b78fd-a99b-4196-a0a6-0332057337ea; Robyn Dixon et al., “Russian mobilization prompts backlash as Ukraine annexation effort plows ahead,” Washington Post, September 25, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/25/russia-ukraine-mobilization-referendums/; Robyn Dixon, Mary Ilyushina, and David L. Stern, “Putin faces fury in Russia over military mobilization and prisoner swap,” Washington Post, September 22, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/22/mobilization-putin-anger-russia-war/; Julia Ioffe, “Putin’s Male Fragility,” Puck News, September 27, 2022, https://puck.news/putins-male-fragility/; Robert Mackey, “Russians Return to Streets to Protest Widening of Putin’s War on Ukraine,” Intercept, September 22, 2022, https://theintercept.com/2022/09/22/russia-ukraine-putin-war-protests/; Pjotr Sauer and Dan Sabbagh, “Border queues build as people flee Russia to escape Putin’s call-up,” Guardian, September 23, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/23/border-queues-build-as-people-flee-russia-to-escape-putin-call-up↩
  22. [22]Anatol Lieven, “Putin’s regime may fall – but what would come next?” Guardian, September 27, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/27/putin-regime-fall-ukraine-west-negotiate↩
  23. [23]Anatol Lieven, “Diplomats & experts: negotiate, or expect ‘drastic escalation’ by Russia,” Responsible Statecraft, January 20, 2022, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/01/20/diplomats-experts-negotiate-or-expect-drastic-escalation-by-russia/↩

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