Are Putin, Orbán and Trump triplets?

Similarities among the three leaders are nothing short of eerie. Differences exist too, of course, but they are environmental, not personal.

Putin operates under no legal restraints whatsoever, Orbán under some, and Trump under quite a few. But these are differences among the three countries, not the three personages.

However, looking at the trio’s outlook on life, the way they operate, the nature of their mass appeal, one is tempted to check their birthdates to make sure they didn’t come out of the same womb at the same time.

Starting from the end, it’s the nature of their popular appeal that is especially interesting. All three demonstrably elicit cult-like devotion among numerous supporters in their native habitats. Yet I also know quite a few Englishmen and Frenchmen who profess admiration for the trio with genuine gusto.

One is tempted to ascribe such an excess of emotion to a shortage of information, but that’s not the case. The people I have in mind may not know all there is to know about the trio, but they are certainly familiar with the facts in the public domain.

But facts have little effect on their feelings. These burn bright either in the ultra area above reason or in the infra area below it. These chaps will hear you out, nod their agreement at everything you say, but then flash the condescending smile of a gnostic. You aren’t privy to their higher knowledge; you can’t possibly understand.

Trying to get to the bottom of this, one has to draw historical parallels, sweeping aside the usual objections that every epoch is sui generis. True, when seeking such parallels one must exercise caution, always making allowances for time and place. But time and place only affect ways in which human nature reveals itself, not the nature itself, which remains stubbornly constant.

Contrary to Spengler’s somewhat Buddhist belief, history isn’t cyclical but linear – unlike a circle, it has a beginning and an end, moving steadily from the former to the latter.

However, the line of progression isn’t straight: history zigs and zags through endless peaks and troughs, leaving few things untouched. Since this has been going on for some 5,000 years that we know of, everything that could have been tried has been tried. One just needs to know where to look.

Thus it’s obvious to me that interbellum Germany is a microcosm of today’s West. True conservatism existed there, and it left an invaluable cultural evidence of its presence (in this connection I always recommend the book Diary of a Man in Despair by Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, a conservative disgusted by Nazism and ultimately killed by it). But it had lost all social and political influence.

Naturally conservative Germans found themselves without a political home. They reacted emetically to both the socialist waffle of the Weimar Republic and its feeble, ideologically driven attempts to heal the wounds of Versailles by government fiat.

Conservatives rejected out of hand the socialist corporatism of Weimar and its shrill rhetoric, which today we’d call ‘woke’. But only two other options were on the table: Nazism and communism. The choice seemed to be not between good and evil, but between two evils.

Those unwilling to choose either had to go into exile by escaping either to another country, like Thomas Mann, or into their own cloistered existence, like Reck-Malleczewen. The latter tried to ignore the Walpurgisnacht outside, only to find out that it wouldn’t ignore him.

The situation in today’s West is similar, though not identical, to Germany c. 1933. Real, intuitive conservatives find themselves at a loose end come election time. They too are nauseated by the present-day version of left-wing Walpurgisnacht and appalled by the systematic destruction it wreaks on everything they cherish.

At some point, the level of vomit reaches up to their collective gullet, and they need treatment urgently. Any medicine will do: natural conservatives become ready to swallow any anti-emetic whatsoever, however bitter and unsavoury it might be.

Moreover, there’s no persuasion like self-persuasion. If the nausea subsides for a while, conservatives convince themselves that the medicine is actually quite tasty or, if it isn’t, a spoonful of rhetorical sugar can help it go down.

In come the political version of Mary Poppins: Messrs Putin, Orbán, Trump et al. They say things conservatives feared they’d never hear again, extolling ‘traditional values’, such as patriotism, common sense, private enterprise, low taxation, national rebirth, Christian morality – the whole menu of virtues treated as vices in a world shaped by woke, socialist guff.

None of the three chaps is perfect, but hey, he who is without sin… and all that. Who cares what the medicine tastes like as long as it works? Conservatives aren’t blind to the trio’s vices, but they are ready to forgive them for the sake of the bigger clinical picture.

