Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Ruth Ben-Ghiat (born April 17, 1960) is an American a political commentator, a New York University professor of history and Italian studies, and a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.

Quotes

• Welcome to the shock event, designed precisely to jar the political system and civil society, causing a disorientation and disruption among the public and the political class that aids the leader in consolidating... power. ...Trump gained power legally but... intends to shock or strike at the system, using the resulting ...chaos and flux to create a ...government... beholden only to the chief executive. ...Bannon has repeatedly talked about "destroying the state" in the name of securing power for "an insurgent, center-right populist movement that is virulently anti-establishment."
  Besieging your targets until nothing makes any sense―giving them no time to absorb or recover from attacks―is a time-tested strategy in the history of... authoritarian takeovers. ...It's now being employed at the pinnacle of American democracy. ...With all the emergencies going on, who is bothered ...about ...Trump tax returns, or ...his ties to Russia?
  • "Donald Trump and Steve Bannon’s coup in the making" (Feb 1, 2017) Cable News Network (CNN)

• I happened to see a video of... presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally. I saw him rouse the crowd to perform a loyalty oath... barely concealing the condescension for the crowd... I heard him talk about roughing up protesters and the media, and then.., "I could stand on 5th Avenue and shoot someone, and not lose any supporters." As a historian of authoritarian regimes... this was deeply familiar... This was a trial... to test the public, political elites and the press to see how... they would tolerate... extrajudiciality and violence. Authoritarians always tell you what they're going to do to you... [T]his is part of their politics of threat. Here was Donald Trump telling Americans... in January, 2016, that he approved of violent methods, could be violent himself, and considered himself above the law. The reactions..: a few expressions of incredulity... and a lot of "That's just Trump being Trump." ...Trump was following ...the authoritarian playbook, which most Americans ...were not familiar with. So I decided to educate people ...more than 60 op-eds ...[and] over 80 interviews to familiarize journalists with this ...analysis, and warn the public and decision-makers ...[P]ersonalist regimes..: the leader's personality.., obsessions.., quirks.., have an outsized influence over domestic and foreign policy. ...[H]is obsessions sometimes become state policy. Think of Hitler and the Jews... [T]he bad judgement caused by one of his worst character flaws, not wanting to take any criticism, can end... in ruinous situations and catastrophe for the nation, as... with Mussolini and Hitler... Trump is not fit to serve as leader... of American democracy, but he is... eminently fit to serve as the leader of an authoritarian state. ...[H]is impulsiveness, his mix of fragility and hubris, ...his lack of empathy... and most disturbing, his willingness to... lead the country into ruin, to save his power and his source of personal enrichment, map 100%... on past authoritarian leaders' character[istics]. ...We have valuable knowledge to strike back, and yet, we haven't been doing it.
  • "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump" (Mar 9, 2019) Video clip, 17:50, National Cable Satellite Corporation (C-SPAN).

• We're living in a time of intense historical revisionism of these past regimes... including to remove their violence, so... Putin erects statues to Stalin, but then sends historians and others who comment on the Gulags into penal colonies, and Amazon... sells t-shirts that say, "Pinochet did nothing wrong"... [etc.] ...I wrote it as an American watching Trump... holding rallies... loyalty oaths, and institutionalized lying, and I wanted to document and figure out this experience with some history. ...[I]t's the first book to put Trump's presidency in the context of 100 years of authoritarian rule.
  • "Ruth Ben-Ghiat" interview & discussion of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, (Nov 30, 2020) After Words, 1:19, National Cable Satellite Corporation (C-SPAN).

• [F]or 100 years authoritarian leaders have invested in propaganda to convince people to believe their lies, to participate in their corruption, and accept their racism and violence as normal and necessary. ...Personality cults are key to success of authoritarian propaganda. ...20th century cults depend on mass-media... -mobilization and... -surveillance so the leader can seem omnipresent... [P]ropaganda is a set of communication strategies... to sow confusion and uncertainty, discourage critical thinking and persuade people that reality is what the leader says it is. ...From Mussolini's ...newsreels to Trump's and Bolsonaro's use of Twitter, authoritarians have had direct communications channels with the public... and... pose as authentic interpreters of the popular will. ...Strong men disappear people, but they also disappear knowledge that conflicts with their ideologies and goals. ...All 21st century authoritarians suppress climate change science because it discourages the plunder of natural resources that generate profits for them and their cronies.
  • "Ruth Ben Ghiat: 'Propaganda and Personality Cults from Mussolini to the Present'" (Feb 12, 2021) Youtube video source, 6:44, Kellogg Institute channel.

