Publishers Weekly
10/05/2020
Historian Ben-Ghiat (Italian Fascism’s Empire Cinema) examines in this incisive and richly detailed account the origin myths, power-grabbing tactics, and personality traits shared by the 20th century’s fascist dictators and today’s right-wing authoritarians. She analyzes how Italian rulers Benito Mussolini and Silvio Berlusconi, Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, Libyan revolutionary Muammar Gaddafi, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin, among many other “strongmen,” seized and held on to power through political uprisings, military coups, and “antidemocratic tactics like fraud and voter suppression.” Ben-Ghiat compares Adolf Hitler’s seizure of the Sudetenland in 1938 to Putin’s annexation of the Ukraine in 2014; dissects how Mussolini, Gaddafi, and Mobutu Sese Seko, the ruler of Zaire, bolstered their power by vaunting their sexual virility; and details how “new authoritarians” including Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro use social media “to create the news they need to stay in office.” Throughout, Ben-Ghiat notes the similarities between President Trump and antidemocratic rulers of the past and present: “A nation that never endured dictatorship or foreign occupation now has firsthand experience of the authoritarian playbook.” It’s a persuasive case, though the decision to leave leftist strongmen largely out of her study leaves Ben-Ghiat open to charges of political bias. Still, this is a thought-provoking look at how authoritarianism has shape-shifted from WWII to today. (Nov.)
New Republic - Federico Finchelstein
"Ben-Ghiat teaches us about the leaders.…[She] cogently states that the secret of the strongman is that he needs the crowds much more than they need him."
Slate Trumpcast - Virginia Heffernan
"A surpassingly brilliant public intellectual."
Sarah Kendzior
"Everyone who cares about American democracy should read this book."
Wall Street Journal - Tunku Varadarajan
"Rich in anecdote.…Ms. Ben-Ghiat is at her most persuasive when she writes of the importance of the strongman’s cult of personality."
Talia Lavin
"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.…Ben-Ghiat does not shy away from revealing America’s role in enabling dictatorships around the world.…It’s a chilling current through the book and one that pricks the conscience of a reader."
Sarah Chayes
"Simultaneously intimate and sweeping in scope.…Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s clear prose rings with a rhythm and cadence that today’s nonfiction too often lacks."
The New Yorker - Jon Blitzer
"Ruth Ben-Ghiat…specializes in male menace."
Guardian - Charles Kaiser
"Ruth Ben-Ghiat delivers a superb examination of how close the US came to fascism—and how it has propped it up before."
Joy Connolly
"Deep insight and a vigorous style…[A] brilliant contribution to the political psychology of democracy."
Timothy Snyder
"With a steady gaze and an eye for the telling detail, Ruth Ben-Ghiat delivers a timely analysis of how a certain kind of charisma delivers political disaster — and some valuable hints about how it can be resisted, and the virtues we will need to rebuild democracy."
Daniel Ziblatt
"Ben-Ghiat's portrayal of fascist-era tyrants, murderous Cold War dictators, and would-be tyrants in our own day gives us a gripping and illuminating picture of how strongmen have deployed violence, seduction, and corruption. History, she shows, offers clear lessons not only about how these regimes are built, but also how they must be opposed, and how they end."
Boston Globe - David M. Shribman
"What separates this book from the many others that examine tyrants and tyranny—is the analysis that puts this phenomenon in perspective."
Library Journal
11/01/2020
Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Augusto Pinochet, Muammar Gaddafi, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump are representative of strongmen, according to Ben-Ghiat (history, Italian Studies, New York Univ.; Italian Fascism's Empire Cinema), as the author traces the evolution of the charismatic leader who specializes in using power for its sake as a way to obtain political control of a country. The narrative story begins with Mussolini and his rise to power post-World War I. In succeeding chapters, Ben-Ghiat explores the tactics and antics of other leaders, such as Hitler and Pinochet, as they use the existing political structure to garner power in their own right. Through extensive research in primary and secondary sources, Ben-Ghiat creates a sobering picture of how strong-willed men have been able to establish themselves as popular rulers, while undermining the very democratic structure within which they thrived. Ben-Ghiat's narrative is replete with examples of how authoritarian rulers came to power and how they maintain power; overall, the book represents a troubling portrayal of how mature modern democracies can be ultimately dominated by such strongmen. VERDICT A sober book, and one that we should all take seriously. Essential for all collections.—Ed Goedeken, Iowa State Univ. Lib., Ames
Kirkus Reviews
2020-09-10
What does Donald Trump have in common with dictators like Hitler and Mussolini? A professor of history and Italian studies at NYU tallies the similarities.
This incisive study casts a wider geographic net than two recent books that have placed Trump on a continuum of authoritarian leaders: Géraldine Schwarz’s Those Who Forget, which set him in the context of rising far-right movements in Europe, and Eric Posner’s The Demagogue’s Playbook, which compared him to American tyrants. Ben-Ghiat shows how “strongmen” have undermined or destroyed democracy in three successive eras: the fascist takeovers (1919-1945) that gave rise to Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco; the military coups (1950-1990) that installed Gaddafi, Pinochet, and Sese Seko; and the elections (1990-present) that elevated Berlusconi, Erdogan, Putin, and Trump. Agreeing with the anthropologist Ernest Becker that it’s fear that makes people follow demagogues, Ben-Ghiat shows how modern strongmen have swayed the masses by exploiting three factors often cited by other scholars: violence, propaganda, and corruption. She also argues, more originally but less persuasively, that they flaunt a fourth trait, “virility,” manifested in acts such as Trump’s boasting of his sexual exploits to Access Hollywood and Putin’s posing shirtless for photos. This argument is her weakest partly because many nondespotic leaders have displayed a similar male bravado; shirtless photos of JFK and Reagan abound, and no U.S. president may have been more macho than big-game hunter Teddy Roosevelt. The author is on firmer ground when she shows how male leaders use “divide-and-rule” and other tactics to consolidate power, as Trump did in making states compete for medical equipment during the pandemic. Ben-Ghiat allows that women like Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi “may have had certain strongman traits,” but she excludes them from scrutiny because “none of them sought to destroy democracy.” Given that this book is at heart a horror story, no female leader will regret her own exclusion.
An intelligent if less than blazingly original study of modern authoritarian leaders.
