Trump has removed the president of Venezuela (3rd January 2026) and eliminated the Supreme Leader of Iran (28th February 2026). He is following the principles established by Lenin in 1917.
Lenin argued that the centre of power needs to fall for the rest of the country to follow. The provinces do not operate without the capital city (12-14 September 1917, Lenin’s Collected Works, Moscow, Volume 26, 1972, pp. 19-21).
Lenin argued that the people were not advanced enough to rebel on their own. This is one aspect of what became ‘Leninism’.
Mao Tse Tung was a follower of Marxist-Leninism and stated in 1957: ‘The Chinese Communist Party is the core of leadership of the whole Chinese people. Without this core, the cause of socialism cannot be victorious.’ (Quotations from Chairman Mao, chapter 1 ‘The Communist Party’.)
One may say Lenin was an intellectual snob. He thought he knew what was best for the people, even though they did not know it. He indicated that his Bolsheviks would have lost in open elections in mid-1917.
The centre of power is the only one that matters. The rest follows. On the traditional and liberal side, only leaders should discuss with one another.
Kissinger proposed in his book ‘Diplomacy’ (1994) that discussions between countries should be carried out between leaders for the general view and their staffs should deal with details.
This vision indicates that only leaders matter.
It was an idea popular in the Victorian era and generated many studies on ‘Great Man history’. One may think of Thomas Carlyle and his biography of Frederick the Great of Prussia (1858-1865) or even Ernst Kantorowicz and his biography of Frederick the Second (1927).
It may be because of this intellectual and snobbish exclusion of the masses that populism is on the rise. Leaders have excluded the average person and their concerns.
Trump has combined his ‘Leninist’ view of leadership with a condemnation of bureaucracy. He has often referred to ‘draining the swamp,’ by which he means reducing the red tape originating from non-elected officials.
Bureaucracy, or the civil service, which effectively runs a country (well or badly), is the target and enemy for such a point of view.
The ‘anti-bureaucratic revolution’ of 1988-1989 (Антибирократска револуција) in Yugoslavia was led by Slobodan Milošević, who was later one of the protagonists of the collapse of Yugoslavia and its wars in the 1990s. His actions and his anti-bureaucratic stance are often perceived as being dictatorial and bringing his country down into a tail-spin.
The idea that leaders at the top should be free from the limits of bureaucracy and elections is part of the 19th-century liberal great man theory.
Trump has removed two leaders and believes that those countries will follow him and his initiatives. That is a Leninist strategy centred on a Victorian view of leadership.
Only elections will reveal the truth.