Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

These leaders let you know from the very start of their campaigns who they are by preaching violence like Trump did, and Duterte and Bolsonaro. And yet people invite them into the system or embrace them and then are amazed when they don’t become more institutional. Indeed they become more radicalized.

Preet Bharara:

That’s Ruth Ben-Ghiat. She’s a professor of history and Italian studies at NYU and the author of Lucid, a newsletter on threats to democracy. She focuses on the history of authoritarianism, democracy and propaganda. Her most recent book, Strong Men, Mussolini to the Present, looks at how illiberal leaders use corruption and violence to maintain power and how they can be defeated. Ben-Ghiat joins me this week to discuss the rise of fascist politics in our time. We talk about the recent election of Georgia Maloney in Italy, the reign of Vladimir Putin and the tactics of Florida Governor, Ron De Santis. That’s coming up. Stay tuned. Now let’s get to your questions.

This question comes in a tweet from Kelly who asks, I’ve seen folks speculating that the Federalist Society is drafting large portions of Judge Cannon’s opinions, is that allowed? It feels akin to an ex parte communication if DOJ doesn’t have access, e.g., as an amicus brief. But Federalist Society isn’t a party, so maybe it’s okay. So Kelly, that’s a very interesting question. You’re obviously talking about Judge Cannon, who’s a federal district court judge in the Southern District of Florida and who has been presiding over the issues relating to the search of Donald Trump’s documents at Malago. Now, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I have not agreed with all the things that she’s ruled on in the Mar-a-Lago matter. I don’t agree with some of the ways she’s dealt with a special master Ray Dearie from the Eastern District of New York. But not agreeing with someone’s opinions and believing that she’s actually outsourced her opinions and her job to a third party organization like the Federalist Society are two different things.

There’s no evidence she’s doing that. There’s no basis to believe that she’s doing that. It is true, but the Federalist Society is very influential in conservative circles. That the Federalist Society is deeply influential in determining who gets picked to be on the bench and in particular on the Supreme Court of the United States. But I don’t see a reason to think that she’s actually having people outside of her chambers write opinions for her. And I understand why given how much focus there is on this case, given how much scrutiny there is on this matter, that people want to jump to conclusions about judges with whom they disagree. But I’ll tell you from my personal experience as I said last week, there are lots of judges in lots of cases with whom I and others disagree from time to time. But I think it’s too quick to jump to conclusions that are outlandish, like the ones that are being suggested to you.

This question comes in a tweet from BC Alex Mom, who writes, I know juries are chosen for their open minds, but are there any tactics that you have used when a jury looks like they’re for the defendant to persuade them to convict? Well, that’s also an interesting question. And I’m going to disabuse you of the notion that there are particular tactics or tricks to persuade juries. Back in the Southern District of New York and maybe in other districts as well, there was kind of an admonition to the jury that prosecutors often made in opening statements. We would tell the jury to do three things. One, pay attention to the evidence as it came in. Two, follow the instructions of the judge about the law as given. And three, use your common sense. And often it was the case that this appeal to common sense not so much to the law, not so much to the instructions of the judge but plain, simple common sense. We would tell them not to leave that at the door.

And so if there’s anything… I don’t call it a tactic, if there’s any approach to trying to persuade a jury that someone should be convicted of a crime, if you believe in your heart and in your mind and based on your research and your investigation that the person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, that’s to appeal to jurors common sense. Because often it’ll be the case that defense lawyers which is their job to do to get an acquittal. To change the subject or distract from the evidence, you train them back on the evidence in their common sense. And that’s the best approach that I know.

This question comes in a tweet from Twitter user, Anderson Jotavia who asks, How are you? Well, thanks for asking. I feel different things at different times. The way I’m feeling right now I think is best encapsulated in what I think was the best answer to that question that I’ve heard in a long time. And it comes from one of my favorite movies, the 1997 film, Grosse Pointe Blank, starring John Cusack. And his character Martin Q. Blank, by the way is a professional assassin. And that might not be your bag but it’s a fun movie in my view. At some point in the film he’s talking with his therapist, played by the brilliant Alan Arkin. And the John Cusack character says, I’m feeling uneasy man. And that I guess in recent times explains how I feel. I don’t feel terrible, I don’t feel utterly pessimistic but I’m uneasy.

I’m uneasy about what’s going to happen with the country. I’m uneasy about what’s going to happen in Ukraine. I’m uneasy about what’s going to happen with our political system. I have hope, but I also have some pessimism and the combination of all that in answer to your question, how are you? I’m feeling uneasy man. This question comes in an email from Dean who writes, hi Preet, in your interview with Representative Raskin, he mentioned the possibility of a multimedia presentation of the January 6th report. If you were to pick a celebrity to present or narrate this presentation, who would you pick and why? Well, I have a pick in mind and I’m going to start a rumor right here which I don’t feel bad about. Recently you might have heard that the great actor with an unsurpassed, beautiful deep voice, James Earl Jones, has retired from the business of voicing Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies.

