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Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
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20/99
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87/99
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About This Book
Ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of resources and corroding or destroying democracy. Their mutual-admiration club also draws on models from the past. Vladimir Putin rehabilitates Soviet tyrant Joseph Stalin, Donald Trump praises Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi, Jair Bolsonaro admires Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan invokes Adolf Hitler as the model of an efficient leader. Ruth Ben-Ghiat covers a century of authoritarianism to explain why strongman rulers in Africa, Europe, and Latin America, drawing from a common playbook of machismo, propaganda, violence, and corruption, have found popular support even as they bring ruin to their countries. The fruit of decades of research, Strongmen gives readers insight into how such rulers think, who and what they depend on, and how they can be opposed.
Reviews
"The crucial factors at play are not social and political conditions but rather unscrupulous ambition and greed, on the one hand, and the determination (or the lack thereof) to resist it, on the other."
"Beginning with the rise of Mussolini and concluding with the present era, Ben-Ghiat attempts to portray the ways democracies die in the arms of authoritarians, and the common traits that enable these downfalls ...at times, the chapters can feel jigsawed together — patchworks of examples undergirding premises stretched thin by all they are forced to contain ..."
"She also argues, more originally but less persuasively, that they flaunt a fourth trait, 'virility,' manifested in acts such as Trump's boasting of his sexual exploits to Access Hollywood and Putin's posing shirtless for photos."
"Ben-Ghiat cogently states that the secret of the strongman is that he needs the crowds much more than they need him."
"Still, this is a thought-provoking look at how authoritarianism has shape-shifted from WWII to today."
"Many readers can well live without Ben-Ghiat's explicit disclosure that Mussolini and Gaddafi each had sex addictions, though even the prudes among us might find it intriguing to learn that Mussolini fathered about 20 children, that his first wife ended up in a mental institution, and that he had a son he caused to be murdered by lethal injection ..."
"Essential for all collections."
"This is too bad, because Trump really does deserve more careful comparison with other leaders ..."
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