• We must... enact measures that reflect and reinforce the bedrock democratic principles of transparency, accountability, and solidarity. That means... instituting a... rigorous procedure for vetting presidential candidates, including disclosure of financial records and foreign and domestic business interests.
  We must... hold elected officials and candidates responsible for the language they use. Rogue statements, such as Trump's... boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose voters, should have consequences.
  • "Ruth Ben-Ghiat Says More…" (Feb 23, 2021) Project Syndicate

• People have to have circumstances that... they can't deny any more. ...[S]ometimes it takes a lot, like in the 1930a and 40s, the only thing that got some people to stop worshipping Hitler and Mussolini is when the Allies bombed them and they saw the destruction; ...or just... criminal negligence. It could be a pandemic, so Bolsonaro in Brazil is in trouble... Trump, one of the reasons he lost was the pandemic: criminal mismanagement. ...[P]rosecution is very important because some people worry, "Oh, if we prosecute Trump it'll cause a civil war" but the history shows that the only thing that bursts the bubble of a personality cult in the long run, is to see that these people are not... immortal, because these guys set themselves up as... gods. ...[T]hey're untouchable, "...Only I can fix it" ...[W]hen they are prosecuted, it happened to Berlusconi.., with Pinochet in Chile after he left office; that's the thing that leads a lot of people to turn their backs on them, when they're finally put to justice. So that they are human.., they are mortals after all.
  • "There were signs of a potential insurrection from the early days of the Trump Administration" (Jan 6, 2022) A Creative Commons Youtube video from the Heartland Signal channel.

• Trump wasn't just in office to wreck American democracy. He... was there to... detach America from a democratic world order and insert it into this developing autocratic order... [T]he reason he admired openly, publicly all autocrats: friendly... with Orbán.., admires Xi, and... attached to Putin... [A]ll of his campaigning against NATO.., digs at the EU, talking about globalism... is of a piece. It all relates. ...[W]hat Trump was able to do with the GOP, ... already going... in an authoritarian direction, but ...not ...pro-Russia. ...Trump managed to take the GOP and make it his personal tool... changed its ideas and sympathies about Russia.., that's... extraordinary. ...[T]hat's part of this big picture.
  • "The long lasting effect that Trump has had on Republicans and democracy" (Mar 11, 2022) A Creative Commons Youtube video from the Heartland Signal channel.

• [A] really important thing is the predominance of... survivalist ideologies. Great replacement theory is one... [T]o motivate people to... do violence, or... embrace the big lie, and to be corrupt, because that's a form of corruption: embracing election denial. You have to convince them that there's an existential threat, that they're in mortal danger... [T]hat's what Great Replacement theory does. That's... all this discourse on democratic cities as crime-ridden dens of anarchy... Giorgia Meloni... [H]er version of Great Replacement theory isn't just... demographic change and more non-whites being born (a more passive thing). She... believes... there's a plot by the EU and George Soros to flood Europe and Italy with non-white immigration... depressed wages of white workers and... extiguished white Christian civilization... Donald Trump is also a specialist in this, where on January 6th he said, "If we don't fight... we won't have a country any more!" The specter of obliteration. Instead of the obliteration that could come through climate change, you deny it and have a different kind of existential threat... affecting the white male minority, and you harness that rage.
  • "Ruth Ben-Ghiat | The Mary Trump Show" (Sep 29, 2022) Youtube video, 7:12, Politicon channel.

