This is an early repost of a recent interview for which no
apologies are made. As the 45th incumbent burns out the last days
of his Presidency in a downward spiral of self-destruction and bad
behavior, this conversation for @KGNU by @claudiacragg with
@RuthBenGhiat holds even more resonance. The central challenge of
Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s “Strongmen:
Mussolini to the Present” is revealed early, in the book’s
introduction, when the author lays out her expansive cast of
characters. “I focus on Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco
Franco Bahamonde, Muammar Gaddafi, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, Mobutu
Sese Seko, Silvio Berlusconi, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Vladimir Putin,
and Donald Trump, with Idi Amin, Mohamed Siad Barre, Jair
Bolsonaro, Rodrigo Duterte, Nahrendra Modi, Viktor Orban, and
others making cameo appearances,” Ben-Ghiat writes. This is an
overwhelming dramatis personae — one that spans not just the globe
but a number of ideologies, types of government and two
centuries.
Ben-Ghiat makes a convincing argument for including Trump in
these less-than-august ranks, most of all when laying out the
specifics of his corruption. For the reader inured by the
drip-drip-drip of stories of brazen corruption over the course of
years, it is bracing to see a half-decade’s worth of reporting so
carefully distilled and to recall that it is in fact aberrant to
see a son-in-law enriching himself at taxpayer expense, or to watch
the Trump Organization’s coffers fill, golf outing by golf outing,
with the aid of the Secret Service. As Ben-Ghiat shows, such
self-enrichment is more in line with a Gaddafi or a Mussolini than
a transparent or accountable democratic leader. Trump’s violence,
too, is laid out chillingly: “In the tradition of the fascists,
Trump uses his rallies to train his followers to see violence in a
positive light,” she writes of his frequent exhortations to
violence and demonization of immigrants at these spectacles.
