Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Authoritarians hold appeal when society is polarized, or divided into two opposing ideological camps, which is why they do all they can to exacerbate strife.

From the start, authoritarians stand out from other kinds of politicians by appealing to negative experiences and emotions. They don the cloak of national victimhood, reliving the humiliations of their people by foreign powers as they proclaim themselves their nation’s saviors. Picking up on powerful resentments, hopes, and fears, they present themselves as the vehicle for obtaining what is most wanted, whether it is territory, safety from racial others, securing male authority, or payback for exploitation by internal or external enemies.

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. They believe him because they believe in him.

On one issue, the strongman has been consistent: his drive to control and exploit everyone and everything for personal gain. The men, women, and children he governs have value in his eyes only insofar as they produce babies, fight his enemies, and adulate him publicly. Each tool of his rule has its place within this scheme.

Elites are the authoritarian’s most important promoters and collaborators. Afraid of losing their class, gender, or race privileges, influential individuals bring the insurgent into the political system, thinking that he can be controlled as he solves their problems (which often involves persecuting the left).30 Once the ruler is in power, elites strike an “authoritarian bargain” that promises them power and security in return for loyalty to the ruler and toleration of his suspension of rights.

FROM AN EARLY AGE, the first man to transform a democracy into a dictatorship showed the qualities that have marked strongmen of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: a violent temperament, opportunism, and a way with words.

Fascism and the modern strongman emerged from the vortex of World War I (1914–1918), a conflict so catastrophic that many combatants felt no words could express its horrors. The first total war, so named for its erosion of civilian and military boundaries, caused a systemic shock.

The disaffection with conventional politics and politicians after a ruinous war created yearnings for a new kind of leader.

comfort of “the world reduced to black and white,” presented by someone with “absolute faith in himself and in his own powers of persuasion.”7

The strongman who triumphs via military coup may pose as a patriarch, but this father doesn’t hesitate to butcher his own. The word coup translates as a “cut” or “hit” in many languages, and it often entails the removal of objectionable elements said to endanger the nation.

Many strongmen who come to power by coup leave it in the same fashion.