Except that the longer those so-called populist leaders stay in power, the more there is to forgive. People begin to notice that, operating within their local constraints, such as they are, the three begin to resemble mafia bosses more than statesmen.

They choose their entourage on the basis of personal loyalty, not competence. They give legal institutions as wide a berth as the local conditions allow. They use their position to enrich themselves, their families and cronies. They do some of the things they promised, but undo them by acting with unaccountable voluntarism.

And they place loyalty to one another above their duties as leaders of sovereign nations. All three despise Western leaders not only for their ineptness (such contempt is widely justified), but also for their refusal to kowtow to the trio by offering tributes and labioglutal ‘respect’.

Putin is the spiritual leader of the trio, lighting the path to the kind of mafioso autocracy the other two envy but can’t yet achieve as completely as they’d like. Trump openly admires Putin, and has done for years.

The Russian chieftain has achieved a perfect blend of authoritarian government and organised crime, using the former to facilitate the latter. As his regime inched ever closer to an out-and-out fascist dictatorship, Putin systematically enriched himself and his acolytes, turning them into billionaires and himself into probably the world’s richest man.

Trump still can’t shed some constitutional tethers, but he does the best he can. One day, possibly soon, his shenanigans while in office will explode into a massive scandal. The billions Trump and those close to him made from ‘deals’ dependent on his position will then come to light as, I’m sure, will the origin of his affection for Putin.

Hungary being a new democracy, Orbán doesn’t have to be coy about his being a Putin agent, not just an admirer. Investigations by Christo Grozev’s outfit The Insider revealed that Orbán’s victorious presidential campaign in 1998 was largely financed by the Russian mafia boss Semyon Mogilevich, who at the time operated out of Hungary.

Since the Russian mafia is an aspect of the Russian government, Orbán knows he owes his position to Putin. And no one can accuse ‘Vityok’ (so known in Russia) of ingratitude.

Orbán does all he can to sabotage Europe’s support for the Ukraine. He has vetoed the EU’s £78 billion loan for the Ukraine, tried to block sanctions against Russia and in general has acted as Putin’s vassal, not to say agent.

A recently published transcript of his October phone conversation with Putin quotes Orbán as saying: “In any matter where I can be of assistance, I am at your service.”

That line, “I am at your service”, was repeated by Orbán’s foreign minister Szijjarto to his Russian counterpart Lavrov. A leaked phone conversation suggested that such services included supplying to Moscow what Brussels called “strategic information on crucial issues”.

In other words, just as Putin is threatening an invasion of Europe and the latter is belatedly rearming, a country at the heart of the EU collaborates with the enemy.

Orbán is standing for re-election at the moment, and Hungarians seem to have had enough of his service to Putin. Mass demonstrations all over Hungary carry placards saying “Russians, go home”, the slogan of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Orbán’s Fidesz party is trailing, and Trump felt duty-bound to help his ideological sibling as best he could.

He sent VP Vance to Hungary, where JD accused Brussels of “disgraceful” interference with the elections. He then proceeded to show what he meant by urging Hungarians to “stand with” Orbán, that staunch defender of family values, national identity and “Christian heritage”. In other words, a close friend of Trump and an agent of Putin.

Thanks to Orbán’s championship of family values, Hungary has been named the EU’s most corrupt country. And in the rule of law category, Hungary is ranked 79^th in the world, below Kazakhstan.

One can’t really blame Messrs Trump, Putin and Orbán for acting in character – any more than one can blame dogs for urinating in the street and chasing cats around the corner. But one can blame societies that have made the rise of such characters possible.

This is what happens when real traditional values are neglected and mocked, when conservatives abandon their principles for the sake of joining the ‘in’ crowd. They’ve forgotten Goethe’s admonition: “Of freedom and of life he only is deserving/ Who every day must conquer them anew.”

Our trio isn’t the disease but a symptom of one. And this disease is self-inflicted.