Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a book that clarified for me exactly what is going on at the White House.
This book made it very clear that fascist leaders of the last 100 years have in common being surly, snarly, egomaniacs, and that Trump is simply in love with joining their ranks, and is going about it with the devotion of a maniacal, pubescent gamer who wants to blow up the world.
My key takeaways: Strongmen argues that today’s leaders also have deeper roots. They recycle rhetoric and actions that go back to the dawn of authoritarianism in the 1920s and are invested in rehabilitating their autocratic predecessors.
Putin is erecting a statue of Stalin; Bolsonaro makes the false claim that Nazism was a left-wing phenomenon; Berlusconi spread the lie that Mussolini never killed anyone, etc. Ben-Ghiat defines the authoritarian playbook as having three eras: the fascist era 1919–1945, the age of military coups 1950–1990, and the new authoritarian age of 1990 to the present.
And the present matters!
Strongmen are all marked by the use of elections to keep themselves in office, the deployment of antidemocratic tactics like fraud or voter suppression to get the results they need. Leaders who come to power by elections rather than coups are more likely to avoid ejection from office and less likely to face punishment.
Once in power, they create an inner circle of family and loyalists from their youth and professional worlds. Many of these individuals have one degree of less proximity to criminals. So does the strongman, but he has far less chance of prosecution than his associates, who almost always take the fall for him.
The collapse of Communism in 1989–1991 created the conditions for the rise of a new right and an authoritarian era. Hypernationalism and tribalism and ethnic conflicts proliferated. Immigrants proved convenient new targets from the start in the East and the West.
These guys travel in corrupt rings globally. Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had a history of supporting strongmen that went back to the age of military coups. After working with his cronies in a lobbying firm for Philippines’ president, Ferdinand Marcos, Manafort represented Putin for a decade before joining the Trump campaign.
Out of the long list of history’s putrid strong men, IMHO, no one has influenced Trump more than Silvio Berlusconi, a corrupt leader of Italy whose reign I remember well. I wondered how he ever became president! And now I just shake my head in misery. Berlusconi faced tax fraud and bribery charges during his election campaign, and Trump started his political career amid a slew of accusations of sexual assault and ongoing legal actions related to Trump University.
The Strong Man believes in lying. “I am the most democratic man ever to be Prime Minister of Italy,” Berlusconi asserted as he bent the institutions of Italian democracy to his private needs. When he returned to office in 2001, he had ten trials underway on charges of accounting fraud, bribery, and more. Illegal immigrants became his main targets. In 2008, he campaigned on hatred of immigrants; undocumented immigrants made up 6.7% of the population. Polls conducted by the government statistics bureau in 2008 found that over 40% of Italians saw immigrants as the main perpetrators of crime in Italy.
Sound familiar?
I am absolutely aware that we are sliding into Trump’s wet dream of being a dictator. Just watch Stacey Abrams’ video on the ten steps to autocracy.
I am not saying anything new here. I am comforted knowing that 100,000,000 + Americans feel the same as me. I feel less alone when I remember that many others also have to limit their intake of the news.
For now, I live with that sense of clenching in my chest and doom in my bones. But I don’t give up.
We are sitting ducks. This is happening. It’s real. It’s not going away any time soon. It’s gonna have to be played out, and there will be casualties and deep grief. The losses — both material and existential — will be hard for us to come back from, but we will. Life is non-linear.
For now, I live with that sense of clenching in my chest and doom in my bones. But I don’t give up. I thank every politician who is speaking up. I am moved by the bravery of many Federal employees. I am proud of businesses that refuse ICE and people handing out those red cards.
I think often of what my people felt in the 1930s in Germany. Sometimes it feels like I can feel their fear and desperation. They also were sitting ducks. They also could not stop what was coming. They also did the best they could to resist and to save their lives.
The people of Italy survived Berlusconi. The people throughout Europe survived Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco.
We will stay and we will fight. We may lose, but we will be on the right side of history. We will trust that the arc of justice bends towards the righteous good. We will be loving and kind, and we will be brave.
In the words of California Governor Gavin Newsom, who is trying to save us from Trump’s redistricting plan that would ensure he controls Congress in order to have enough sycophants to employ his corrupt tactics, “Wake up!”
It is up to decent, sane citizens — you and me — to stand up for democracy! We must vote! We must keep on!
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Previously Published on Medium
