Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

From Mussolini through Putin, all of the strongmen featured in this book establish forms of personalist rule, which concentrates enormous power in one individual whose own political and financial interests prevail over national ones in shaping domestic and foreign policy. Loyalty to him and his allies, rather than expertise, is the primary qualification for serving in the state bureaucracy, as is participation in his corruption schemes. Personalist rulers can be long-lasting rulers, because they control patronage networks that bind people to them in relationships of complicity and fear.

As he gains a following, the aspiring leader tests out tools like propaganda and corruption that will later help him rule. The decay of truth and democratic dissolution proceed hand in hand, starting with the insurgent’s assertion that the establishment media delivers false or biased information while he speaks the truth and risks everything to get the “real facts” out. Once his supporters bond to his person, they stop caring about his falsehoods.

At its core, propaganda is a set of communication strategies designed to sow confusion and uncertainty, discourage critical thinking, and persuade people that reality is what the leader says it is.

some of the most successful propaganda builds its falsehoods around a grain of truth. The perennial strongman message that foreigners are breaching the border to engage in criminal acts is one example. A fabric of lies is woven around the fact that large numbers of foreigners do indeed cross the border, omitting vital information such as when they arrived and with what motives. Information manipulation on this subject often includes attempts to link immigration to elevated crime rates and terrorism.

BY THE TIME GADDAFI’S REGIME FELL in 2011, new authoritarian rulers were putting their own mark on the history of propaganda. They mix rallies, censorship, and personality cults with social media to create the news they need to stay in office. Holding elections means that they are more dependent than ever on censorship and the manipulation of information. They still silence and slander critics, but also flood the media space with noise and confusion, drowning out messages that may threaten their power.

Today’s strongmen are well aware that every minute the public and the press spend on the outrage du jour is time they’re not mobilizing for political action or investigating abuses of power.

Trump does not lie about one or two things. Rather, facts on any subject that conflict with his goals of power and profit are degraded through rumor and innuendo or simply altered or denied. The number of documented falsehoods he uttered as president increased from 5.9 a day in 2017 to an average of 22 a day in 2019, for a total of 16,241 in his first three years in office. This constitutes a disinformation barrage without precedent in America.

THE AUTHORITARIAN PLAYBOOK has no chapter on failure. It does not foresee the leader’s own people turning against him, from military men he trained to young people he indoctrinated to women he rewarded for having babies.

It’s not surprising that most authoritarians leave office involuntarily. They are supremely ill equipped to handle the downward arc of leadership and life. They have trouble abandoning personal traits like hubris, aggression, and greed that served them to stay in power, even when these become self-defeating. Their theft of national revenue and resources may leave them unable to continue to fund the spoils system that kept elites loyal to them, leading to their loss of legitimacy.