• American voters should take Trump's enthusiasm for autocrats seriously. He is previewing the kind of leadership he will pursue... and doing his best to re-educate Americans to tolerate―or worse, even desire―an approach to governance that, wherever it has unfolded, has created despair and division―and often placed nations on a path to destruction, as with Germany under Hitler’s guide.
  [A]utocrats... disregard... human rights and human dignity and... attempt to persuade people that it is in their interests to support governments that take their rights away. This seems to be Trump’s project... [N]o authoritarian has ever relinquished power once he gains it...
  • "Opinion: Trump’s praise of dictators tells us all we need to know" (Mar 14, 2024) CNN.

• [T]he speed at which this is happening and the... concentrated push... doesn't have any parallel in situations where leaders came to power through elections. ...[T]he early Putin.., Orbán or Erdoğan ...didn't move at this speed. This resembles more [like] after there's been a coup.
  • "Historian Warns Trump Moving Towards Dictatorship FASTER Than Putin, Orban & Erdoğan Did" (May 6, 2025) A Creative Commons Youtube video from The Humanist Report channel. (Video clip is of an original MSNBC report, "Trump Defends the High Cost of His Military Parade".)

• [H]is first wife... said that he had two books... one was Art of the Deal... which was ghost-written, and the other was Hitler's speeches, so he's very interested... in autocrats, and learning from them, but he doesn't read, so... it's a factor of having a similar personality... He wasn't in office to govern. He wanted to dominate people. He wanted to make money off of the presidency. ...[T]hey have similar personalities, and that's one reason they do similar things ...[T]hey ...very early ...start talking about violence. They start demonizing the press. They want to turn the public against journalists and make them political enemies, so that if anything comes out about their corruption, nobody will believe them. ...So there is this playbook that they use... [I]n the book I isolate these tools of... violence, machismo, corruption, the myth of national greatness... and show what stays the same, and what changes over 100 years.
  • "Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Recognizing Signs of Authoritarianism" (May 15, 2023) Youtube video source, 6:11, UH Better Tomorrow Speaker Series channel.

• [A]t a time when we face climate, health, food and other crises, the priority of authoritarian states is never public welfare, but maintaining stability... keeping the leader in power. ...[S]trongman leaders don't just endanger democracy, ...they pose an existential threat to humanity. ...[Y]et hundreds of millions ...embrace authoritarian lies and violence, so we need to understand why[.] ...Strongmen is about ...looking back in history, globally, for patterns ...[I]t ...put[s] Trump's America in historical perspective. ...[F]or 100 years charismatic leaders ...at moments of uncertainty and transition ...often come from outside the political system. Many... have a past in mass communications. ...They communicate with their followers in ...ways that seem original and thrilling. ...[A]uthoritarians ...appeal when societies have made ...gains in gender, class or racial emancipation and equity.., [and] sooth fears of the loss of male domination.., elite privilege, ...the end of white Christian "civilization." ...[C]ertain categories of enemies recur: Nomadic peoples, Jews and Muslims, LGBTQ communities, indigenous people and more ...the throughlines of persecution.
  [A]uthoritarians get a boost from conservative elites... their most important promoters and collaborators... afraid of losing their privileges... often thinking that he can be controlled, and that never works out... They strike... the "authoritarian bargain"..: prosperity for... the elites in return for loyalty and toleration of... violence and suspension of rights.
  • "Strongmen: How Illiberal Leaders Consolidate Power and How They Can Be Defeated" (May 20, 2023) Youtube video source, 18:30, UH Better Tomorrow Speaker Series channel. Ref: 1) R. M. Desai, A. Olofsgård, T. M. Yousef, "The Logic of Authoritarian Bargains: A Test of A Structural Model" (Jan, 2007) Brookings. 2) R. M. Desai, A. Olofsgård, T. M. Yousef, "The Logic of Authoritarian Bargains" (Jun, 2007) @Stockholm School of Economics.

