Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

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 has no pages on how to deal with becoming a national disgrace, someone who is pelted with tomatoes and eggs when he appears in public after leaving office, like Pinochet, or forced into exile, like Amin. Its discussions of how to control minds and exploit bodies do not extend to the deterioration of the leader’s own. Aging and the ebbing of virile powers is difficult for leaders whose “entire sense of self is bound up in being revered,” in psychological profiler Jerrold Post’s words. Disappearing from the scene due to illness, as Mobutu did in 1996, can be dangerous for men already on the decline.2 Nothing prepares the ruler to see his propaganda ignored and his charismatic hold weaken until he loses control of the nation and is hunted by his own people, as happened to Mussolini and Gaddafi. For the strongman, such outcomes are unthinkable and yet ever-present. They fuel behaviors that make him feel safer and brush away thoughts of mortality. That might mean persecuting more enemies, firing more truth-tellers, hoarding more women and riches, or consulting astrologers (many are superstitious) about his fate and his legacy. Such rulers also brood about what happens to their peers. Hitler made sure he did not end up like Mussolini, and Gaddafi cooperated w...