The Steady State Sentinel is produced by the
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Join our expert hosts as they interview field
-tested guests whose unique experiences shed
light on the crises and challenges facing our
nation. Hello, you're listening to the Steady
State Sentinel from the Steady State. I'm Jim
Lawler, a former senior CIA operations officer,
and I've worked some of the most sensitive counterproliferation
and espionage cases. Today, we're talking about
authoritarianism with Dr. Ruth Ben -Ghiat and
what it means for our democracy and national
security. Dr. Ben -Ghiat is a professor at New
York University and is a noted historian who
writes about fascism, authoritarian leaders,
propaganda, and democracy protection. She's the
author of the New York Times bestseller, Strongmen,
How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fail,
which looks at the tools of authoritarian rule
and how authoritarians can be resisted. She also
has a Substack newsletter and a podcast, Lucid
on Threats to Democracy. We're going to insert
those links in our podcast. So welcome, Ruth.
And let me start off. by asking you, noting that
in Strongman, by the way, which I have a copy
of, I'd like to say I enjoyed it. I was fascinated
by it, but it was very disturbing, very disturbing.
I found myself nodding my head as I read it,
seeing your citations of historical parallels
in the 20th century to what we're going through
today in the United States of America. which
up until now has been the land of the free and
the home of the brave. But I'm starting to wonder
about that. So you present in your book a consistent
profile of authoritarian leaders in the 20th
and 21st centuries, as I said, their traits,
their vices, their proclivities, all of these
things that they share. So please recount for
us, for our listeners, what some of these characteristics
are and note whether you think our current president
exhibits these. Yeah, that's a good question.
And I would say that until 2016, I had been working
for many years on Italian fascism and thus also
a bit on Nazism and Franco, but historic fascism.
And it was really observing the behavior of Donald
Trump during the 2016 campaign, in particular
when he said that he could stand on Fifth Avenue
and shoot someone. And he wouldn't lose any followers.
And then observing that just a few weeks after
that was when the GOP made its approach to him
through Jeff Sessions. I started writing for
CNN about Trump because I realized that this
was somebody who had a lot of those traits and
could be extremely dangerous if he were not contained.
One thing that we see is that they're entirely
transactional beings. And this applies to Putin,
to Mobutu, to all of them, whether they're communist
or fascist. And everybody has a utility until
they don't anymore. And because they don't have
a fixed code of values, they just... do what
they think serves them and their power at the
moment. And so, you know, the biggest example
is Hitler allies with Stalin and then Hitler
invades Stalin. But there are many things. So
you can't count on them. They will just always
do what they think is best for them. Another
thing is despite their bluster of the strong
men, they are insecure and weak and frail people.
who are actually living in fear all the time
of people deposing them or coming to get them.
And so that's why they require loyalty by everyone
around them. And one thing that Americans have
had to learn, Mike Pence had to learn it, is
that your loyalty is earned every day. You could
have years of being the most loyal, faithful
person out there publicly praising the leader.
And if you do one thing, That they don't like
you become the enemy. And so they set up structures
of that's why they hire people who are loyalists
and sycophants over expertise. And and so that's
another trait that they all follow. Sometimes
I wonder, and of course, I'm not asking you,
since you're not a psych, neither a psychologist
nor a psychiatrist, if this might have some.
Donald Trump's problems might have something
to do with a dysfunctional relationship with
his father, and he's craving attention. I don't
know. Again, I'm not a psychologist, and neither
are you, but the thought did enter my mind as
you were saying that. Yeah, many of them have
damaged relationships with fathers or parents,
or they were... The violent, like Mussolini was
very violent from an early age. He would stab
people. By the time he was actually founding
fascism with his black shirts, he'd stabbed people.