So A, he would be my pick. B, it’s obvious why and C, I’m going to hope and believe for the time being that the reason he’s retired from voicing Darth Vader is he’s gearing up to do the voice for the January 6th report. But in all seriousness, I don’t know that it matters who does any narration if it needs to be a celebrity, if it needs to be somebody with particular standing in the world. I just think that they need to do a clear job at presenting visual evidence combined with documentary evidence, combined with testimonial evidence in the way that they’ve been doing so far. And I trust them to do a good job because they have been up to this point.

We’ll be right back with my conversation with Ruth Ben-Ghiat. On September 25th, the far-right politician, Giorgia Meloni was elected Italy’s first female prime minister, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party evolved from the remnants of Mussolini fascist party and its victory is a concern to many around the world. Meloni is one of a handful of far-right leaders who have risen to power in recent years. NYU professor and fascism expert, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, joins me to discuss what has brought us to this point and where she thinks we’re headed. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, welcome to the show.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

It’s good for you to be here. There’s a lot of talk about a lot of things and you’re an expert on certain things. And one of the reasons I wanted to have you on was there’s a lot of chatter about a woman who is very likely to be the next leader of Italy, Giorgia Meloni. And people are talking about it and what it fore tells not just for Italy but for Europe and for the world, even though Italy is not the biggest country on our planet. Could you start by just giving us a primer on who Giorgia Meloni is and what she’s about?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yeah, so Giorgia Meloni is breaking with tradition because she is the first female prime minister Italy has had. She’s also the first prime minister who comes from the neo-fascist political tradition. And what this means is when Mussolini was killed and the original fascist party was banned in 1945, a new fascist party neo-fascist was formed right after the war. And so Italy was very different than Germany where the allies just took a different tack to Italy thinking, oh, they were good people who followed a bad man. So this neo-fascist it was legal and it became the fourth largest party in Italy by the ’60s. So there’s always been a kind of normalization of the extreme right in politics. And Giorgia Meloni came up as a hardcore militant in this neo-fascist party becoming the leader of the student organization and an admirer of Mussolini.

And so that’s her, she wasn’t just a member, she was a leader of this party. And the current party that is going to be the main party of the governing coalition is called Brothers of Italy. It’s a new newish party. It was founded in 2012 by Meloni and others. And the reason it was founded is important because at the time there was no autonomous independent extreme right party in Italy, because the existing one had fused with Berlusconi’s party. So her political career both in this new party has been dedicated to kind of preserving the heritage of fascism into the 21st century.

Preet Bharara:

But Giorgia Meloni and her party do not embrace the term fascism or neo-fascism. Am I right?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

That’s correct, she’s describing herself as a conservative. And she includes in this descriptor Orban’s Hungary, the newly radicalized GOP in our country. She talks very matter of factly about being on the same page as the GOP. And she was an admirer of Putin until just a few years ago or even later. And so it’s hard to know what conservative really means. She’s rabidly anti-immigrant. She said that there shouldn’t be any new mosques built in Italy. So her positions have a whiff of the extreme right about them, even though she calls herself conservative.

Preet Bharara:

Boy, so I’m confused and wondering about this, does she see herself as a return in some way to Mussolini or is something very different? Is she trying to fool people in your mind by not embracing the fascist or neo-fascist label? Or is it just more palatable given the local politics of that country not to use those terms or embrace those terms?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

It’s a little of all those things because in fact historic fascism which was a one-party state, a true dictatorship, no opposition permitted outside of North Korea or China to the communist tradition you don’t have that as much anymore. Today we have on the extreme right, we have what are called electoral autocracies. Where you come to power through elections, you maintain elections and then you as Viktor Orban has done you kind of game the system over time so that it gives you the results you need. And the GOP is on this path with all its election denial. So it wouldn’t be a return to fascism per se. It’s more a sense of the ideals of extreme nationalism, anti-leftist, anti-immigrant xenophobia, conspiracy theories. She’s a big believer of great replacement theory, the idea that non-white births are increasing and that poses a threat to white Christian civilization. So it’s not a literal returned fascism anyway, but those ideals. And the more you know about fascism basically as I do… I’ve studied the original fascism for years, the more you recognize that inheritance in what she says today.

