Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

[@ReadMoreHistory-v9u]

Ruth Ben Ghiat is one of the most important voices to listen to right now. Her newsletter Lucid is essential. I never miss her presentations. I feel the same about Timothy Snyder. They both explain this moment perfectly. They’ve been trying to warn people for years.

[@michaelhermiston]

always a great pleasure listening to Dr. Ben-Ghiat...with the surge in enthusiasm for the Harris/Walz movement, if it grows to the Democrat's presidency, this will be a fabulous case study in the way to overcome the authoritarian/fascist MAGA growth....with positive messages, excitement, joy, a lack of defensiveness, transparency, and involving grassroots energy!

[@alexcipriani6003]

That can only work a limited number of times; if it doesn’t manifest in actual meaningful changes it stops working. Fool me once type of thing aka Obama 2008 was one such example.

[@CurtOntheRadio]

If.

[@jmontarsi]

This was one of Professor Ben Ghiat's best presentations on video of her book STRONGMEN so far since she first began appearing in the media after its publication. Great discussion! Looking forward to reading her next book. -- LUCID subscriber.

[@jamesleonard2870]

LUCID is awesome 💙💙🌊🌊🏄‍♀️🏄‍♂️

[@nicolasdelaforge7420]

Yea - she pointed to nearly every dimension of what a dictator is, how the ground prepares itself to welcome the tyrant, the sort of people involved, everything is covered with deep insight and scholarship: amazing lecture and what stunned me is how every dimension applies to Trump!

[@rjs8044]

So interesting, pertinent & useful. Thank you!

[@studydude]

Ruth Ben Ghiat is a beacon of light showing what people need to understand where we could be going as a country.

[@Gbark713]

I LOVE Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She needs to be on Stephen Colbert immediately.

[@racheladkins6060]

Absolutely

[@nicolasdelaforge7420]

But this is the exact description of Trump! A+ in insight and scholarship, a gem interview.

[@georgepotter1820]

Wilhelm Reich's book The Mass Psychology of Fascism written in the 30s with the rise of the Third Reich speaks to that portion of the population who are inherently prone to authoritarian tendencies. We need more research!

[@jmontarsi]

I'm reading Reich's book now!

[@courtneyleeds]

Quite a few people know of the work of Hannah Arendt and her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism." Some are familiar with Erich Fromm's book "Escape From Freedom," or perhaps even Peter Drucker's first book "The End of Economic Man." And, of course, Professor Ben-Ghiat’s book! I strongly support research, but let's not overlook what exists 💜

[@MarcSchoenbrunn]

I myself went to Reichian Therapy, and read all Reich's books. He really nailed the character type who is attracted to fascism. FASCINATING TOPIC which needs more study, especially with what is is happening now.

[@steveh6612]

I love her. Mrs Ben-Ghiat is freakin awesome

[@courtneyleeds]

3:08 - "One of the main conditions (that make a portion of the population open to authoritarian rule) is when a society has gone through a lot of change that is viewed... as wrenching and as a loss by [some]. So, it could be periods of great forward strides for worker's rights, or women's rights, things like racial emancipation. So, a feeling that is born in some that they are losing out." Yes Yes! In a word I would say “despair,” and the corresponding yearning to be saved!

[@jmontarsi]

Fritz Stern's "The Politics Of Cultural Despair" and Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?"

[@Amittai_Aviram]

Think of the belated emancipation of Jews in various countries in Europe, including, eventually, Germany, and Jews' consequent full integration into German society and culture.

[@thinktwice-me7ie]

She is such an extraordinary thinker! And I love her humour. Thank you

[@hereigoagain5050]

Great conversation. Jonathan Haidt has done interesting research on values. Liberals and conservatives share values of justice, fairness, and the "golden rule." Conservatives also value respect for authority, group loyalty, and sanctity, which makes them more vulnerable to strongmen.

[@Soubhik12345.]

I've become a huge fan of Ruth.

[@stephen-f9h]

One point I would disagree with is that "Reagan would not recognize it." It was, in fact, Reagan's Southern Strategy ran by Lee Atwater, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone.

[@mariondean8499]

It was Nixon’s southern strategy

[@davethompson9776]

I’m still trying to understand how people believe complete fantasy pulled right out the butt of a grifter.

[@willielee5253]

💙🌊💙🌊💙🌊💙 VOTE 💙🌊💙🌊💙🌊💙 🌊💙🌊💙🌊 Harris🇺🇸🇺🇸Walz 🌊💙🌊💙🌊

[@b991228]

Beyond the span of our current history of 100 years the philosophy of our governing bodies have had a profoundly evolving history. We have had the state of nature, tribal kingdoms, Greek aristocracies, Roman aristocracies, Holy Roman empires, European kingdoms, European democracies and more. Are you able find any explanation as to the relationship of authoritarianism as to being a part of the understanding of the evolving political philosophy over the ages?

[@mariondean8499]

I think most strongmen come to power when there is great inequality.

[@biospheremedia]

There's a gap or discontinuity at at 14:48

[@rjs8044]

It seems to boil down to the fact that when you deny people resources & social inclusion, you invite the fascist. Really not so complicated. Human beings fail at enforcing the equitable treat of other human beings. Greed should be illegal all over the globe. Greed drives all of this awful behavior.

