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For authoritarians, only some people are “the people,” regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group.
Only some people are "The People"
On one issue, the strongman has been consistent: his drive to control and exploit everyone and everything for personal gain.
All "for personal gain"
Deutsche Bank has funded authoritarian states from Hitler’s Germany to Putin’s Russia, as well as lending to businesses like the Trump Organization that are suspected of helping autocrats and their cronies to launder their money.
Deutsche Bank - Hitler to Putin to Trump
As in Italy, the action of a few conservative elites, rather than popular acclaim, got the strongman into power.
A few conservative elites got strongmen into power
new authoritarians use elections to keep themselves in office, deploying antidemocratic tactics like fraud or voter suppression to get the results they need.
New authoritarians use elections to stay in power by fraud and voter supression.
Some Europeans who sought new models for rightist politics also looked to America. There, a more radical form of conservatism had taken hold during the 1980s, thanks to the support given to anti–big government and pro–White Christian sentiments during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
His government has promoted Californian and Catalan secessionist movements and uses disinformation campaigns to aid foreign candidates and causes that benefit Russia (Trump and Brexit are two examples).
Putins government promotes secession movements abroad .
Strongmen disappear people, and they also disappear knowledge that conflicts with their ideologies and goals.
and 1935, Mussolini appeared in over one hundred American newsreels and had his own nationally syndicated newspaper column, courtesy of his admirer William Randolph Hearst. “Outside of Italy he could not crack heads, he had to win minds,” the exile Salvemini said of Mussolini, who had a squad of powerful Americans helping him do just that.19
Between 1927 and 1935 - Mussolini appearexd in over 100 newsreels in America via Wm Randolph Hearst.
Hannah Arendt’s 1951 observation: The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.
While the gas chambers ceased operation in 1945, fascist violence lived on, its marks remaining on survivors’ minds and bodies. Italian and German perpetrators retained its techniques, plying their trade in Franco’s Spain, in the Middle East, and in Latin America in the age of military coups.
Fascist Violence lived on after 1945 in the Age of Military Coups
Sustained mass protest requires opportunity, organization, and motivation born of outrage and the transcendence of fear.
Sustained mass protest requirements...
When his American backers grew ambivalent, he hired the lobbyists Roger Stone and Paul Manafort in a futile attempt to save his reputation.
Mobuto's lobbyists: Roger Stone & Paul Manifort
Studies conducted by Pippa Norris and other political scientists rank the GOP among the most extremist parties in the West in terms of its rejection of liberal democratic values. Its positions on immigration, crusades against racial and gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights, and attitudes toward ethnic and religious minorities have placed it close to the platforms of the parties of sitting autocrats like Erdoğan and Modi.
GOP as extremest party
AMERICA HAS PLAYED AN OUTSIZED ROLE in the success of authoritarianism around the world, starting with the US banks and media outlets that supported Mussolini’s dictatorship in the 1920s.
US support of authoritarians siince the 1920's
There are two paths people can take when faced with the proliferation of polarization and hatred in their societies. They can dig their trenches deeper, or they can reach across the lines to stop a new cycle of destruction, knowing that solidarity, love, and dialogue are what the strongman most fears.