Preet Bharara:

When someone with fascistic… If I can use that adjective, fascistic tendencies or rooted in fascism comes to power in a country generally speaking, do people tend to under-react or overreact?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

They often under-react and I wrote my book, Strong Men, which is case studies starting with Mussolini and Hitler going up to Orban, and Trump, and Putin. There are these patterns that emerge. And one is that often conservative elites have acted to bring these kind of insurgent figures who often come from outside of politics into the system thinking that they can use them, thinking they will kind of do their bidding and they will then become normal and they will become calm when they become head of state. And in the case of Trump, the word used was the pivot, that Trump’s going to pivot to being a normal politician. And I was like, no, he is not. He is who he says he is. He is that I can stand on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone. So these leaders let you know from the very start of their campaigns who they are by preaching violence like Trump did and Duterte and Bolsonaro. And yet people invite them into the system or embrace them and then are amazed when they don’t become more institutional. Indeed they become more radicalized.

Preet Bharara:

And so why is that? Is that just general wishful thinking on the part of the public naivete? Even though we now have a century of scholarship, including lots of your scholarship showing these patterns, why do we persist in Under-reacting?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

It’s a really interesting question. It depends who it is for. If we’re really talking about the public, it’s very upsetting to see your country as a country that could embrace extremism, authoritarianism and so over and over… So it’s not just America that says it can’t happen here, the Germans thought, oh well, it can’t happen here because we’re the most cultured people on earth. In fact, Germany when Hitler took over it wasn’t just high culture, they had the most advanced graphic design culture, advertising culture, engineering science. They were like way in the avant-garde. And so they too thought that it couldn’t happen here. And even Italian fascism, Mussolini got power really fast. But Italian Jews thought, well, he’s not going to go after us because he’s not Hitler. So it’s a little bit of denial, a little bit of wishful thinking because it’s very difficult to see your country as being able… It’s scary as going down that path. It also means that you might have to do something, you might have to get involved. You can’t take your rights for granted anymore. And America has been going through this since the Trump years.

Preet Bharara:

So does the rising strong man who comes into power in a country understand that the massive people will not believe what they say, and will engage in wishful thinking and head in the sand behavior. And allow them to slip into power while a core, the base will understand that they mean what they say. And that subset of the population who wants a strong man gets the right message and the other folks miss the message. Is that all intentional or does that just happen?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

It’s a little of both. One of the questions I get most commonly is, is there a master plan?

Preet Bharara:

Right, good question

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

For example, is Trump reading a manual because there’s a reason that I was able to predict pretty much everything he did. Including I did know what format he would take that he wouldn’t leave office because I studied all these other guys.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. You wrote the manual, thanks very much.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yeah. And the thing about them which takes people by surprise, is that they truly have similar personalities. And it was very disturbing to realize that Trump has a very similar personality to the people in the past. And they are opportunists, they are transactional beings. And so they will ally with anyone and they will say anything to anyone to get what they need. And that means saying one thing to one group and the opposite to the next group. It also means it’s very interesting and Trump is the latest example, they end up with these very eclectic, strange seeming constituencies where you have gangsters and priests. And Trump had Orthodox Jews and also neo-Nazis, housewives. And this is because they are all things to all people. And the major principle of the strong men is that they will be whatever the culture needs them to be in that moment.

Preet Bharara:

Are they acting according to a manual and a plan? Or more likely and what it seems to be sometimes, there’s certain people who just know how to improvise and react by instinct that matches a pattern of the people who go before them? And should that give us comfort or should that cause us to be even more queasy?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

So it’s a meeting of personality and circumstance. And there are certain patterns that you could say prepare a society to embrace people like a Trump or a Mussolini. And one of them is that when a society has had a huge amount of social progress, it could be gender emancipation, it could be racial equity, workers rates, that kind of sets the stage for a reaction. And in fact Mussolini back in the 1920s, he called fascism a revolution of reaction because it shakes everything up, creates new constituencies, new alliances, upends norms, legalizes lawlessness. But it’s a return to the way things were before. And so they watch what each other is doing when they’re having this process. So Hitler was watching Mussolini, Trump admires what Orban does and what she does in China. But these personalities act in similar ways if the society is ripe to have them

Preet Bharara:

In Italy, it’s interesting as you point out, Italy has a history and a past of fascism and in your book you begin with Mussolini. Does it matter that as I understand Italy never really had a reckoning or truth and reconciliation like Germany had? Would you be more surprised about the rise of fascism in Germany in the near future?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

All over the world there is rising hate groups and there’s been a spike in Germany as well. But because of denazification and being the motor of the Holocaust and Nazis in being so central, it was just a very different situation in Germany where everything was banned and there was a very strict legal order. And they didn’t follow that in Italy. As we said before, the neo-fascist party was perfectly legal. And the other thing is Italy’s been a kind of laboratory for right wing politics and it really gets marginalized in coverage of authoritarianism. There are good reasons that Hitler’s always the center. But first Mussolini invented fascism and Hitler worshiped Mussolini. He had a bust of Mussolini all through the ’20s on his desk and other Nazis were ridiculing him because he was just obsessed with Mussolini who was so successful. Whereas he [inaudible 00:21:24] in work, he got put in jail, no one wanted to buy his book.

