History Of 'Strongmen', Mussolini To Erdogan: US Was On The Road To Fascism: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Scholar
'Strongmen review: a chilling history for one nation no longer under Trump.' Ruth Ben-Ghiat delivers a superb examination of how close the US came to fascism – and how it has propped it up before. The Guardian, Nov. 26, 2020.
This terrific history of strongmen since Mussolini makes it clear that despite a horrific pandemic and massive economic disruption, ordinary democratic Americans have more to be thankful for this Thanksgiving than ever before. Comparing the gruesome, granular details of the reigns of Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, Gaddafi, Pinochet, Mobuto, Berlusconi and Erdoğan to the acts and aspirations of Donald Trump, New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat makes a powerful argument that on the scary road to fascism, America just came perilously close to the point of no return.
Almost everything Trump has done has come straight from the authoritarian playbook. Every dictator, for example, has built on the accomplishments of his predecessors.
“Just as Hitler watched Mussolini’s actions carefully,” Ben-Ghiat writes, “so did Gaddafi learn from Lt Col Gamal Abdul Nasser’s 1952 overthrow of the monarchy in Egypt.” Then in the 1980s and 90s, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich served as models for Europeans looking for “a more radical form of conservatism”. Gingrich’s 1994 Contract with America was echoed a year later by the Front National, with its “contract for France with the French”. Berlusconi’s Contract with Italians followed six years later.
In Egypt, Nasser hired “former Nazi propagandists for their expertise in antisemitic messaging”. In Zaire, from 1965, Mobutu Sese Seko’s media handlers reimagined Leni Riefenstahl’s image of Hitler descending from the sky by opening the television news each night with a picture of the dictator’s face, hovering up in the clouds. The parallels between Trump and his role models are endless. Ben-Ghiat writes of “watching Trump retweet neo-Nazi propaganda, call for the imprisonment [of Hillary Clinton] and lead his followers in loyalty oaths at rallies seemed all too familiar”– and how it filled her “with dread”.
Before the Putin-Trump bromance there was Putin and Berlusconi, grinning at each other from Zavidovo to Sardinia. The way Trump talked about Mexicans was hardly different from Hitler’s words about the Jews or Berlusconi’s about Africans. The Italian media mogul and prime minister was himself just a pale imitation of Mussolini. In the pre-war period, he was responsible for the deaths of 700,000 Libyans, Eritreans, Somalis and Ethiopians.
Every authoritarian regime has seen a crucial alliance between big business and the dictator, from Putin and his oligarchs to Hitler and German industrialists and Trump and the Wall Street elite...
Read More, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/26/strongmen-review-ruth-ben-ghiat-donald-trump-fascism-hitler-mussolini-franco
- Also: 'Trump's Coup Failed But US Democracy Has Been Given A Scare,' Julian Borger, The Guardian, Nov. 25, 2020,
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/25/trumps-coup-failed-but-us-democracy-has-been-given-a-scare
- 'Strongmen' Book Talk, Ruth Ben-Ghiat & Jason Stanley, Oct. 28, 2020. Ben-Ghiat is the expert on the “strongman” playbook employed by authoritarian demagogues from Mussolini to Putin. In her upcoming book "Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present," she explains the blueprint these leaders have followed over the past 100 years, & empowers us to recognize, resist, & prevent their disastrous rule in the future.
She also tracks the use of anti-Jewish propaganda as a common element connecting Mussolini, Hitler, & some of today’s European strongmen. This program is moderated by "How Fascism Works" author Jason Stanley.
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fragile our democracy is. 