• Trump's repeated elevation of dictators as models of leadership should be understood as part of a re-education strategy: conditioning Americans to see authoritarianism as a superior form of government to democracy. That is likely why he is explicitly making strongman rule his brand, telling Americans it is in their interest to allow him to save them from the supposed chaos and crime of democracy and give them an orderly authoritarian world under his control.
  • "Opinion: Trump’s praise of dictators tells us all we need to know" (Mar 14, 2024) Cable News Network (CNN)

Quotes about Ben-Ghiat

• Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a distinguished historian of Italian fascism and a prolific political commentator, belonged firmly to the alarm-bells camp over the past four years. Less than two weeks into Trump’s presidency, she wrote an article titled “Donald Trump and Steve Bannon’s Coup in the Making.” Her new book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, elaborates on... the ways ambitious strongmen can damage or destroy democratic regimes. The book features Trump prominently, but it sets him in a rogues’ gallery of authoritarians and would-be authoritarians ranging from Hitler and Benito Mussolini to late-20th-century dictators like Augusto Pinochet, Moammar El-Gadhafi, and Idi Amin to present-day populists like Viktor Orbán, Narendra Modi, and Jair Bolsonaro.
  • David A. Bell, "Methods of Power" (Apr 6, 2021) The Nation

• The irony cannot be lost... government officials have used their positions to muscle out a scholar of authoritarianism from a prestigious lecture, aping the very tactics of censorship and political intimidation... associated with authoritarian states.
  • Jonathan Friedman, Sy Syms director of PEN America’s U.S. Free Expression programs, "Cancellation of Naval Academy Lecture by Ruth Ben-Ghiat at Behest of Republican Politicians Threatens Institutional Autonomy" (Oct 25, 2024) PEN America.

• Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen...will serve as a guidebook for navigating through this ongoing authoritarian turn in American politics. In examining the political tendencies, as well as dictatorships, of Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Muammar Gaddafi, and Augusto Pinochet, among others, Strongmen answers... questions perplexing... many... [and] brings to the fore stories of resistance, many based on personal interviews that give hope and encouragement. ...Ben-Ghiat’s historical evidence is repeatedly complimented with references ...to her authoritarian playbook... making it ...easy to see what such disparate figures as Berlusconi, Putin, and Trump share in common. Firsthand accounts from survivors of autocracies are interspersed... adding poignancy to the horror... [S]ocieties... faced with extreme ideological polarization and inter-communal tensions can either succumb to authoritarian forces or stop the cycle with dialogue, solidarity, and love. In... the United States, this may seem simplistic and even impossible, but these are what strongmen fear the most, and... keeping hope alive is an act of resistance. In clarifying the authoritarian formula, Strongmen is an exhortation to appreciate and collectively protect our fragile democracy.
  • Jennifer McFeeters, "Review: Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen" (Feb 8, 2025) The New Fascism Syllabus

• A leading expert on authoritarianism and history professor at New York University, Ben-Ghiat is the author of numerous books on Italian fascism, including... Strongman: Mussolini to the Present―which compares Donald Trump to Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and Pinochet, among other dictators. She... has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump, regularly connecting his temperament and viewpoints to... dictators she studies. Ben-Ghiat had been invited by the Naval Academy’s history department to deliver the Bancroft Memorial Lecture... which... would focus on "what happens to militaries under authoritarian rule." ...[H]owever, the Naval Academy canceled the lecture ...after the urging of Congressman Keith Self ...
  • Suzanne Trimel, "Cancellation of Naval Academy Lecture by Ruth Ben-Ghiat at Behest of Republican Politicians Threatens Institutional Autonomy" (Oct 25, 2024) PEN America.

See also

• Authoritarianism
• Berlusconi, Silvio
• Bolsonaro, Jair
• Dawisha, Karen
• Democracy
• Dictatorship
• History
• Hitler, Adolf
• Johnston, David Cay
• Mussolini, Benito
• Pinochet, Augusto
• Putin, Vladimir
• Republic
• Trump, Donald
• Trump, Mary L.
• Unger, Craig

External links

• Ruth Ben-Ghiat official website.
• Ruth Ben Ghiat, Professor of History and Italian Fascism, New York University Arts and Science.
• Ruth Ben-Ghiat On the C-SPAN Networks
• Ruth Ben-Ghiat @Google Scholar
• Ruth-Ben-Ghiat @ResearchGate.net