This blog post started out as a short (14-minute) youtube video. What follows is an edited transcription. The video is here. What follows is an [edited] transcription.
The historical background, and ideas for how to weaken the strongman cult, comes from this book by New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat:
The question of the hour is: What can we do to diminish the power that Trump-Fox-Republican Party holds in our government, at all levels?
Last week, in my post about Mitch McConnell’s power grab, I quoted Steven Levitsky, Harvard Professor and author of How Democracies Die, who said that the greatest danger to democracy is the government slipping into dysfunction, which will erode public confidence in democratic institutions. This is a danger because, when public confidence erodes, people become vulnerable to the appeal of a strongman, who promises to get things done.
What Ben-Ghiat calls the “strongman” as a form of national government leader really took off after World War I. The war pretty much decimated the old order, the aristocracy, and monarchies. There was an attempt for democracy to take hold, but in a few notable countries, like Italy and Germany, a strongman was able to undermine democracy and take control.
Ben-Ghiat tells the stories of quite a few strongmen, including Mussolini, Hitler, Gaddafi, Pinochet, Mobuto, Erdoğan, Putin, Trump, and others. They all share particular traits.
Patterns emerge. For example, they all use their public office to enrich themselves. In fact, after living through the Trump presidency, what’s striking is that no matter which strongman Ben-Ghiat is describing, she could also be describing aspects of Trump. For example:
Sons-in-law also have a prominent role in strongman governance. Mussolini made his son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano foreign minister in 1936, used him as “a tool of his personal politics,” and then had Ciano executed for voting in 1943 to remove him from power. Orbán’s son-in-law István Tiborcz, a businessman, has amassed a net worth of over 100 million euros, but the Hungarian government dropped corruption probes initiated by the European Union (EU) against him. Berat Albayrak, accused by multiple foreign governments of illegal activities while serving as Turkish energy minister, is now his Erdoğan’s treasury and finance minister. Jared Kushner, a presidential adviser, pursues private Kushner and Trump family financial interests along with his government assignments. (p. 146).
Another trait many of them share is that, when they come to power, it’s with a history of lawbreaking. Another trait they have in common: Strongmen, like gangsters, find ways to create immunity for themselves, allowing their underlings to go to prison for their own crimes. As Ben-Ghiat put it:
From Mussolini onward, making sure you have immunity while those who have done your dirty work go to jail has been an essential strongman skill. (p. 50).
After Trump’s strong-arming of the president of Ukraine “I’d like you to do us a favor, though,” and the way he instigated a riot without explicitly saying what he wanted to happen, I was struck by this Mussolini incident:
“Make Gobetti’s life difficult,” Mussolini told his prefects, leading to multiple arrests and a savage beating on the street. A weakened Gobetti died in 1926, soon after he went into exile. (p. 100).
See how Mussolini has deniability? He never actually said, “Hurt him physically.”
Here’s another interesting similarity: Ben-Ghiat says this:
Rallies were the fascist strongman’s favorite form of political theater and Mussolini and Hitler used them as sites of emotional training to create “a violent, lordly, fearless, cruel youth,” ready to do what was necessary for the nation. (p. 104).
I remember that chilling moment in 2017 after Trump became president when he said he would continue doing rallies. If you didn’t already know by then, in that moment it was clear we weren’t in normal democratic politics. Yesterday, Trump started his rallies again. He wants to help Republicans retake the House, which is a time-honored way people set themselves up as a strong presidential candidate.
I don’t think I have to spend much time persuading you all that Trump fits the mold, so I’ll move on to talking about how to prevent another Trump from coming to power. To really understand how to prevent another strongman from taking control of the executive branch, we have to understand how strongmen come to power, how they stay in power, and how they eventually lose power. Ben-Ghiat explains all of this thoroughly.
Not long ago, strongmen often came to power through military coups. More commonly they come to power through elections or other democratic means, and then they find ways to stay in power.
This is key: Strongmen come to power with the backing and support of conservatives, who believe the strongman can be used as a vehicle for their own agenda. Germans conservatives thought Hitler would be their tool. In the early thirties, a few powerful conservatives started courting Hitler, thinking he could help them subvert the left’s growing electoral strength. One industrialist thought Hitler could serve as a transition to restoring the German monarchy. Hitler actually only won about 33% of the vote. This is an interesting number, by the way. In this video I talked about the Authoritarian Personality and I cite political psychologists who say about a third of the population has a tendency to fall in line behind an authoritarian leader.
Hitler actually became Chancellor through a backroom deal with powerful conservatives. He became chancellor by decree instead of a parliamentary majority. Later, after fleeing Germany in 1939, conservative industrialist Fritz Thyssen, who helped prop up Hitler said, “I, too, misjudged the political situation at that time.” (Page 31)
Mussolini came to power with the king appointed him prime minister. The king thought he could control Mussolini. Oops.
Pinochet was backed by his own military (which was conservative) but he was also propped up by Henry Kissinger and the power of the U.S. From Ben-GHiat:
Once the ruler is in power, elites strike an “authoritarian bargain” that promises them power and security in return for loyalty to the ruler and toleration of his suspension of rights. Some are true believers, and others fear the consequences of subtracting their support, but those who sign on tend to stick with the leader through gross mismanagement, impeachment, or international humiliation. (p. 14).