So Mussolini he wrote the template for actually how authoritarianism works today. And then you had Berlusconi in the 1990s who brought the neo-fascist into government for the first time in Europe since 1945. And normalized fascism so that neo fascism became just a governing ideology. And now we have Meloni who is the first woman and who’s the first prime minister from this tradition. So Italy has been very important in breaking taboos, in establishing new parameters. And I think it should be more central in our considerations.

Preet Bharara:

So people understand someone like Meloni comes to power not with anything like a majority of support. How much support do you need in a country with a political system like that to come to power?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Well, the party was wildly successful and it’s grown hugely. And the governing it got like over 25% of the vote.

Preet Bharara:

Right. So 25% is still a fraction, it’s a slice. It’s just like Donald Trump’s unwavering base in America is only something like 30%.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yes. So Italy is a system of coalition government. And so many people are saying that we don’t have to worry so much about Meloni because it’s so easy to make a government fall in Italy. And that’s true. I believe though, whenever there’s an experiment in extremism, in a kind of rabid minoritarian ideologies and practices that come to the head of state, that become normalized as the practices of the head of state it stays in the system even if the government doesn’t last very long. And that rabid core of even if it’s a minority, it obtains validation. Just think about what happened with Trump where he came in and he provided a big tent for all kinds of extremists, not just the neo-Nazis he said are very fine people. All kinds of malcontents and people who we called them the forgotten, but also all the extremists who’d been waiting for someone to give them momentum and validate them.And in fact, he tells them he loves them not only on January 6th, but he made them feel like they were part of something and they were understood. And this is what all of these leaders have been able to do and that’s how a very extreme minority faction can actually become the basis for a mass movement.

Preet Bharara:

Do you think that in any given population, even in liberal democracies such as they are, there is naturally and latent a 25 to 30% subset of the population that likes and would be attracted to the right strong man?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yeah, there is. And there’s research from a while back that Karen Steiner and others, that in any population there are a percentage which it’s about what you mentioned of people who hold authoritarian views.

Preet Bharara:

And just to pause in [inaudible 00:24:45], do we believe that to be true whether we’re talking about the United States, or France, or the UK or any country?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Researchers believe it to be true. And the way they measure it actually is often through attitudes about nonpolitical institutions, parenting, religion, all these other institutions where authoritarian attitudes and practices can be rooted. And then the idea is that if the right person comes along and the circumstances are correct, those people can be activated and energized because it’s… You know how when a propagandist know that effective propaganda builds on things that people already believe. You have to have a core of things that people already believe to be most effective. The same with getting people to embrace an authoritarian political figure, that person if he’s smart will build on things that people already believed in other areas of their life. That’s also why there’s always such a collusion with authoritarian religious institutions and strong men. So you have evangelical Christians, Orthodox Jews, kind of fundamentalist faiths rather than progressive faith traditions. Those are the people who go for strong men

Preet Bharara:

So if we begin even in liberal democracies and societies with a base of 25 to 30% of people who can be activated in this way, that means there’s a lot less room for error on the part of the rest of folks in organizing a government and appealing to people and setting up policies that don’t activate that subset. Is the trick over time to reduce the subset that’s open to strong men or is the trick to keep the other 70% or whatever the other opposition would be, keep them united and undivided?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

It’s both. The second is perhaps more realistic, and Democrats in general have not been as effective in unifying and allying. Now, our country’s very unusual cause we have this bipartisan system. But every time there’s an election now with a strongman figure and they do well, I watch to see, I think about what went wrong. And either the opposition didn’t unite which is what happened in Italy. They don’t have effective messaging, they don’t have the same emotional appeal as these populists. Or in Hungary in the spring, Orban was reelected and the opposition had this big coalition and so they were high hopes, they all banded together. But what they actually did is they included a far right party, they moved themselves to the right hoping to siphon off Orban’s voters. Instead they were beaten and Orban got even more votes because in moving to the right they did not come up with an authentic progressive alternative. So allying, being a real alternative with real values and emotional appeal is one of the ways that you can make the circumstances such that when these figures come on the scene, the opposition will be ready.

