Decisions, decisions...

Albuquerque NM

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In the summer of 2020, Ruth Ben-Ghiat was putting the final touches on her history of modern autocracy. She had to do it, though, without the benefit of knowing whether one of her most important subjects would remain in power come November. But she wasn’t exactly in the dark either. She had seen enough of Donald Trump’s behavior over the preceding five years to know how neatly he lined up with other strongmen she had studied and how his autocratic tendencies would influence his behavior whether he won or lost. “I just predicted that he wouldn’t leave in a quiet manner,” Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University told me recently. “He’s an authoritarian, and they can’t leave office. They don’t have good endings and they don’t leave properly.” Nearly two years later — after a riot, an impeachment, and a monomaniacal campaign to punish the Republicans who tried to hold him accountable — Ben-Ghiat has ample proof of her thesis. And she professes even more concern that Trump’s sway over the GOP has permanently transformed the party’s political culture. “He’s changed the party to an authoritarian party culture,” she told me. “So not only do you go after external enemies, but you go after internal enemies. You’re not allowed to have any dissent.” With the midterms and some key governors races approaching, Ben-Ghiat is looking around the corner again. She sees dangerous signs of autocracy seeping into state houses and governors’ mansions where leaders such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are executing policies and enacting laws that mimic Trump but with a smoother, less bombastic style. She insists her urgent warnings should not be construed as fatalism. Throughout our interview she leavened her direst predictions with a pragmatic if not sunny optimism. Political violence is more likely than an actual civil war; a Republican takeover in November would be catastrophic but she remains heartened by the ability of American voters to “interrupt an autocratic personality who’s in the middle of his project;” and ballot box victories alone don’t stop autocrats but the law can. “It takes prosecution and conviction to deflate their personality cults,” Ben-Ghiat said. “That’s what it takes.” This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Michael Kruse: We’re coming up on seven years since Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced he was running for president. I’m wondering where in your estimation we are in this country in the timeline of increasing authoritarianism. Ruth Ben-Ghiat: When somebody like Trump comes on the scene and holds office, it’s really like an earthquake or a volcano, and it shakes up the whole system by gathering in this big tent all the extremists, all the far-right people, and giving them legitimation. The GOP was already going away from a democratic political culture, but he accelerated it and normalized extremism and normalized lawlessness. And so the GOP over these years has truly, in my estimation, become an authoritarian far-right party. And the other big story is that his agenda and his methods are being continued at the state level. Some of these things were on the agenda way before he came in, like getting rid of abortion rights and stuff like that. But these states are really laboratories of autocracy now, like Florida, Texas. The final thing I’d say is machismo [is] up there as a tool of rule alongside propaganda and corruption. Getting ahead as a man [in this political system] means being more like Trump. And so you saw Mike Pompeo, who started talking about “swagger” and he was a very different kind of State Department head. And now you have people like Ron DeSantis who even absorbed the hand gestures of Trump. And so at the elite level, the political system is shaped by Trump, and every day we see his legacy. Kruse: What would you say to those in this country who say, “No, the Republicans aren’t the autocrats. It’s the Democrats who are the autocrats. It’s Joe Biden. It’s other Democrats with power who are making us wear masks or take vaccines we don’t want to take. They’re the ones who are behaving more in autocratic ways, not the Republicans.” Ben-Ghiat: One of the big talking points and strategy of right-wing authoritarianism, is to label democratic systems as tyrannical. Mussolini was the first to say that democracies are tyrannical, democracies are the problem. And there’s a whole century’s worth of the strategy of calling sitting Democrats, who you want to overthrow, dictators. Biden as a social dictator, [is] a phony talking point. It has so many articulations from “They’re forcing us to wear masks.” And you have people like DeSantis who are doing this very subversive thing of saying, “Florida’s the free state. You can have refuge from the dictatorship of Biden here.” And what this is designed to do is discredit the sitting democratic administration in order to create, a myth of freedom. January 6 was actually marketed as the violence [being] in the service of freedom, and you were overthrowing a dictator. Kruse: Where is Trump in his own timeline? Is he in your estimation getting weaker, getting stronger, in a holding pattern? Ben-Ghiat: The genius of the “big lie” was not only that it sparked a movement that ended up with January 6 to physically allow him to stay in office. But psychologically the “big lie” was very important because it prevented his propagandized followers from having to reckon with the fact that he lost. And it maintains him as their hero, as their winner, as the invincible Trump, but also as the wronged Trump, the victim. Victimhood is extremely important for all autocrats. They always have to be the biggest victim. So the “big lie” maintained Trump’s personality cult versus seeing him as just another president who was voted out of office. Americans traditionally always accepted that when your time is up, no matter how popular you were, you were gone. Trump disrupted that because he’s different from any other president, Republican or Democrat. He’s an authoritarian, and they can’t leave office. They don’t have good endings and they don’t leave properly. And I predicted — I had to turn in [my] book in the summer of 2020 — and I just predicted that he wouldn’t leave in a quiet manner. The “big lie” allowed him to psychologically never leave. So he’s in this kind of limbo. As an authoritarian, his other job has been to make sure to keep hold of the party so no rivals emerge, so that he could [not] be eclipsed by a younger version of himself. And that would be DeSantis. Kruse: Have you been surprised at how successful he’s been in this regard, especially considering he doesn’t have Twitter? As you referenced, Truth Social has been more or less a failure to this point. He is doing this through emails and [conservative] media hits. Ben-Ghiat: The Twitter was for the masses, to keep the masses indoctrinated, and I see Trump as one of the most successful propagandists of the early 21st century. He tweeted over 120 times a day. But that was for the masses. I wasn’t talking about voters as much as how has he kept the elites tethered to him. And that has nothing to do with Twitter. That has to do with what he’s always done: collecting compromising information, threatening, and he’s changed the party to an authoritarian party culture. So not only do you go after external enemies, but you go after internal enemies. You’re not allowed to have any dissent. And it’s not just when the leader was going to be impeached. In February 2021, during the second impeachment, and Republicans who voted to impeach him had to buy body armor because they were being threatened. The big question will be what will happen in the coming months so that he can retain that power because he’s very toxic. There’s always this worry that maybe the investigations will bring more things out, so it’s not a done deal that he will get the nomination. But he’s been remarkably successful in ways that don’t surprise me at all. Because that’s how authoritarians are. They’re personality cults, even if they rule in a democracy like [Italy’s former prime minister Silvio] Berlusconi did. Berlusconi’s personality cult did not deflate until he was convicted, which he eventually was. That’s what it takes. It takes prosecution and conviction to deflate their personality cults. Kruse: You recently wrote, “Ron DeSantis is turning Florida into his own mini-autocracy.” Why is he an autocrat? Ben-Ghiat: He has autocratic tendencies. What’s so interesting is he was a Reaganite and then he had clearly some kind of epiphany when Trump came on the scene. He had that campaign video that showed his house being transformed into an altar for Trump. And he got the endorsement. He has absorbed the lessons of what you need to get ahead in the GOP today. And that is to be a forceful bully, even to high school students. The way he carries himself and speaks has gotten much more aggressive. And he’s also very smartly tried to turn Florida into this refuge for all who are oppressed by Biden. He invited New York city cops and people from all over the nation who are oppressed by federal government vaccine [rules], or state mandates, [to] come to Florida and be free. And so that’s one way he’s setting up Florida to be the fiefdom of a certain politics, a certain ideology, that he clearly then wants to take national. And in fact his spokesperson, Christina Pushaw, says, “Make America Florida.”