Politicians who have believed themselves to be great and irreplaceable, easily begin to look helpless and ridiculous - because they try to cover up their panic through "magic". There have been enough examples of this recently.
There are politicians who, when they find themselves at the top of power, begin to think of themselves as some pagan gods or at least - demigods. This betrays weakness of mind and weakness of character. Therefore, such politicians, when they find themselves in a problematic situation, continue with their pagan behavior, but no longer in their capacity as gods, but as shamans. Without having read anything on the otherwise serious topic of "magic", they try to get out of some crisis that is overwhelming them by applying the most elementary childish forms of spell or imitation magic. It's like hearing an Eric Clapton solo and, picking up an electric guitar for the first time, trying to pick up the solo of "Leila". From the outside, it always looks both funny and pitiful.
Imitative magic - this is when, despite the crisis that is overwhelming you, you continue to imitate your usual everyday life. You go to work in the minister's office, you drive in the company car, and your secretary makes you that coffee that is just for you. The goal of this magic is to meet the crisis with your usual routine. And for it, the crisis, to get confused and leave you alone.
Spell magic - This is when you start to push away the crisis that has overwhelmed you with spells that it is gone and that everything is perfectly fine for you.
When the throne starts to shake
Authoritarian types from different parts of the world, whose thrones are shaking badly and are heading towards collapse, do things like this. It has always been like this and - obviously - always will be. Let's take the communist regimes in Europe. After the shock of the Czech uprising in 1968, all the communist parties from Prague to Moscow rushed to cast spells. They included in their constitutions the provision that the communists are always in power. The Bulgarians, apparently the most frightened at the time, put this provision at the head of the Constitution, as Article 1.
After this trick didn’t work and the communist economies began to collapse, the communists turned to imitation magic. Like mushrooms after rain, marble city squares, pseudo-marble buildings of local party committees, as well as jagged marble statues and monuments began to sprout. The idea here was obvious: to cover everything in marble to instill a sense of eternity and unshakable power. All over Bulgaria you can see how pseudo-marble buildings are crumbling today and how in dozens of pretty towns, previously enjoying “pigeons and a green square“, there are now ugly cubist squares where one stumbles over broken marble tiles.
The powerlessness of such magical exercises was especially clearly visible during the defeat of the Iraqi army in 2003. In a legendary report, an Iraqi minister, standing in a Baghdad square, explained how the Americans had no chance of breaking through the “steel ring“ around the capital, let alone – taking it. He had just said – before he could say anything, an American –Abrams” tank sped past the camera behind him. Spell magic is spell magic, but an –Abrams” tank is 70 tons.
Russian incantations
The leadership of Russia gives quite vivid and increasingly frequent examples in the same direction. The main Russian incantation is that Russia did not attack Ukraine. In the first weeks of the war, Foreign Minister Lavrov said at an international forum: “Russia did not invade Ukraine“. These days, the Russian Patriarch Kirill, also known as Colonel Gundyaev of the KGB, solemnly said: “Russia has never attacked anyone“. And the other day, Russian foreign policy spokeswoman Zakharova exploded against Mia Sandu, the president of Moldova: What Russian aggression? Where did she see Russian aggression? And she concluded: “I would like to ask Maya Sandu: is everything okay with her head?“. This same Zakharova, two days before the Russian army invaded Ukrainian soil, announced that a person must be crazy if they believe that Russia will attack Ukraine.
The goal of these incantations, of course, is to convince the Russian people that they are not waging a colonial war on foreign territory, but that they are somehow put in a position to defend themselves. For a long time, the main incantation was that in this war Russia is defending itself against NATO. But the moment has come when fewer people are joining the Russian army than are being killed on the battlefield. That is why the message has been changed these days.
"Under the old flags of Nazism and revanchism, a pan-European group is being created to attack Russia - now thinking not only about hybrid methods, but also about a physical attack. And at the head of this group is not Hitler, but Volodymyr Oleksandrovich Zelensky with his Nazi slogans" - said the same Lavrov, who denied that Russia had invaded Ukraine.
The purpose of this new spell is clear: after the slander against NATO did not lead to the desired surge in the Russian armed forces, Lavrov is now trying to convince the Russians that they are in the same situation as in 1941 - to defend themselves with all their might against the Nazis. The hope is that the reflexes of the Russians to enter a total war will work: everyone at the front, and those who are left behind to knit socks for the soldiers, as Putin recently demanded of his population.
Imitations of power
While Putin's spokesmen wander through the depths of incantations - and increasingly often just swear in a slang way - the supreme leader himself is one lap ahead. On May 9, he tried imitation magic - to imitate indestructible military power with a victory parade. However, the fear of the appearance of Ukrainian drones forced him not to show off any fearsome military equipment, and even to "crush" the parade itself by about 46 minutes.
The imitation did not work, and Putin turned to incantations: he had another "unparalleled" a formidable missile that could hit a target 35,000 kilometers away - i.e., launched in the direction of the USA, this missile would circle the Earth and hit Novosibirsk. The purpose of this spell was to frighten the West with this (yet another) imaginary danger and force Ukraine to give Russia what it cannot take by military means - the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Then Putin imitated nuclear exercises with Belarus and hinted that a new war could start from this side in the direction of Ukraine or the Baltic states. But NATO openly gnashed its teeth at the Belarusian tartar Lukashenko and he, true to his cowardly nature, fell silent on these topics after weeks of warning his population to prepare for war.
The spell did not work. Instead of Putin swearing, as his subordinates do, for now he is hitting him on demand. First, he asked Trump to make Zelensky not attack his parade in Moscow. Then he went to Beijing to ask for a second gas pipeline to China. All he got was a request to Trump, formulated by Zelensky in a decree “allowing” the parade to be held in the Russian capital. Putin returned from China empty-handed. And he hit him with a request to the Ukrainians themselves. He asked the servicemen not to carry out the orders of their commanders. He didn’t even threaten them, as someone like Lavrov, who was behind on the material, would have done.
Trump’s spells
Trump’s throne, although less than Putin’s, is already shaking. We understand this from his attempts at spellcasting, such as his almost daily incantations that the peace agreement with Iran is almost ready, therefore the Strait of Hormuz is almost open for shipping, and therefore fuel prices at gas stations have almost plummeted. Considering the rebellion that the Republican (his) deputies have raised against him in Congress these days, we should expect Trump to follow the incantation-imitation-request curve; he has been good at swearing for a long time.
The problem with all these people is that from the outside, their attempts to apply magic appear to be exactly what they are: signs of panic and helplessness. And when an authoritarian statesman begins to look helpless, all kinds of sharks start circling around him - both at home and in the international arena. What follows is the first bite, blood in the water and the lightning-fast dismemberment of the respective leader, and sometimes - even the leader system he has built.
This text expresses the author's opinion and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the DW as a whole.