Preet Bharara:

We’ll be right back with more of my conversation with Ruth Ben-Ghiat after this. The other interesting thing is on this issue of whether or not the strong men threat is underappreciated, because as you discussed earlier, people engage in wishful thinking but have put their heads in the sand. The supporters of the strong man who come comes on the scene they don’t say, I don’t think, we have a strong man on the scene and he’s going to engage in martial law, he’s going to do all these things. He says about people like you and people on the American right and observers have said this about some of your writings. You’re overstating, you’re going bananas. These comparisons are ludicrous and ridiculous and they have no basis in fact, and they have no basis in evidence and you should settle down. One person wrote recently, professor from the West coast, that the kinds of things that Giorgia Meloni says are kind of the garden variety types of things that governor of Florida Ron De Santis might say. How do you respond to that?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Well, that’s true because again when Giorgia Meloni told the Washington Post before the election very matter of factly that the GOP is allied with them, and that the battles of the GOP are their battles of her party, that’s very revealing. Indeed, one of the most interesting stories that’s a bit under-reported is there’s this vast movement among the far right internationally to create a kind of these networks, to create a new cultural political order. And Steve Bannon’s very busy with this, it stretches to Brazil. It’s not just a Euro-American, but this is part of it. And the more you know about the original fascism even though it looks different today, and the way they depended on these cultural networks and the more about the outcomes and the damage that somebody like Trump can do, the more I think it’s appropriate. I totally changed my professional life when Trump came on the scene.

I was writing an academic book on World War 11 and I had the skill set to see what was coming. And so I decided to start speaking to the press and writing for CNN and as a work of civic education, because in fact it hasn’t been alarmist it has been accurate.

Preet Bharara:

So your response to the Ron De Santis comment is not that, oh, it’s just a comparison to a blowhard garden variety politician in America. It’s that Ron De Santis himself represents something dangerous and bad.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yes, and if we want to do the big picture thinking, he’s a very interesting figure. And I’ve already written about four op-eds or five about him because the second I saw him, I was like, okay, here we go because-

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, explain that.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

What happens is when somebody like Trump comes in the system and shakes it up, and Trump really he put the GOP under this authoritarian style discipline. And it’s absolutely astonishing what he was able to do because Mussolini and Berlusconi they created their own parties. So Trump didn’t do that. He came from outside to the grand old party and yet he was able to completely make it his personal tool. So when you have somebody like that, they spawn imitators in the system. And so you had Mike Pompeo talking about swagger. So they embody a style of leadership, a style of manhood that others start to imitate. So Ron De Santis is very interesting because he was a conservative, Reaganite style conservative. And he totally remade himself because he’s very ambitious, he’s very opportunistic. And so we saw when he campaigned for governor he made himself into a quote, die hard Trump supporter. Even how he’s using people as props with his mother vineyard stunt, the first prop was his own infant where he made a campaign ad where he had a Trump flag in his own infant’s crib to show how great he was.

And so he’s remade himself as the perfect example of this new GOP. November 2020, he proudly said that Florida had no election fraud and now he’s been the first person to have an official office of election crimes and he’s made arrests. So he’s on the cusp, but he’s even absorbed Trump’s body language, his gestures when he speaks. So I look at him as an example of these mini Trumps, these clones who come out of the system when someone like Trump has come. And you had this with, they used to be called mini Hitlers, Mini Mussolinis, there’s mini Orbans. And that’s just one of these systemic things that happens when you have a strongman.

Preet Bharara:

One thing you talk about with respect to strong men is the paradox, and this is what you wrote a couple of weeks ago and I want to ask you about it. “A paradox of strong man rule is that the more power and money they accumulate, the more paranoid, insecure and grasping they become. Behind the apparent strength of the autocrat is the fear of losing control and the prospect of a time when they will not be all powerful.” Tell me a little bit more about that.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yeah, I think I wrote that in regard to Putin but it’s about late autocracy, the structure of governance that these kinds of rulers set up. They all have these inner circles or inner symptoms and they only want flatterers and family members because they can keep their secrets and be corrupt together. And people who won’t tell them anything they don’t want to hear. And Trump did a version of this. So it was very interesting to see how this inner circle, inner sanctum, which all autocrats have was replicated in a still functioning democracy under Trump. And what happens is over time they start to believe their own propaganda and their megalomania becomes larger. And the more they have, the more they want, the more control. And they have a mania of possession, they have to possess mines and hearts and bodies. And we’ve seen this with the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago and the whole saga of the classified documents. Strong men do not see any separation between public and private.

Preet Bharara:

Everything is theirs.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

A proprietary vision of governance, at its peak you get kleptocracy. So Putin has the biggest kleptocracy since Gaddafi. And Gaddafi for example, it’s been very difficult for victims of his corruption to get their money back because his personal funds were fused with the Libyan state funds, all those billions. So Trump was a fundamentally different kind of president than anyone we had before of either party. So of course he had highly sensitive classified documents in a box with family photos and golf box.

