As someone from Russia, which has been ruled by an alt-right autocratic regime for 17 years, I have the privilege of being able to convey messages from the future to my friends in the US and Europe.

The first message is about Trump’s racism and xenophobia. The president-elect and members of his team are accused of spreading hatred towards Muslims, Jews and Hispanics. The outrage is justified, but if Trump is to become a successful alt-right autocrat, he will soon neutralise this criticism by co-opting numerous representatives of these communities into his camp, and indeed the government.

For someone like Trump or the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, xenophobia is only a means of mobilisation, not an end in itself, like it was for Hitler. They have no qualms about embracing someone they hated just a second ago. Trump and Putin are ecumenical nationalists.

Putin’s approach is a good example. He has always been able to reach out and find support among Muslims, Jews, Chechens and even part of the LGBT community. But while Putin’s version of nationalism is truly non-ethnic and non-racist, it is just as vicious and radical as the nationalist movements that took over much of Europe in the 1930s.

Putin created a version of modern nationalism that I and many others in Russia call “nashism”. It comes from the word nashi, which means “our folks” and was used by Putin and his alt-right predecessors in the 1990s to define supporters and their enemies, who would naturally fall into the category of “not ours”. They included everyone who disagreed with the system. Some were minority activists, but mostly they were straightforward Russian liberals of non-exotic origins and walks of life.



In the same vein, I can see how Trump can appeal to African-Americans, Jews and Hispanics. I met members of these communities at Trump rallies while driving through the midwest swing states the week before the election, and I am now writing from Brighton Beach, a Russian-speaking Jewish district of New York that is overwhelmingly and vehemently pro-Trump.

Their advantage is that they are not bound by logic or intellectual decency

The local residents, mostly ageing Soviet-era immigrants who have switched from voting Democrat to Republican in the past 10 years, love the new president-elect for the same reason their former compatriots in Russia love Putin: he makes them feel great and important again, while legitimising their hatred towards liberals.

The likes of Putin and Trump don’t create ethnic movements, they create gangs in which the only criterion that really matters is whether you are “with us” or “against us”, whether you are ready to insult or hurt the “others” no matter who they are and what you used to feel about them. They are mob artists, they are majoritarians or – translating the latter term into Russian – Bolsheviks.

Their advantage is that they are not bound by logic or intellectual decency. Their constituencies have short attention spans, and don’t notice when their leader switches from hating to praising and co-opting a certain group. That’s what Putin has done with former Chechen independence fighters, who are now playing a key role in his machine of terror.

The anti-Trump marches held by the opposition in New York last weekend were all about minority rights, but I am not sure to what extent everyone present – the crowd included many radical left-wingers – is united on values, such as democracy, rule of law, government transparency and internationalism. Trump’s spin doctors will have no problem breaking up this movement, pitting its diverse components against each other, the same way Putin did with the Bolotnaya Square protests in 2012.

With their old-school rhetoric and linguistic taboos, left-wingers and liberals look obsolete against Trump and Putin, who both represent a very modern, sophisticated and media-savvy political movement. To beat him, Trump’s opponents need to start everything anew and unite under more universal, and unifying, slogans.



A version of this article first appeared on the blog FullofBias.com