[@TheJustinJ]

It is ENVY that ultimately puts these dictators in power. Envy of other peoples success. Envy of other peoples abilities. Envy of what everyone else has, and the masses have failed to accomplish. Greed does not seem to be a negative. If a CEO wants $100,000,000 and comes up with a brilliant product, builds a factory to make it, hires thousands of people to show up every day and operate the line. Marketing geniuses who can sell it on a wide scale. And at the end of the day, after everyone has been paid. All materials were purchased. The bank note on the factory is met. And the shareholders had the best year of their career: Then who cares if they pay the person a fantastic bonus? How does this hurt anyone? It dose not: It just creates ENVY. Then those people make demands. And being the majority, they get what they asked for. Free money, or benefits. Paid for by who? Themselves, through inflation, because the government cant print wealth, it cant create anything of value. It has to take it from the person who created the product and did all those things to make it happen. They take it from the people who produce and reward those who do not produce enough even for themselves. Then the victims who are paying for everything: Everyones salary and benefits who works for them, and also everyones benefits WHO DON'T WORK FOR THEM. So they petition government, or simply make large donations with a wink and a nod, so politicians stop taking what they did not create, and giving to those who did not earn it. So poloticians do what they can do: They PRINT MONEY to pay for welfare and programs (200+ US government programs currently out spend the military by 300%). So everyone who receives these benefits does so at the cost of inflation. And inflation hits the middle class hardest, because they are trying to save and invest for retirement. But their savings are eroded theough inflation to give free housing and food and medical treatment to someone who chimney smokes their whole life, and never lifts a finger to grow or develop or produce anything of value. Or bothered to take care of themselves. Now YOU have to pay for THIER medical care and oxygen rent, and social security payment: and dialysis, and food: everything. You can literally sit on the couch and derive over $40,000 per year in benefits in America. There is no reason to be homeless, Section-8 is a thing, and its benefit limit is over $15,000 per year. Most problems are caused by helpless, lazy, ignorant, envious people. Not productive, or even greedy people.

[@donaldwhittaker7987]

Outlawing greed is a strange notion. Perhaps someone will develop chips to insert in our brains that will make us only greedy for the stuff we need but not too greedy. Who decides what everyone needs? What if the men who created Microsoft, Standard Oil, Apple, or JP Morgan Bank believe they need more than the rest of us? What is to be done with such people?

[@VanessaVaile]

otoh the sight of caps makes me move on by without pausing

[@dwaynehendricks7842]

They're all insecure.

[@garygrantham3917]

I just started listening but let me guess- the connection between authoritarianism and capitalism won’t be made 😂😂😂

[@Historia.Magistra.Vitae.]

There is no connection. Authoritarianism is antithetical to Capitalism.

[@mariorossi3898]

As an Italian who is well-acquainted with the period of Mussolini's dictatorship and fascism, having studied amongst other, it through the works of the leading Italian scholar Renzo De Felice, I find this comparison between Mussolini and today's political figures like Trump and even Berlusconi to be misleading and entirely out of place. Berlusconi who has been disparaged by left Italian and western left median has been recently "rehabilitated" (by the same Italian left media)for having created a political conservative centre right that did not exist before and that is now ruling Italy since after 2022 elections. These figures like Trump for example, may be controversial in their behaviour and language, but they have absolutely nothing to do with the Mussolini of the 1920s-30s.It is ridiculous drawing parallel. Likewise, comparing Mussolini to Hitler is historically absurd, even though the two dictators allied themselves. They remained ideologically distant, and fascism had nothing to do with Nazism. In fact, just to give just one example, fascist Italy protected Jews from the Nazis murderous troops also in the Italic occupied territory (southern France, Yugoslavia, Greece,) until the military collapse of Italy in September 1943. In short, I find it absurd to seek parallels between Mussolini and today's Western political figures who, whether we like it or not, operate within a completely democratic framework in UIS and Western Europe. Instead, we should be discussing the decline of American liberals, who seem to disregard democracy and the will of the majority in favour of considering themselves intellectuals who know and understand everything, to the detriment of the "peasants" among the people. This is the reason why the so called working class in the West is turning this back to them. Unfortunately the US democratic party is just a shadow of what it used to be.

[@willielee5253]

I don't know why there's comments about the decline of the left. It was the right leaning who Stromed the White House. Kamala Harris is drawing people, at least for now, to the center on both sides.

[@rabbitandcrow]

Wow, big Mussolini fan, huh.

[@Amittai_Aviram]

In discounting comparisons between Mussolini and other strongmen (Hitler, Berlusconi, Erdogan, Putin, Duterte, Modi, Trump, Bolsonaro, Al-Sisi, Pinochet, Netanyahu ...), you are focusing so much on the unique details with which you are acquainted that you fail to see the larger patterns - you lose the forest for the trees. As for your reading of Trump and "intellectuals" and "peasants," you are bringing in a totally inappropriate context. You are failing to see, for instance, that Trump is actually the champion of super-oligarchs - what else would you expect? - who is also good at manipulating and misleading the working class to vote and agitate precisely against their own interests. That kind of manipulation _is_ the pattern that Ruth Ben-Ghiat exposes.

[@Amittai_Aviram]

As for your contemptuous remarks about "intellectuals," they repeat a classic right-wing (I dare say fascist) trope: deliberately to confuse knowledge and thought with material wealth. The opposite of intellectuals is not peasants and the working class, it is people who are not intellectual. The opposite of peasants are overlords; the opposite of the working class is the wealthy class of owners.

[@Amittai_Aviram]

Your discounting of comparisons between Mussolini and other strongmen - Hitler, Stalin, Franco, Erdogan, Putin, Berlusconi, Duterte, Bolsonaro, Modi, Pinochet ... comes from so tight a focus on individual features that you miss the pattern that Ruth Ben-Ghiat describes - you lose the forest for the trees. As for Trump, "intellectuals," and "peasants" - Trump is a spoiled ruling-class sociopath championing the interests of the oligarchs who bankroll him, who is also clever at misleading some working class people into voting against their own interests. That, too, is part of the pattern we see in all these cases.

[@TJR-CO]

NEW EDITOR PLEASE