Preet Bharara:

Of course he did.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

I have a newsletter called Lucid, I write about this stuff and I wrote an essay on this exact thing because it totally bears out how these guys behave. And that’s why in a full dictatorship they would use their secret police to find sex partners for themselves. Everything must serve the leader and everything is his.

Preet Bharara:

But this is the dangerous part and in fact, you’re right, the quote about the paradox of strongman rule was from something you wrote recently about Putin. And then you quote Margaret McMillan who observed about Putin. This is a guy who already had it all, down to the gold toilet seats in his absurd palace in Crimea, when then as you write he made his reckless move on Ukraine. Is he arc of the strong man because of this psychology and this paradox, does it always result in a huge blunder that costs lots of lives?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

It often does. And it’s been so interesting with this tragic war on Ukraine. It’s like seeing a page of this playbook of the late autocrat come to life. And in fact, when Biden and Putin had their summit in June, 2021, I looked at Putin sitting there and he was put on an equal footing in that beautiful library in Geneva. And he was sitting there apparently placid. And I got a really bad feeling, actually really bad feeling. And Biden’s goal for this summit was to basically make Putin more reasonable and have a more predictable relationship he said, more stable relationship. And that night I wrote an essay for my newsletter and I said, well, this could cause Putin to become more reckless and less stable because he had it all. And I do believe that they get to a point because they’re paranoid and this paradox we talked about before, where the prospect of decline… Now whether Putin, there have been rumors that he’s been ill, so illness can set it off.

But just the prospect that the idea they’re at their peak and that it’s going to be downhill. And in fact his popularity was going down, he’s had to arrest more and more people. And look what he’s had to do escalating his repression of Neville. And so they get into this state where they think about their legacy and they want to make a grand gesture. And political scientists even have a term, it’s called gambling for resurrection. Where you go for broke, but you do it in a way that is ill considered because of what I mentioned before, by then you’ve excised from your life any critics, anyone who’s really going to tell you what the story is. So Putin started this war we know now, without gaming it out and this sanctions with his economic advisors, he didn’t consult his military. It’s like exactly what Mussolini started to do. And Mussolini was eventually removed in a palace coup for incompetency when the allies got to Sicily and it was clear what was going on.

Preet Bharara:

That’s the hope some people have for Russia.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yeah. And the other sad thing is in textbook is that authoritarians say that they’re going to make the nation great, but their corruption ravages all of the institutions. And so what’s going on with the Russian military is the first days of the war when there were these intimations, you saw these elite units just having huge losses. I thought immediately that this was the toll of corruption. And it’s been like a paper tiger. And so what this war has revealed is the total bankruptcy of autocracy. How this mighty Russian military was actually eaten from within by corruption and by propaganda, institutionalized lying. So commanders are not telling the truth. You don’t tell any bad news. It’s the pathology of autocracy come to life.

Preet Bharara:

Some people have said that almost everything Trump has done has come straight from the authoritarian playbook. This is from The Guardian. Every dictator for example has built on the accomplishments of his predecessors. What predecessors does Donald Trump have in America, any?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

As a ruling figure, he far eclipses anything that Nixon did. But I truly see him as somebody who as a leadership model doesn’t have much precedent in America, versus the robust tradition of American fascism and extremism. The grassroots or the increasing extremism of the GOP which then had the Tea Party phase and all of that. But that’s why he leans on other autocrat, actually sitting autocrats. That’s why when he met with Viktor Orban in 2019, he said it was like a revelation and he said, it’s like we’re twins. He found his soul, his kindred spirit.

Preet Bharara:

And the love letters with Kim Jong-un.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

All of it.

Preet Bharara:

You also write that strong men rely in part on patriarchy and machismo for power. But we started the interview talking about Giorgia Meloni, who’s obviously not a man. Do we require a new term to talk about someone like Meloni or is there cultural political power different in some way?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yeah, for someone who wrote a book called Strongmen, in the conclusion to that book which I had turned it in the original manuscript in summer of 2020, and I predicted that there would be a female led authoritarian state. It’s inevitable because this cohort they’re not getting any younger, this cohort of the Modis and the Putins. And women are very prominent in the far right. So we wouldn’t perhaps have the Mussolini and Putin stripping the shirt off the machismo using the body, the half naked body as a emblem of strength. But I wrote and I still believe that, the corruption, the racism, the violence would not change if you have a female leader, especially if they come from some kind of far right background.

Preet Bharara:

You talk about a term called gender washing, what’s that?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

So gender washing it’s a political science term for when you have these far right female leaders who seek to put themselves forth as friends of women, as protectors of women. At the same time they are taking away women’s rights, reproductive rights. And by the way, Meloni’s party we can look to see what her party has done in that area where they’ve already been governing in the city of Verona, and they’ve been making it much harder to access abortion. So things like that. But gender washing more broadly is when you have women who, leaders who dress appropriately le Pen, she’s very bourgeois looking, perfect hair, understated tasteful clothes. And this covers up the brutal racism and real life violent outcomes of their far right rhetoric. That’s gender washing.

