Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
BOOK REVIEW
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat has spent a lifetime studying and writing about fascist regimes and autocratic leaders. Her sixth book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present (Norton, 2020) provides an in-depth analysis of the usual suspects (Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Putin) but also examines a dozen other “Strongmen” including Uganda’s Idi Amin, Libya’s Gaddafi, Italy’s Berlusconi, Turkey’s Erdogan, Hungary’s Urban, and, of special interest to this reader, Donald J. Trump.
The single defining characteristic that all have in common is what Ben-Ghiat calls the “gold rule of Strongmen: doing whatever is necessary to gain, maintain, and expand their personal power.” Everything else, including the nation itself, is disposable and subordinate to the Strongman's insatiable drive for personal power. In this thorough, systematic, and wide-ranging exposition and analysis, Ben-Ghiat delineates the predominant characteristics and behaviors of these egomaniacal narcissists, autocratic leaders, and fascist dictators she calls “Strongmen.”
Lying, for example. “Authoritarians,” she writes, “invest heavily in the manipulation, falsification, and concealment of information,” relying predominantly on the endless repetition of lies, propaganda, and misinformation promulgated by sycophantic enablers and apologists. Trump’s niece, psychologist Mary Trump (who had a front row seat at the family table) described the Trump clan’s operational ethos as “lying and cheating as a way of life.”
Under Trump, the free press (ie, anyone who criticized him) became the “enemy of the people.” “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” he infamously told a gathering of veterans. “Just remember: what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” The Washington Post fact-checker reported 30,573 Trump lies in his four years in office (averaging 21 lies a day); Trump’s predictable response to any truthful portrayal of his avalanche of dishonesty: fake news, a witch hunt, they’re out to get me. And in the infamous words of sycophantic apologist Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s lies aren’t lies, they’re “alternative facts.”
Even in his post-presidency Trump has maintained a daily diarrhetic flow of lies, especially on his absurdly-named Truth Social internet platform. Daily he reiterates the Big Lie (usually in ALL CAPS!!!) that he won the 2020 election. Ben-Ghiat calls these types of statements “communication strategies designed to sow confusion and uncertainty, discourage critical thinking, and persuade people that reality is what the leader says it is.” One wonders whether Trump, as a narcissistic psychopath, knows he is purposefully lying or whether he now believes his own lies. Either way, if pathological lying is a common characteristic of the world’s worst autocratic leaders, then Trump (who loves to be the “greatest”) may in fact hold the title of Greatest-Liar-of-All-Time.
Nepotism is another common characteristic of Strongmen, bringing family and loyalists into the heart of their regimes and rewarding them with political and financial advantages and favors. Clearly in this category were Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as loyal enablers like Rudy Giuliani, Steve Bannon, and Stephen Miller, and FOX apologists like Sean Hannity - all fall within the orbit of Trump’s nepotism. It is also noteworthy that while the current Republican House of Representatives is preparing to sensationalize the Hunter Biden “laptop story” with wall-to-wall Joe McCarthy-esque hearings, yet silence reigns with regard to Jared Kushner’s $650 million dollar “commission” for “brokering” a $6 billion U.S.-Saudi arms deal, or the $2 billion “purchase” of Kushner’s failing real-estate property by infamous Saudi Prince BMS. In this book, Trump-world is emblematic of nepotism in Strongman regimes everywhere.
Ben-Ghiat methodically presents evidence of a wide range of the autocratic abuses committed by her numerous subjects, with Trump’s position identified in each category, but what this reader found most interesting was Trump’s standing in the ubiquitous Strongman characteristic of virility.
Like most of the Strongmen profiled in this book, Trump has a long list of accusations of rapes and sexual assaults, many of which he openly boasts about. His self-professed virility was perfectly encapsulated in his infamous Access Hollywood comment that “When you’re a star, they let you do it. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” Trump has long revelled in this type of belligerent manhood; his on-going insults and demeaning comments against women (especially powerful and successful women) are legendary. But the toxic repercussions of what Ben-Ghiat calls “verbal bludgeoning” have now spilled over into the normalization of vitriolic misogyny; attacks on women (as well as LGBQ+ and disabled communities) are now common tropes in neo-fascist regimes. Attacks on women’s reproductive rights have become a mainstay among Trump supporters; Proud Boys represent a violent male vanguard of Trumpism; and cowardly Senator Josh Hawley’s new book is called “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.” Taking it to the misogynistic extreme, Lawrence Lockman (Republican in Maine’s House of Representatives) recently stated that "if a woman has a right to an abortion, why shouldn't a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman?" This amplification (even glorification) of toxic masculinity and dominance over women has already metastasized as one of Donald Trump’s malignant legacies to America.