He was a serial rapist. I mean, we're talking
hundreds of women, like Gaddafi. So these are
very disturbed people. In Trump's case, he wanted
to please his father, but he actually learned
a ton from his father because his father was
crook. who was defrauding the U .S. government
out of taxes, doing all kinds of things. So he
learned from, Trump learned from his father that
being smart means, you know, getting away with
things. And his father, I think, you know, was
never put in prison for his tax evasion and other
things. And he learned a model of business and
dealing with people from him and also from other
charming mentors such as Roy Cohn. And Roger
Stone, the latter, who, along with Manafort,
was working for dictators, trying to throw elections
for Marcos. These people have a long history
of, shall we say, anti -democratic behavior,
transactional behavior. And these were the mentors
of Trump. You've mentioned the traits of an authoritarian
leader. And I confess, I'm... both horrified
and fascinated with it, maybe the fascination
of the abomination, like Joseph Conrad's famous
line in The Heart of Darkness. But I'm even more
interested in what motivates a follower. I mean,
why are these so many mega Republicans out there
that seems to stick with him through thick and
thin, no matter what the abomination is, they
are sticking with him? What is this? What is
causing this? Yeah, that's the right question
to ask, because really, who would these these
dictators be without their followers? What if
nobody showed up for their rallies? What if nobody,
you know, decided to adulate them? So so, you
know, part of it is if you look at when these
people come up and have success. It's often when
there's been a lot of change in a society. And
this is a pattern over 100 years. It could be
a moment where things feel like they're falling
apart and traditional political parties are not
sufficient anymore for people. Or after the fall
of communism, that's a big one. Or after World
War I, when fascists came up. But often it's
when people feel that the quote wrong people
are getting power in society. So it could be
women attaining more equity and visibility, racial
emancipation, workers' rights. And it's those
times of great social change when the strongman
comes up and says, I'm going to fix it. I'm going
to fix it by having a kind of male supremacy.
And that is, you know, and in Euro -American
context, of course, a white male supremacy and
has different articulations in different areas
of the world. But it's when some people feel
that they're losing something from the way that
society is going. And then the strongmen, because
again, because they have no inner core, they.
They read the marketplace. And Trump, a lot of
them actually had a background in either advertising
or media, TV, television, journalism. And they
read the marketplace and they make themselves
what is most wanted at that moment. And that's
it's very important. And that's why the follower
feels seen by him and feels that. He he will
be the protector. He'll be protected. And so
literally, Trump said, I am your voice. You you've
been forgotten, but you're forgotten no longer.
And he made himself what would work at that moment.
And Berlusconi did the same in Italy. So the
follower feels protected because of this. And
then once they bond and this is true of elites,
too, as well as popular followers. These are
it's unbelievable. And it's it's what does it
say about psychology? Once they bond to the leader
or they make their deals, if they're elites,
they stick with them through whatever, no matter
what happens. It's really hard to break those
bonds for elites. It's because they're getting
something out of it and they are afraid that
something will happen to them or they'll just
lose out. But that is the problem, that once
they make the bonds, they will put up with and
rationalize an enormous amount of damage and
violence to stick with the leader. Is this like
an aspect of confirmation bias? Yes, to some
extent, especially grassroots people. And in
fact, so many of us in the United States have
somebody in there, either your family or your
community or your church. who you can't talk
to anymore. And the more what happens is, and
there's interesting studies also from the point
of view of people who've been defrauded by like
financial con men. Once people, if they start
waking up and they start to realize that their
idol might have not been truthful with them,
they feel deeply ashamed. And so they dig in
sometimes. So they start to come out. And that
is when it's tempting for us to say, oh, I told
you so. You know, thank God you're seeing the
light. But that can be counterproductive because
they feel ashamed. And the more they realize
they were defrauded, and that applies to political
things too, the more they can be kind of stubborn.
And it can take a long time for them to... to
come out of it, unless something catastrophic
happens. And then sometimes it's like a brusque
awakening. Well, I mean, I think all of us resent
it when somebody says, I told you so. Yes. So
I think I... That's not a good... When we're
having our conversations, I am urging people
to try and have conversations. And I mean, my
own mother, she lives in England and... During
the pandemic, they had real lockdowns and she
was in a small village. And she started watching
Russia Today. And she became totally enchanted
with Russia Today. And she had never mentioned
Putin. And she started talking about Putin as
like the best thing ever. And she developed a
rabid hatred of Biden. And so I started, you
know, sending her things that I myself had written
for CNN about, you know. a Russian playbook and
this. And she just would say, you're just fake
news. You're fake news to her own daughter. So
it's very hard when they're in the thick of it
to deal with people like that. But we should
keep the dialogue going. This is what the experts
say. You don't want to push them away further.
Well, I had a similar discussion with a very
good friend, a friend of more than 45 years standing.
A very intelligent man, a very wealthy man, a
guy who I consider one of my best friends. And
when we discussed the January 6th incident of
2021. He insisted that all of these people were
not insurrectionists, but they'd been invited
in. And I said to him, I said, where did you
get that? They were invited in and they killed
people and attacked police officers. I finally
I backed off because it was a social occasion.