Preet Bharara:

And do you expect this trend to continue of women in the tradition of Le Pen and Meloni.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

I do. And I think that it’s just as likely that the first US female president would come from the right as from Democrats. Clearly we were not ready for Hillary Clinton in some ways, but the right because of this stance on women which is now we are going to protect the family and the family has to be a man and a woman. So Meloni to keep with that example she’s against adoption by same sex couples. And this is very compelling. And like Orban is Hungary, they’ve had a lot of social assistance to women who stay home or they’ve paid grandparents to take care of hopefully growing white families. So I think this is very compelling to many women who would gladly under this idea, under this illusion that this is going to be good for women they would vote for a female candidate.

Preet Bharara:

I want to come back to something we were talking about earlier when we discussed that there are 25 or 30% of people in even liberal democracies and societies, who are welcoming of strong man type if that person came along. And one of the strategies would be to reduce that percentage in the population, that seems like not an immediate thing that can be accomplished. Do you have any ideas about how in the medium or longer term we reduce that 25 to 30% to 10 or 15%? Or is that not possible? Are we hardwired in some ways?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yeah, because the stratum of people who have authoritarian attitudes involves their feelings about non-political things, as I said like schooling and family dynamics and hierarchies. And it’s connected to patriarchy. One way to approach that is kind of at the level of civic culture, of civic education, of schooling, being able to spread and circulate different ideas about power. At root this is also about power. Should power be collaborative or should it be authoritarian with hierarchies, top down? And we see this it’s in corporations, there are many nodes of this network of a certain way of thinking about power that is authoritarian. There are a lot of little duchess in corporations, a lot of personality cults. And so I conclude in the book that until we get away from this fetishization, this fetish of a certain kind of brute male power as equating it with strength, including national strength, we’re going to keep replicating this authoritarianism in society.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. I wonder if my question is a little bit like the difference between saying that one of our strategies is to eliminate poverty, which I think you can aspire to, but you’re never going to eliminate the bottom 1%. Because even if everyone gets richer just as a matter of mathematics, 1% of the people at the bottom will remain 1% of the people at the bottom even if you’re all millionaires. And I wonder if that’s the dynamic we have going on with a segment of the population being open to strong men.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yes, somewhat. The other thing that we can do is educate people in terms of disinformation to recognize disinformation and this would be ideally done at the level of in schools. That’s a very tough thing right now because under GOP influence schools are acting in the opposite direction to ban any discussion of inequality and all kinds of subjects of racism and LGBTQ education. But ideally to kind of have a civic education where you taught people as there were programs at the regional level in Finland and in Italy, you teach people to recognize disinformation early on.

Preet Bharara:

Could you engage in the following to me scary exercise based on your research and study and observations? So it’s one thing to talk about what the Trump presidency was like and to analyze him. He was not deposed. He lost an election, although he doesn’t admit it. He could very well come back to power in 2024. And I’ve asked this question of other guests, but nobody who has your particular perspective and academic expertise. What does Trump two look like through the lens of his being a strong man?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Someone like Trump is motivated by vengeance, by self protection. And indeed Trump plus Berlusconi plus Putin, all ran for office initially while they were under investigation. And you know this very well, and so governance becomes about self preservation. So we could expect any kind of investigation, including January 6th to be immediately shut down. We could expect an acceleration. Speed is important in Autocracies, and Trump did a huge amount that’s not fully acknowledged to purge the civil service in many sectors while he was there. But there would be a kind of… And people have talked about this, a plan to have a mass purge of democratic and rule of law abiding civil servants. You have to capture the civil service in order to have an autocracy. The Republicans have already done a lot of the groundwork, the electoral system, the civil service, local politics. So a Trump two would kind of have a very quick program of vengeance against enemies because that’s the core of the authoritarian way of thinking. You must protect yourself by neutralizing anyone who can harm you.