Ironically, it is Trump’s declining virility that is now top of mind in his daily tweet-storms. When Vladimir Putin posted his bare-chested-strongman pictures in 2019, Trump responded by photo-shopping his head onto the body of Sylvester Stallone’s character from the 1976 film Rocky. And recently Trump again tried to deflect his declining virility with a series of self-glorifying trading cards, posing as John Wayne, Superman, and other testosterone-filled heroes. In Ben-Ghiat’s words, Trump was acting like “all strongmen who are plagued by an inner emptiness, no matter how much money and power they accumulate.” And just today Trump bragged about his “strength and stamina” in supposedly “winning” the Trump Invitational Golf Tournament - as if any of his invitees would dare out-perform the self-proclaimed Greatest (fill in the blank) in the History of the World.
Trump, then, fits easily into this book of Strongmen whose “priority is to maintain or expand his power … and is willing to destroy democracy in the process.” Like all narcissistic authoritarian leaders, Trump depends on lies, propaganda, nepotism, sycophantic enablers and apologists; he promises law and order but enables and encourages corruption and violence; and he considers loyalty to himself as the singular qualification for any political support or advancement. In following the “strongman’s golden rule: do whatever is necessary to stay in power,” Trump ‘s own political and financial interests continue to prevail over the nation’s interests.
But his laughable press releases and photo-shopped images - not to mention his tanning beds, skin dyes, and hair transplants - can no longer conceal the decline and fall of Donald J. Trump from Strongman to desperate Has-Been. To paraphrase a line from Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, “he ain’t strong no more.”
As for his enduring appeal among his diehard followers, Trump’s image as Strongman, explains Ben-Ghiat, is “a mirror in which everyone … sees what he wants to see and what he hopes for.” For the downtrodden, for the alienated, for those who feel left behind, cheated, full of resentment at their declining lot in life and frightened by the huge social, economic, and demographic changes sweeping the nation, the Strongman unleashes nationalist and tribalist sentiments, gives his malcontented followers someone to blame, someone to hate, someone to vent their resentment and frustration onto, and then, standing tall and virile, the Strongman promises to dispel their enemies (foreign and domestic) and to make everything great again. (It’s worth noting that Hitler came to power in 1932 with the slogan Make Germany Great Again, and Gaddafi’s permanent policy was “Libya First.”) “I alone can fix it,” says Trump the Strongman, America’s Superhero, and his followers believe him, and his lies, and his phoney macho poses because they want it to be true. And because they can’t admit they were wrong.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present is a comprehensive, entertaining and insightful analysis of the characteristics and behaviors of narcissistic psychopaths who become autocratic rulers in the name of “the people” or “saving the nation” but in reality their single driving focus is always to cling to personal power at all costs. The entire history of Strongmen portrayed here is a perfect foil against which to measure the rise - and fall - of America’s Make-Believe Strongman in our Age of Delusion.
The good news (for this reader) is that with Trump’s declining virility, and despite his desperate attempts to defy reality, the sad final chapter of America’s once-and-former Strongman is playing out before our eyes, with no credible successor in sight. And to Jim Jordan, Marjorie Greene, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and all the other neo-fascist wannabes - for all their fake outrage and manufactured drama - it will be said, now and forever, that “you’re no Donald Trump.” If history prevails, Trumpism will end with the passing of America’s photo-shopped Strongman.
And I say Amen to that.
Thank you for this review, Abraham. It sounds like an interesting read. But I'm skeptical about whether Donald Trump belongs in this grouping.
Given the multiple similarities among the various dictators named, I can't help but notice, and be grateful for, one trait that sets Trump apart from the others: laziness
Trump wants to act like an all powerful ruler, and revels in his image as a "Strongman". But it seems he never wanted to actually do anything of significance. Unlike Recep Erdogan or Victor Orban, each of whom has a life-long history of political activism, Trump never held or aspired to public office before he decided to run for president. Nor was he ever seriously involved in party politics. According to some reports, he didn't really care that much about becoming president in 2016. And once elected, he didn't even bother reading his daily briefings.
I'm fairly certain neither Erdogan nor Orban plays golf every day. The sad truth, one that his gullible followers are only now beginning to understand, is that Trump is not really a strongman at all. He's just a con man. Your designation of him as "America's Make-Believe Strongman in our Age of Delusion" is delightfully apt.
However, his being included in a study like this one only adds to the myth, and ultimately prolongs his con.
Leaving out T Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Thatcher,... and also leaving out the history of collectivist power movements that always have some lead character, but are more deadly and dangerous in history.
Strongmen, or strong women are not a some monolithic crisis of human harm, it is timing and ideology that portends the crises of human harm.