TRUMP, PUTIN, AND THE POWER OF THE "COMMON ENEMY"
This is about much more than just the 2016 election. Russia is running a decades-long playbook to break up the democracies, and Donald Trump is the perfect tool for the job.
1. The Real Russian Goal: Make You Fight Each Other. Russia's top strategy is called "Reflexive Control."
Simple Meaning: It's like a martial arts move. Instead of attacking you directly, Russia sets up a situation where you choose to kick yourself in the head.
The Play: Russia doesn't need you to love Putin. They just need you to hate your own media, your own government, and your own institutions more. Trump's election and his style of constant conflict perfectly amplified that chaos.
2. The Shared Strongman DNA: The reason this works is the deep connection between the two leaders' appeal. The Connection: Trump and Putin sell the same powerful idea:
Your country is weak, the elites are corrupt, and only a single, decisive strongman can fix it.
The Result: When Trump followers see Putin, they don't see an enemy. They see a fellow "anti-establishment strongman" who is succeeding against the same global forces (NATO, liberal media) that Trump fights. If Trump praises Putin, it gives those Western followers "permission" to stop seeing him as a villain and start seeing him as a tough, effective leader.
Russia is perfectly happy if 50% of the West loves Trump, because that means 50% of the West is actively questioning the democratic unity that has been Russia's biggest problem for 70 years. Trump is the magnet that pulls Western minds out of the Western alliance.
3. The Paradox of Hypocrisy: Why Russia Doesn't Care About Real Problems
This is where the operation reveals its true cynical nature.The West is grappling with genuine crises that require massive change—things like corporate capitalism's wealth gap, stagnant worker wages, and addressing the deep scars of historical racism, colonialism, and white supremacy. These are the issues that should be debated and reformed within democracies. But Russian Disinformation DOESN'T focus on these genuine problems.
The Propaganda Focus: Russia exclusively promotes narratives of non-sense division: anti-immigration fear-mongering, anti-EU sentiment, anti-NATO conspiracy theories. They exploit existing cracks, but they never advocate for meaningful, structural democratic reform (like taxing the ultra-rich). They only want to see the system discredited, not improved.
4. The Empire vs. Empire Rhetoric:
The irony is doubled by Russia's own rhetoric. The Kremlin constantly criticizes the "hypocrisy of the West," decrying its colonialism and expansionism to curry favor in the Global South. Yet, Russia's own history is that of a brutal land-based empire built on colonization, assimilation, and the suppression of dozens of nationalities, culminating in its current war of imperial reconquest against Ukraine.This breathtaking hypocrisy—advocating for division while opposing reform, and railing against colonialism while actively committing it—is the clearest proof that the Kremlin's goal is not a better world, but simply a weaker West.