MAGA Ideologue Calls Trump “Moses Leading His People To Promised Land”

MAGA Ideologue Calls Trump “Moses Leading His People To Promised Land”

                                                                                          Saeed Naqvi

There are identifiable reasons why international affair are difficult to comprehend in the age of Trump. One is, ofcourse, Trump himself, the miasmal mist he sprays around his pronouncement, a bewildering mix of unpredictability and unreliability.

Another reason for consistent puzzlement is the habitual reliance by a large body of opinion makers on sources of information set up to serve the Sole super power moment which lasted from the end of the Cold War to the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in 2008.

The stance struck in the euphoria of the superpower moment needed change but making readjustments was resisted because alternations would be an acceptance of decline. Some of the difficulty in comprehending world affairs at this precise moment is also because initiatives and plans set into motion three decades ago, for another time, are being tried today when the times are out of joint.

To cope with western decline, the US chose to wrench itself away from Europe rather than be one, at the head of the western alliance in decline. The US chose to go solo, thereby becoming more equal than others in a triangular world order, China and Russia being the other two poles. Rather than acquiesce in the emerging multipolar world order as one among others, Trump and his cohorts in MAGA are projecting a world order in which the US, unencumbered by alliances, would be economically and militarily more equal than others. MAGA planners have dreamt up an exclusive area of influence which would be named Donroe Doctrine, a more muscular version of the Monroe doctrine.

Enunciated in 1823 by President James Monroe, the doctrine kept European powers out of the Caribbean and Latin America. Which powers does Trump intend to keep out of this “backyard”? China and Russia. Surely Trump knows that both are very heavily invested not just in Venezuela but in all of Latin America. Indeed, 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries have signed up with China’s Belt and Road initiative.

How will Trump cope? Heaven knows what ideas may be in the offing.

Henry Kissinger’s triangular world order sought to widen the breach which had surfaced between Moscow and Beijing. He succeeded. Trump’s sketch of three super powers US, China and Russia has no apparent breach he can widen. He has to first create a hairline fracture between them. He is much more of a sledge hammer man than one who can handle with delicacy fine knives and needles.

The collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, a milestone in the West’s downward slide, coincided with NATO’s Bucharest summit where Georgia and Ukraine were listed for membership. Even as Putin, present for the NATO-Russia Council meeting put his foot down quite firmly. NATO at Russia’s border was an existential threat for Russia, he emphasized.

Francis Fukiyama impatiently wrote a book: End of History. His thesis fell miles on the wrong side of history. But there were others like media magnate Rupert Murdoch whose triumphalism at Soviet fall led him to expand tabloids as a means of thwarting authoritarian regimes. But authoritarianism was not being replaced by a liberal order. Populist Nationalism was the unintended consequence.

Murdoch sought to block authoritarian regime but it also ended up placing road blocks in the way of anything progressive like Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in UK. I wrote in 2017: “if you make Sanders and Corbyn impossible, you end up making Trump and Nigel Farage inevitable.” In his interview to the Economist, MAGA ideologue Steve Bannon was confident that Nigel Farage would be the Prime Minister of the UK after the next elections. Bannon’s political projection may be flawed but his utterance does clarify his political inclinations.

European leaders already in power or knocking at the gates whose ascent would please Bannon and Trump are Victor Orban (Hungary), Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini (Italy), Marine Le Pen (France), Geert Wilders (Netherland), Santiago Abascal (Spain) and Herbert Kickl (Austria). All these leaders have been cultivated by Bannon during his trips to Europe.

The earliest lucid enunciation of the Trump establishment’s appraisal of Europe was spelt out by Vice President J.D. Vance. His speech exactly a year ago, February 14, 2025 at the European Security Conference at Munich left the European Grandees, the top military representatives gasping.

“The threat to European security is not from Russia or China or any other external actor.” The danger Vance said, “was within”. Vance explained, giving examples. In December 2024, a Romanian Constitutional Court took the unprecedented step of annulling the Presidential election on the eve of the final run off. Russian interference was allegedly the cause for the annulment which was applauded by the EU.

Bannon and Vance have not left Europe in any doubt. European liberalism is not their meat. For Europe Victor Orban of Hungary is their role model. Europe had to shuffle itself out of its liberal coil to be coherent with Trump’s US. The “erasure” of European civilization by an open door policy towards migrants was anathema to MAGA ideologues.

I have been intrigued by two back to back podcasts with Bannon interviewed by Zany Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief of the Economist. She described it is a “terrifying” experience but which was also important because it drive an important section of opinion in the US.

Bannon counts Trump as one among the three great US Presidents who gave the nation a certain direction – George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and, yes, Donald Trump.

Bannon placing Trump by the side of history’s most iconic Presidents is exaggeration, ofcourse, but what does one make of Bannon giving him a seat with Prophet Moses “leading his people into the promised land.”

The huge agenda Bannon has set for Trump cannot be completed in the three years left for his term.

With a wave of the hand, Bannon puts that question aside.

“The American people will give Trump another term. Yes, they will upturn the constitution to give him a third term.”

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