Preet Bharara:

So I’m fearful-

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

and investigate you. Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

The other thing I’m fearful about which you have alluded to, is that the other lesson he will have learned like strong men who preceded him was that no longer will he make the mistake of having someone in his brain trust, or in his cabinet, or in his kitchen cabinet who has any kind of independent base or independent thoughts as you were saying about Putin. He has to get to the point where everyone around him who has any authority to exercise Trump’s will, will in fact do so. No accidental generals with some moral compass. You’re going to have an administration of John Eastman’s and people like that. Is that fair assessment?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yes, absolutely. And one area I watch carefully because a third of my book is about coups, who knew it was going to be so relevant to America. But so I’ve studied at length the civilian military relationships, what happens to them? And more broadly, security forces law enforcement. So I would worry… So General Milley, who was a ball work against many bad things that could have happened, there would be nobody like Milley could be there in Trump two. So it wouldn’t just be civilian, there would be… And Michael Flynn is very active with this. And the things that have come out about the secret service, there would be I believe internal purges in those security and military sectors so that you could have an across the board… The Nazis used to call it synchronization of all loyalists. And Trump he came in there and he was experimenting and that’s why he had such a revolving door. He kept hiring and firing because the longer… This goes back to the paranoia, the longer they’re there, the more lackeys and loyalists they need.

And the more they commit corruption, the more the bar for who is loyal and what they’ll put up with has to rise. So the moral bar has to descend, but the loyalty requests and criteria are no one can be loyal enough for the leader.

Preet Bharara:

Last question, and I’m hoping you’ll answer this in a somewhat hopeful way. Based on history and precedent in your studies as opposed to modern day current polling, can you make the case for why, I hope you’ll say it is unlikely that Trump would return to power?

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

I think it is unlikely that Trump would return to power. He has so many investigations. He has a bedrock support of many but Ron De Santis is now backed by over 40 billionaires. And I think that the danger is that somebody like De Santis who’s very extreme but doesn’t have the baggage of Trump, doesn’t have the criminal… Nobody has the range of criminality of Trump. It’s very difficult to replicate, maybe only Berlusconi in Italy. So somebody like De Santis can come and seem like a moderate and normal as David from said politician, and yet could act in a similarly vengeful way.

Preet Bharara:

So that’s not exactly good news.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

No, Trump not returning to power would be a huge victory because Trump represents a very unique level of danger, because of his foreign connections, his money laundering. There is no one else who is as dangerous as he is.

Preet Bharara:

Not even Ron De Santis.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

No, because Trump’s past and the way his business operates that’s a whole other thing.

Preet Bharara:

Okay, well I’ll take that for now.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

An upbeat note.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, thank you so much for taking the time. I really appreciate the book that we have talked about, is Strong Men, From Mussolini to the Present. I urge everyone to read it. Thanks for coming on the show.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat:

Thank you.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with Ruth Ben-Ghiat continues for members of the CAFE insider community. To try out the membership for just one dollar for a month, head to cafe.com/insider. And for a limited time, new members can get 40% off the annual membership price with the special code, midterms. Again, head to cafe.com/insider and use the code midterms for 40% off the annual price.

As we end the show this week, I just want to acknowledge how hard it can be to maintain optimism these days. We have the march of autocracy, we have deep polarization, there is war in Ukraine, there is talk of nuclear weapons in that war. We have inflation, we have the end of Roe v. Wade. The pandemic is still with us and our political future is very uncertain. As I said at the beginning of the show when asked how I am, I’m uneasy. But despite the tumult and turmoil and uncertainty, there are reasons to be optimistic. As my guest Karim Sadjapour said this week on our latest episode of In Brief, the widespread protests in Iran are perhaps a sign that something is happening in that country that could lead to a more promising future for Iranian women. Nuclear threats aside, Ukraine is winning against Russia. And it looks like Democrats may well keep control of the Senate.

Against this backdrop, I wanted to mention a piece that caught my eye this week in the Washington Post. It’s written by former governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels. He writes about a group of people in Warsaw, Indiana, known as the Warsaw Breakfast Optimist Club. Members meet every Wednesday at 7:00 AM… It’s pretty early, to discuss their upcoming projects and fundraisers which center around youth service and to recite the optimist Creed. Daniels highlights some passages of the creed that as he says, point the person taking the pledge towards others. One of the tenets is make all your friends feel that there is something in them. Here’s another, be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. The Warsaw Breakfast Optimist Club is part of the Broader Optimist International, an organization founded in Buffalo, New York in 1911 as a means to find respite in hard times.

It now has more than 2,500 local clubs that meet on a weekly basis to help serve the youth in their communities. As we face challenges in our daily lives and across the world, our focus understandably is often on the negative and it can be difficult to be optimistic. But we must not allow the bad to cloud out all of the good. It is hard sometimes. It’s hard for me, as I imagine it must be sometimes for you. But like the 14th Dalai Lama says, choose to be optimistic. It feels better. Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, Ruth Ben-Ghiat.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag ask Preet. Or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669- 24 Preet, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producers are Adam Waller and Matthew Billy. The CAFE team is David Kurlander, Sam Ozer-Staton, Noa Azulai, Nat Weiner, Jake Kaplan, Sean Walsh, Namita Shah, and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.