Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

OURS IS THE AGE OF THE STRONGMAN, of heads of state like Berlusconi and Putin who damage or destroy democracy and use masculinity as a tool of political legitimacy.

evolution of authoritarianism, defined as a political system in which executive power is asserted at the expense of the legislative and judicial branches of government.

Populism is a common term for the parties and movements that carry forth this illiberal evolution of democratic politics. While populism is not inherently authoritarian, many strongmen past and present have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than legal rights.

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.

This is why, in strongman states, attacking the leader is seen as attacking the nation itself, and why critics are labeled “e...

More recently, labels like “hybrid regimes,” “electoral autocracies,” or “new authoritarianism” (the term used here) proliferate as scholars seek to classify this new wave of antidemocratic rule.

Personalist rulers can be long-lasting rulers, because they control patronage networks that bind people to them in relationships of complicity and fear.

The leader’s displays of machismo and his kinship with other male leaders are not just bluster, but a way of exercising power at home and conducting foreign policy. Virility enables his corruption, projecting the idea that he is above laws that weaker individuals must follow.

three periods of strongman rule: the fascist era, 1919–1945, the age of military coups, 1950–1990, and the new authoritarian age, 1990 to the present,

FOR ONE HUNDRED YEARS, charismatic leaders have found favor at moments of uncertainty and transition.

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.

anthropologist Ernest Becker observes, It is [fear] that makes people so willing to follow brash, strong-looking demagogues . . . capable of cleansing the world of the vague, the weak, the uncertain, the evil. Ah, to give oneself over to their direction—what calm, what relief.18

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.19

For a century, knowing how to capitalize on calamity, whether you had something to do with it or not, has been an essential strongman skill.22

The strongman’s impulsive and irascible nature (most have severe anger issues) and the “divide and rule” practices he follows to prevent anyone else from gaining too much power produce governments full of conflict and upheaval.

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.

common authoritarian pathology of possession:

Personalist rulers can be the most destructive kinds of authoritarians because they do not distinguish between their individual agendas and needs and those of the nation.

It also reflects on a truth that the autocrat goes to lengths to conceal: he is no one without his followers.

Most strongmen have uncommon powers of persuasion. Their followers and collaborators are the ones to “make” their reputations,

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.

authoritarian states thrive on the synergy of bureaucracy and violence.

Out of those five turbulent years and the Russian Revolution (1917–1921) came fascism and Communism. Both political systems were founded on a rejection of liberal democracy and the worship of male leaders who promised to harness the energies of modernity to create superior societies.

Fascism disrupted the existing field of politics, confusing many by putting two things together that were supposed to be opposites: nationalism and Socialism.

Yet Mussolini, a former Socialist, knew the power of insurrectionary language to mobilize people. He pitched Fascism as “both subversive and conservative”: it favored national unity instead of class conflict, imperialism and force instead of international solidarity, and promised modernization without loss of tradition.

Reversing female empowerment at a time of mass male injury and declining birth rates was one target of fascism; neutralizing workers galvanized by the Russian and 1918 German and Hungarian revolutions to demand more rights, another.

Mussolini prepared the script used by today’s authoritarians that casts the leader as a victim of his domestic enemies and of an international system that has cheated his country.9

While violence prepared the path, the March on Rome, celebrated by Fascists to this day on October 28 as a populist uprising, was an elite-approved transfer of power.13

Mussolini pioneered authoritarian strategies to weaken Italian democracy. He turned Parliament into a bully pulpit and denounced negative coverage of him and Fascism as “criminal.”

Italian Parliament passed a Fascist-sponsored electoral reform that gave any party receiving over 25 percent of the vote two-thirds of seats. This measure, plus voter intimidation and fraud, gave the Fascists 64.9 percent of the vote in the April 1924 election.

The fastest way to lose your life to a strongman is to publicly denounce his corruption. Matteotti wasn’t just an outspoken anti-Fascist, but also a crusader for government ethics,

Il Duce was ill equipped for the rejection he faced during this period. “[U]sed to flattery and applause, he could not face the once-crowded waiting rooms of his office, now suddenly empty, gelid, immense.”

A series of assassination attempts against the new autocrat led to the Laws for the Defense of the State (1925–1926) that created a secret police (Organization for the Vigilance and Repression of Anti-Fascism, or OVRA) and banned strikes, political parties, and more.

Hitler’s audiences multiplied as he exerted what observers saw as “an almost mystical power of attraction” at rallies, unleashing frenzies of raw emotion that expressed Germany’s pain and anxiety.

The February Reichstag fire ensured that he didn’t have to. The building still smoked when Hindenburg issued an emergency decree ending freedoms of press, assembly, and more. Thousands of leftists were detained in prisons and warehouses while Dachau, the Reich’s first concentration camp, was being converted from an arms factory. In March came the Enabling Act, which allowed the Führer to rule without consulting the Reichstag or the president. In less than two months, Hitler had secured the ability to govern without any checks on the exercise of his authority.

Two grand historical movements, decolonization and the Cold War, fueled the second strongman era.

Military service had always been an avenue of advancement for ambitious men from occupied nations, and coups appealed as a way for such outsiders to get to power.

Military coups may be less common today, but they have been the most common path to authoritarian rule, accounting for 75 percent of democratic failures globally since World War II.

Justifications for coups repeat over a century, such as preventing economic disaster, avoiding leftist apocalypse, or removing corrupt leaders.

LIKE OTHER STRONGMEN, Pinochet believed he’d been guided by a higher power into the position of being able to save his country.

The movement he unveiled, Forza Italia, named after a popular soccer chant, had a conservative platform. It was pro–free market, family, order, and efficiency. Although Communism had ended five years earlier, Berlusconi played up the threat of leftist tyranny.

Elections had long been a mark of an open society and their absence a criterion of autocracy, but new authoritarians use elections to keep themselves in office, deploying antidemocratic tactics like fraud or voter suppression to get the results they need.

Leaders who come to power by elections rather than coups are more likely to avoid ejection from office and less likely to face punishment.

From Mussolini onward, making sure you have immunity while those who have done your dirty work go to jail has been an essential strongman skill.

Francesco Borrelli issued an ominous statement: Those who want to become political candidates should look within themselves. If they are clean, then they should go ahead serenely. But if they have skeletons in their closets . . . they should open their closets now and stand aside from politics, before we get there.7

For the strongman, politics is always personal.

Berlusconi ended up with the kind of eclectic supporter mix that had powered past authoritarians into office: priests, gangsters, housewives (a big Berlusconi fan base), and elites who supported him to protect their own privileges. “If he wins then we all win. If he loses then he loses alone,” said Gianni Agnelli, president of the FIAT automotive company, with timeless cynicism.

Just as Franco was a transition figure between the fascist and military coup eras, so did Berlusconi serve as a bridge to twenty-first century authoritarians who discredit democratic institutions for personal benefit while mainstreaming extremist political forces.