That describes what we are seeing right now with the Republican Party elites, many of whom initially resisted Trump’s bid for the Republican nomination in 2016, but who now fall in line. McConnell and other conservative and right-wing elites see Trump as a vehicle to accomplish their goals.
Ben Ghiat issued a warning:
Many learned too late the rule about cooperating with authoritarian regimes: as with the related world of organized crime, the moment you agree to do one thing, the trap is set for you to do another. (p. 101).
Another thing that is striking: The extent to which right-wing America influenced the rise of far-right-wing European parties and dictators across the globe. From Ben-Ghiat:
America has played an outsized role in the success of authoritarianism around the world, starting with the US banks and media outlets that supported Mussolini’s dictatorship in the 1920s. (p. 254).
We know how Kissinger propped up Pinochet. Did you know about William F. Buckley? I didn’t until I read Ben-Ghiat’s book:
Pinochet could count on the misinformation turned out by the American-Chilean Council he partly funded. Headed by Marvin Leibman and William F. Buckley, the council’s reports downplayed the junta’s violence and emphasized its neoliberal economic policies and its stability. (p. 108).
Ben-Ghiat gives lots of other examples of American conservatives propping up these kinds of dictators worldwide:
Like Kissinger, Trump adviser Roger Stone and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had a history of supporting strongmen that went back to the age of military coups. As part of the lobbying firm Black, Stone, Manafort, and Kelly, they worked for Mobutu, Barre, and for Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos during a 1985 election campaign that earned Marcos accusations of fraud. Manafort had transitioned to the new authoritarian age by representing Putin in 2006–2009, and he worked for the pro-Russian Ukranian president, Viktor Yanukovych, for a decade before he became Trump’s presidential campaign manager. (p. 61).
When RT America, Russia’s propaganda station, wanted to expand its influence in the United States, it hired Fox News personalities like Rick Sanchez and Scottie Neil Hughes. This is not a coincidence.
Just as these strongmen come to power with the backing of conservatives, they tend to lose power when they lose the backing of the conservative elites.
Part of what ousted Pinochet was that his inflexibility and corruption worried his American backers:
Elliott Abrams, who had served as President Reagan’s assistant secretary of state for Latin America, recalled the moment bluntly. Pinochet had “outlived any usefulness he had ever had. Even if you thought he was terrific in 1973, by 1983, it was time for him to go.” (p. 206).
For the record. Pinochet wasn’t terrific in 1973 when he pulled off a military coup that left the legitimate president dead.
But evidently, 10 years later, Pinochet “outlived his usefulness.” Here’s what else Ben Ghiat says:
More personalist rulers are toppled by elites than by popular revolutions, especially in situations of economic or military distress. While they may last longer than other kinds of authoritarians, 80 percent of them are booted out of office eventually. (p. 223).
Had the entire Republican Party lined up behind Trump’s attempt to overthrow the election, we would have been in a much more harrowing situation. But key conservatives like Pence and Georgia secretary of state Raffensburger (and others) refused to go along. Conservative judges tossed out Trump’s frivolous lawsuits.
I’ll add that Daniel Ziblatt, a Harvard political science professor and the other co-author of How Democracies Die agrees. See this Washington Post interview, “Why Liberal Democracy Only Dies when Conservatives Help,” with Ziblatt:
Okay, so what can we do?
I started by quoting Levitsky, who says that the greatest danger to democracy is the government slipping into dysfunction because this makes people vulnerable to the appeal of a strongman, who promises to get things done. What Biden needs to do (and what he is doing) is make government work, and that includes strengthening the institutions like the DOJ so that we can withstand another Trump. Basically, we have four years to build back up what Trump battered.
The judges Biden will appoint in the next four years will go a long way to strengthening the judicial branch.
Criminal prosecutions can certainly help, but it’s not like these guys are going to say, “Trump was prosecuted so we should just fold up shop and learn to play nice”:
Remember that most strongmen come to power with criminal backgrounds. People who like strongmen like the fact that they break laws. We’ve seen how the Republican Party will shield and defend Trump no matter what he does. Of course, it’s hard to run for office from jail, but that will not deter another Trump like figure from stepping forward. In fact, right we see lots of elected Republican leader trying to position themselves as the next Trump.
From Ben-Ghiat, “prosecution plays into the victimhood cult.” Besides, facts don’t bother them. They’ll just say the prosecutors and juries were biased against them.
The Republican demographics are shrinking, particularly as they more openly embrace white supremacy, and we still have functioning elections, so obviously people turning out in large numbers is crucial.
Pressure campaigns work. From Ben-Ghiat:
Pressure campaigns on banks, law firms, and other enablers of authoritarian corruption can fuel a reconsideration of the practice of working for autocrats for the revenue it brings. (pp. 253-254).
What we can and should do now is boycott the companies that are propping up the Trump Party. Big corporations like the tax cuts they get from the Trump Party, but if their sales drop off and people stop using their services, what good are tax cuts. We need to show these corporations that it’s in their financial interests to support democracy.
And, as always, my list.