And I didn't want to, you know, I have a lot
of affection for this gentleman and his wife.
But I wonder where they get their news. And so
let me ask you this, Ruth, what? How is there
a way, you know, I know this sounds kind of simplistic,
but is there a way to deprogram them? I mean,
how do these people eventually, who follow an
authoritarian, why do they break with them? Why
do they defect? Do you think these murders in
Minneapolis will have some effect on them? I
have to clear my throat, sorry. I think that
if they're very deep into their disinformation
tunnel, as I call it, Even murders like that,
cold -blooded execution style stuff, will not
because they've imbibed the talking point of
the government that these were domestic terrorists.
But eventually, it's going to be harder for the
government propaganda to not conflict with what
they see around themselves in their own communities.
And once those lies are very apparent and...
And soon many, many people are going to know
somebody or know of someone who has been brutalized
in some way or another by ICE or something has
happened to them. And also the economy may deteriorate
further. And so it's going to be harder to deny
that what the government is saying and Trump's
priorities of his ballroom and kidnapping Maduro,
all these foreign policy things that... and he's
not interested in them and affordability, it'll
be harder to ignore. And so what you see, many
of the case studies are long regimes, almost
like a one -party state, and that's different.
But it can take... either a kind of rotting from
within of the state due to corruption. And so
what did we see in Russia is you had like hundreds
of thousands of young men fleeing for the border
because after the, quote, special military operation
into Ukraine, because they knew very well that,
you know, Russian military was not what it was
supposed to be. And they would be cannon fodder
and they would die. So they hundreds of thousands
were ran for the. They tried to get out of the
country. And that's an example of people who
are no longer believing the propaganda. So I
think you're familiar with the doomsday clock
of the Federation of American Scientists. That's
where they speculate how close we are to nuclear
Armageddon. And they say so many minutes until
midnight and they set that hand back or forward
depending on how close we're coming to that nuclear.
precipice, that Armageddon. So if you had an
authoritarian doomsday clock, how close are we
to midnight with an authoritarian takeover and
a collapse of our democracy? Where would you
put the minute hand right now? You know, in some
ways it's tempting to say we're halfway there
because Huge amount of damage has been done.
And it depends what your metrics are. If the
metric is the damage to government institutions
like Department of Justice, the State Department,
it's way beyond half. It's huge damage has been
done. And foreign policy has been personalized.
You see this with other autocrats. where these
cronies and sons -in -law, you know, people who
they're pushing out the foreign policy establishment.
And so under that metric, we're quite a ways
onward. And also corruption, of course, being
able to hold the leader accountable and his cabinet
ministers. For corruption, that is down the path.
And the other thing that's notable about our
situation is... So much was done so quickly that
there is no comparison to really any other leader
who came into power via elections. If you look
at the first year of Putin, Erdogan, even Orban
did a lot, but we're also the United States.
And they also wrecked USAID. They did so many
things for foreign policy. And when the U .S.
does things, it reverberates around the world.
So there is no other. government outside of a
coup, where the effects within the country and
globally were resonating so much as what we've
been living through. Yes, I've made the statement,
and I hate to trivialize this by comparing our
president to a certain German leader in the 1930s,
but it took the burning down of the Reichstag
after Hitler was made chancellor. Donald Trump
is moving much more quickly in some respects.
And that's very important. And the reasons for
that, they had a shadow government in Heritage
Foundation and Project 2025. They had Musk, who
was the oligarch. You know, that's also, I think
that right now the U .S. is a laboratory for
a new form of authoritarianism. So you have classic
things going on, capturing institutions, capturing
media. de facto paramilitary like ICE. But what
happened with Musk was unheard of because the
oligarch who helps the leader is supposed to
be outside of government. That's how it's worked
in Russia, in Modi. They buy up banks or they
buy up newspapers and then they ally. Here, Trump
gave a private citizen, Musk, who's the richest
in the whole world, to the ability to come in
to the sensitive nerve centers of a superpower
through Doge. And Doge was the mechanism to infiltrate
and plunder the U .S. government. And my mouth
was falling open that he was made a contemporary
government employee, but this was just a... This
was just a ruse, let's say, of cover. And they
were allowed to go in and sack, you know, all
of the sensitive systems of payment and treasury
systems. When did that happen? They locked out
employees. They locked them out of their computers.
