Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

TO COUNTER AUTHORITARIANISM, we must prioritize accountability and transparency in government. At the heart of strongman rule is the claim that he and his agents are above the law, above judgment, and not beholden to the truth. Accountability also matters as a measure of open societies because the old yardstick—elections—is less reliable. New authoritarian states often simulate democracy, and nominal democracies governed by personalist rulers often act like autocracies. In Trump’s America, as in Berlusconi’s Italy, the legal and the illegal, fact and fiction, celebrity and politics blend together until nothing means anything anymore and everything is “a confidence game.” The corrosive effects of the shift away from standards of accountability and truth were evident in the reaction of CBS News journalist Norah O’Donnell to Trump’s January 2020 State of the Union speech. Although the speech contained multiple false statements about economic growth during his presidency, O’Donnell hailed it as a triumph by “the reality TV president . . . a master showman at his best.”