Comparing Coup Attempts in History and Present Politics

At 4.32pm on the 18th of August the so-called State Committee on the State of Emergency cut the lines of communication to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbacev's dacha - these included telephone communications and the nuclear command and control system.

Eight minutes later Lieutenant General Yuri Plekhanov, Head of the 9th Chief Directorate of the KGB, let the group into the dacha where they demanded that Gorbachev either declare a state of emergency in the Soviet Union or resign.

The previous month twelve Soviet public figures, mostly artists but also some politicians and military officials, signed a letter entitled 'A Word to the People' in the anti-perestroika newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya. The letter was drafted by the writer Alexander Prokhanov.

"An enormous, unforeseen calamity has taken place," it told readers, "Motherland, our land, a great power, given to us to ward with the nature, glorious ancestors, it is perishing, breaking apart, falling into darkness and nonbeing."

On July 10th 2024, the actor, director and film producer George Clooney published an essay in The New York Times entitled 'I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee'.

"The one battle [Biden] cannot win is the fight against time," Clooney wrote, "None of us can. It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."

Where Prokhanov's letter was infused with Soviet patriotism, Clooney's was shot through with party loyalty. Prokhanov pleaded with Soviet leaders to save the Soviet Union; Clooney pleaded with Biden to save the Democratic Party. Yet the functional outcome was the same: a coup - of sorts.

Less than two weeks later, on the 21st of July, President Biden issued a letter stating that he would not run for president again in 2024. Everyone knew that Biden had written this against his own will. Some accepted that he had simply caved under pressure, others whispered of a backroom deal or even threats.

Gorbachev survived his coup attempt, although afterwards he faded into the background as the new President of Russia Boris Yeltsin came to the fore. The coup attempt definitively sped up the dissolution of the Soviet Union, however, precisely the opposite of what the plotters had intended.

Likewise, the coup against Biden will likely speed up the collapse of the Democratic Party in the United States. The leaders of this party told the American people that Biden was capable of doing his job but now, after the coup, they have tacitly admitted that he is not. This is an obvious breach of trust - and one that voters will be unlikely to forgive.

But what does it matter? The collapse of a political party is nothing compared to the collapse of a great power like the Soviet Union. Another political party, perhaps. But just as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was until 1991 the party of the state, so too is the Democratic Party of today.

The Democratic Party in 2024 is the skeleton of the American ruling elite. Without it, this elite collapses into a gelatinous heap. Can the American state function without its party? Can the current world system survive if the American state starts to falter? These are questions that will be answered in the following 18 months - they are questions that are now being asked across America and the world in response to this very American coup.

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