It's like coup tactics, really a different kind
of coup, a 21st century coup. And that's also
how things have happened so fast. Now, to finish
answering your question, though. There's been
an enormous amount of pushback that indicates
that we still have a democracy in many respects,
including inside institutions. There have been
300 successful legal cases decided on by judges,
many of whom were appointed by Trump. So they
have not been able to totally capture yet the
judiciary the way that Erdogan and Orban have
been able to do. And certainly. You know, Putin
and people like that. So and then you have all
of the grassroots protests all over the nation
and you have organized things like no kings that
are building and building in numbers. And then
you have all the spontaneous mobilizations that
are very moving of people coming out. You know,
they're on their way home and they see somebody
being brutalized by ICE and they drop their briefcase
and go in or they are home and they're in their
pajamas and they rush out the door. And that's
going on all over the country. And then, you
know, there's a lot of independent media like
Substax, and we're all still able to speak out,
perhaps more carefully, but we speak out. And
so they have not managed to wreck the democratic,
I would call it, public sphere. These are the
guardrails of democracy. It shows a certain fairly
high degree of resilience that we can hopefully
recover. So we're not to the point where we can't
recover. No. And I actually believe that I am
an optimist by nature, which is a good thing
given the people I study, because they're like
the worst people in the world. And you've got
to immerse yourself in there. their lives and
it's not pleasant. But I believe that one of
my maxims is never underestimate the American
people. And maybe because I'm a first generation
American, I think that because Trump is engaging
in overreach and he's making a lot of unforced
errors and there is this thing called autocratic
backfire. And one of the conditions that cause
it and cause mass resistance and elite defections
are corruption, like blatant corruption, like
not even hiding it anymore. Overreach in terms
of brutality for ordinary people, check. And
then the creation of hardship and basically the
government being very obvious that doesn't care.
And, of course, Trump doesn't care what happens
to people. And that's been evident forever. Well,
you quoted him. You said that he said a while
back he could shoot somebody and they wouldn't
care. Yeah. And it's taken people. The thing
is about America, with the great respect for
the presidency, it's taken people a very long
time to want to acknowledge how scary, too, how
immoral. just uncaring Trump is. And I remember
in 2020, during the pandemic, I was interviewed
and I said that Trump didn't care if you lived
or died. He doesn't. None of them care. They're
narcissists. They don't care. But this, I got
a lot of hate mail or people were upset because
it's too bleak. And we're used to, we've had
good and less good presidents, but the office
of the presidency has a prestige and governance
in a democracy has something to do with public
welfare. And here we've got the whole point of
our autocratic governance is totally different,
has nothing to do with public welfare. It's about
getting rich from office and consolidating power
as much as possible so that nobody can come after
you. And so it's taken, Americans didn't have
a national precedent for this. And so that's
been a hindrance, I would say, in a way. It's
the strength of our country, but it's been a
hindrance in terms of getting people to realize
the extent of the danger. My adult children have
asked me how we can overcome this slide, or maybe
it's a plunge towards authoritarianism in America.
Do you have any advice for young adults today,
or any of our listeners for that matter, to how
we can prevent this slide into this authoritarian
state that you describe so well in your book,
Strong Men? I think that what we're living through
now is a giant civics lesson. And I certainly
see everything I'm doing as civic education about
how precious our democratic rights are, how we're
so privileged to have these rights. And one of
the things I've learned from also talking to
dissidents and just my own studies is that you
use every tool and space that you have while
you still have it. And that includes elections.
I get. Emails from people who say, well, we're
fascists now. This is a fascist state. So you
can't vote your way out of fascism. And that
is cynical because we still have elections and
Democrats are racking up a lot of victories and
it's starting to rattle the Republican Party.
And something could come of that later on. I
agree. I agree. We just elected a Democratic
governor, Abigail Spanberger, here in Virginia.
The new governor in New Jersey, I believe it
is. This is encouraging to me that all is not
lost. It's going to continue. And so we have
to. But there's there's millions and millions
of people in America who. either were detached
from politics, took our liberties for granted.
And so we have to reach those people and do,
you know, registering people to vote. That's
one avenue that we never give up on elections.
