No April Fool's: Ukraine, Trump and Hannah Arendt (and The Economist)

This new poll is no April Fool's - although there are lots of fools involved. About 77 million of them, plus some Democrats even. And it is very dangerous - in particular for Ukraine.

(Headline in The Economist March 31, 2025)

BY MICHAEL ANDERSEN

Well, The Economist got it half-right and half-wrong. Does it matter? Yes it does. If you are Ukrainian, it matters very very much.

"This swing in perceptions on both sides of the Atlantic has been particularly dramatic,” the magazine explains its headline, “in just a few months Mr Trump has brought discord where there was friendship.”

That’s (a bit) better: There is no doubt that Trump has successfully been lying, manipulating and deceiving the Americans. And we now see the shocking result: 25-30% of Republicans now consider Canada and the European Union “unfriendly” or even “enemies”. Hell, even some Democrats have been infected by Trump’s rhetoric.

But the way the Economist puts it, talking about “attitudes towards each other”, “on both sides of the Atlantic” makes it sound like a mutual process - a debate, a give-and-take, maybe even a fall-out, a divorce with mudslinging from both sides. No. That ain’t it: True, the Europeans’ attitude to the U.S. has changed - but our attitude has changed exclusively because of Mr Trump (and Vance, and Musk, and Hegseth, and Ms. Gabbard etc.). To put it in words that Mr Trump understands: they started it.

And it’ easy to show. Note in the graph that all the increase in negative opinions and feelings of Europeans towards the U.S. fully coincide with two dates; the fifth of November when Trump got elected, and in particular, since he took office January 20 and started lambasting and (militarily) threatening Ukraine, Canada, Denmark, Mexico and Panama.

Okay, enough of me harking on about what the Economist should have done. I want to make clear that normally I am a fan, but on this one I fear that the editor went a bit AWOL, or at least got the one about correlation and cause wrong. Sure, it’s a detail, but we all know who lies in the detail, don’t we? (These days, it’s Mr Putin, actually.)

I am not least a big fan of The Economist’s often very fine writing on Ukraine; During the last three years, the magazine has often been setting the agenda, asking the necessary questions (both of the U.S., the West and of Ukraine itself.) This is no exception, although I would have liked the magazine to follow through. Because the poll and its indications are brutal. Brutal. Frightening. Shocking.

‘Calm down, Old Grumpy Dude,’ I can hear you sigh - but no, I won’t, because this is shocking.

The YouGov/Economist poll shows that since Donald Trump got elected - only five months ago - there has been a drop of 20% in the number of Republicans who consider Russia “an enemy”. Among Democrats, the drop is almost 10%.

Seeing as Putin is doing exactly the same as he has been doing for the last three years - killing civilian Ukrainians in their beds with his bombs, missiles and drones, showing zero interest in ceasing fire (on top of sending untold hundreds of thousands of young Russian soldiers to their certain deaths) - the radical drop in the image of Russia as an enemy can only be explained by Donald Trump’s manipulation of the American voter when it comes to Russia and not least Vladimir Putin.

Here are some of the words that President Trump has used recently about the Russian dictator: “genius”, “[Putin] is only doing … what anybody would do” (about Russia’s increased bombing of Ukraine, as Trump had halted intelligence sharing with Kyiv and thus made it more difficult for the Ukrainians to defend themselves). Trump has repeated again and again that he finds it “easier” to work with Russia than Ukraine, because Putin “wants to end the war.” “I’ve always had a good relationship with Putin, he wants to end the war. And I think he’s going to be more generous than he has to be.” “I would love to see Russia back in the G7 (G8).”

Add to this, Trump’s load of lies and accusations thrown at Ukraine, the Ukrainians and not least their president. Obviously, this hurts the image of Ukraine in the U.S. population, of course. But, at the same time, the lies also soften the image of Russia, logically.

In his 10 weeks in office, Trump has managed to call the (popularly elected) Ukrainian president “a dictator with only four percent approval rating”, who is “not very nice, no angel” and who “started the war.” Trump also, on a regular basis, claims that Zelensky and the corrupt Ukrainians are fleecing the U.S. tax payer.

“I’m finding it more difficult, frankly, to deal with Ukraine. And they don’t have the cards,” Trump famously said. The U.S. President has repeatedly stated that Ukraine’s demands to recover the 20% of its territory that Russia has occupied is “unrealistic“- painting the Ukrainians as stubborn and not willing to “compromise”.

“You are gambling with world war three!” Trump shouted at Zelensky in his and Vance’ famous Oval Office attack on the Ukrainian leader a month ago, where they also accused their guest of “not saying thank you” to the American people for their help and being disrespectful by not wearing a suit.

As a result, an astonishing 29% of Republicans now see Ukraine as “an enemy” or an “unfriendly” country. A country that has never done anything that could possibly be seen as harmful to the U.S. A country whose population for three years has been maimed, raped, tortured and killed by Russia. On our tv screens. On our mobiles. That very country, those very people, are now seen as an enemy by almost one third of Republicans.

Mind. Blown. And not in a good way.

That Donald Trump and his nasty mini-me have pulled this off must go down in the annals of disinformation as one of the bigger and nastier feats of all time.

Which brings us to Hannah Arendt. And - as she often does (did, she wrote this 60 years ago, about Nazism, words and manipulation) - Arendt puts what we see before our very eyes into perspective. And she scares the hell out of me. And of any Ukrainian or pro-Ukrainian person:

"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore. A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong. And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies. With such a people, you can do whatever you want."

“With such people, you can do whatever you want”, Arendt writes. “Switching sides”, the Economist themselves have dubbed the graph. But ‘switching sides’ in a war where nothing has changed? How does that work, folks? Putin still invaded Ukraine. Not the other way around, despite what your president lies.

Have a look at the graphs below: On the left I have simply repeated the graph from above - while on the right I have continued/extended - in green - the tendencies from the last few months.

Soon we will get to the ultimate state of ‘whataboutism”. A situation where half of Republicans believe that Russia is the enemy, but half believe that Ukraine is the enemy. And where also 20% or more of Democrats no longer see Russia as an enemy.

It is not unlikely that we could reach this ‘balance’ this Spring, as Trump continues to give in to Putin’s demands on Ukraine, and the Ukrainians will be presented with ‘peace proposals’ amounting to giving away their territory and independence. At that point, the media will no longer talk about “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine” or “Russia’s genocide in Ukraine”, but instead their language will be the more neutral, balanced “the war in Ukraine” or “the conflict in Ukraine”.

The Trump team has already long ago switched to that language. As Trump himself has repeated a million times, “I want to stop people dying”, not “I want to stop the Russians from killing more innocent Ukrainians.”

Words mean something, in particular in international politics; the result of this being spoken about as “a war between Ukraine and Russia” and “the war in Ukraine” as opposed to “the unprovoked Russian invasion of Ukraine”, will be that Ukraine will lose support in the U.S, and with that will lose political, financial and weapons support. And lives. More Ukrainian lives.