And we work actively. If you want a phone bank,
whatever way, you don't have to be in the streets
protesting. There's many other things you can
do. But working to. to make people realize what
the stakes are of being detached right now. I
agree. In fact, if you permit me, I'd like to
read one quote that you wrote in your book, which
I think is just beautiful. You say, there are
two paths people can take when faced with the
proliferation of polarization and hatred in their
societies. They can dig their trenches deeper.
or they can reach across the lines to stop a
new cycle of destruction, knowing that solidarity,
love, and dialogue are what the strong man most
fears. History shows the importance of keeping
hope and faith in humanity and supporting those
who struggle for freedom in our own time. We
can carry with us the stories of those who lived
and died, as just happened in Minnesota, over
a century of democracy's destruction and resurrection.
That's precious counsel for us today. Those are
beautiful words, Ruth, and I think it's wonderful
advice. Thank you. Yeah, it was like a journey
to write the book, and it was not easy at times
to write that book. Well, it was written four
years ago. It was written during the first Trump
administration. I know. But what I came away
is that— The answer to the hatred is for us to
prioritize the values of empathy and kindness
and community. And so it's been all over the
world when people have built a nonviolent resistance.
Very, very important that it be nonviolent and
come together to help each other when the government
doesn't care or is actively becoming a hostile
force. We have a lot more agency and authoritarians
want us to think that we're hopeless and they
want us to be helpless or think that we're helpless.
And so coming together and embodying the values
that are the opposite of the strongman brand
is something that's very important. Yes, absolutely.
I noticed that the book is all about strong men,
but I didn't notice any mention of strong women.
Is there a reason for that, do you think? Is
this a testicular trait? I have a chapter on
machismo, and it's one of the first books to
really put machismo up there along with propaganda
and corruption and violence as a tool of rule.
And I didn't include somebody like Thatcher or
Gandhi because I wanted to really focus on people
who really wrecked a democracy completely, like
and became dictatorial figures. Now, today, though,
we have the book was written before Meloni came
to power. And I do think it's it is significant
that. She is the first female prime minister
in Italy. It's a huge deal. But she was a neo
-fascist, and her mentors were Mussolini, who
there were many videos of her making fascist
salutes in her youth, and also Berlusconi, who
were both famous serial rapists and just, you
know, beyond misogynistic. And so she, yes, she's
breaking the glass ceiling, but she's highly
homophobic. She espouses great replacement theory.
She's friends with Musk. Her domestic policies
are, her foreign policy is more moderate. Her
domestic policies are a lot of recycling of what
Berlusconi did. So women can come. to power even
for the first time, but they have, in a way,
internalized ideologies that don't serve women
well. I'm going to conclude this discussion with
another quote in your book. Your book is beautifully
written, and I love this. Democracy needs heroes
more than ever and compelling narratives that
make the case for the merits and advantages of
open societies. Liberal values don't have to
seem tepid and boring, as the philosopher Martha
Nussbaum argues. If compassion and love are recognized
as fundamental to the democratic model of politics,
too often we have left the work of shaping emotions,
including patriotism and our love for our country,
to democracy's enemies. You know, why should
MAGA have a monopoly on what we claim to be patriotism
and support of America? Making America great
again. America has always been great, but they
are diluting it seriously. And now we have somebody
in power who is, I believe, working with the
enemies of America and trying to wreck. If you
look at what's gone on, it's like as though there's
a holistic plan. They're a bit too chaotic to
really have a holistic plan, although Project
2025 people did. But to take away or wreck or
defund everything that brought America trust
and prosperity in the world, from humanitarian
assistance to medical research to international
collaborations, all of it has to be wrecked.
And it's a really scary thing that's going on
because who's going to prosper? And I guess a
good ending point is... Trump campaigned on this
in 2024 in June, I believe it was, in a campaign
rally. He said, if you have a smart president,
they don't have to be enemies. You'll make them
do great. And he was referring to China, Russia
and North Korea. Incredible. Incredible. Well,
thank you so much, Ruth, for joining us today.
Tell the audience again where they can find you
and your work to resist authoritarianism. And
we'll post the link, but please tell them about
that. So I published a lot of my writing. I published
a newsletter on Substack called Lucid. And it's
about threats to democracy and authoritarianism.
And I have weekly for paying subscribers. I have
weekly Q &As where you can ask me and my guests
questions directly. I also write for The New
York Times sometimes. and the author of Strongman
and working on a book about resistance now. I
was going to ask you if you were going to update
Strongman in light of what we're going through
now, but if you're working on another book and
resistance, I think that would be wonderful.
I look forward very much to reading that. So
thank you again, Ruth, for being on our show
today. And anyways, if you like what you heard
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