The Life and Afterlife of a Macho Government

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

Imagine a wealthy plutocrat with a history of media manipulation and an insatiable appetite. Now imagine he runs for head of state, despite having no political experience. His electoral base loves him, though he has no legislative accomplishments to name, and he has an ugly tendency to snuggle up to Vladimir Putin. Eventually his appetites overtake him, and he’s forced from power in disgrace, though he refuses to accept it.

Of course, I’m describing three-term Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

This book’s back-cover copy promises a “blueprint” for strongman leadership in one-man states throughout history. This is, however, somewhat misleading. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of history and Italian studies at New York University, admits unitary male leaders generally aren’t crafty men, and don’t necessarily have a shared playbook. They mostly roll with the punches, though their rapid adaptation tends to follow reliable patterns, which we, the socially engaged, can study.

Ben-Ghiat examines Twentieth and Twenty-First Century strongman autocrats. She defines strongmen as national leaders, usually though not necessarily male, who achieve power through exaggerated displays of traditionally masculine behaviors. Once in power, they rule through force of personality and brook no disagreement; most have no exit strategy, and leave power in disgrace, or worse. Ben-Ghiat doesn’t study Communist dictators, whose power machines behave, she says, differently.

Between the World Wars, strongmen generally achieved power through threats of violence. Neither Hitler nor Mussolini ever won elections, but both achieved power by stirring up angry crowds and threatening to turn them loose. Later, during the Cold War, strongmen like Augusto Pinochet, Mobutu Sese Seko, and Colonel Gadhafi led military coups. Recent strongmen, like Berlusconi, Putin, and Trump, have maintained the veneer of democracy, while disparaging its substance.

Strongmen generally gain their people’s acclamation and support (though not necessarily trust) by displaying strength and masculinity. Though only Mussolini and Putin regularly pose shirtless for photographers, coup leaders’ love of military uniforms and elaborate medals reflect their love of power displays. Many like to project images of themselves as brawlers, from Gadhafi issuing threats on state TV, to Trump fantasizing about punching protesters at campaign rallies.

This hypermasculine display results in contradictory relationships with women. Both Hitler and Saddam Hussein kept their private lives private; Hitler concealed his mistress, Eva Braun, from public view for years. Mussolini, however, pursued multiple women, whose brief assignations often turned into years-long surveillance operations. Gadhafi kept a brothel on a military base, often trafficking in arrested dissidents.

(Ben-Ghiat never mentions Stormy Daniels; she doesn’t have to.)

Ruth Ben-Ghiat

These strongmen love touting their economic credentials. From claims that Mussolini’s trains ran on time, to supposed wealth generated in Pinochet’s Chile, to Mobutu’s lavish lifestyle, the centralized strongman state putatively creates unmatched wealth. Ben-Ghiat follows the actual money trail, however, and finds that these claims are mostly fictional. Economic gains, if there are any for anyone outside the strongman’s circle, are usually funded by catastrophic debt.

Mercifully, though the strongman projects a façade of invulnerability, he invariably faces massive opposition at home. Hitler survived multiple assassination attempts, and Mobutu regularly shuffled opposition politicians between his Cabinet and prison. Fascists and military strongmen generally leave office in chains, or else in a hearse. Elected strongmen like Berlusconi are more likely to be simply humiliated. Only Francisco Franco actually held power shrewdly enough to lie in state.

Though she avoids commenting on current events, except to provide historical perspective, there’s little doubt Ben-Ghiat writes this to highlight current power dynamics. Donald Trump repeatedly appears in direct parallels to historical strongmen in Ben-Ghiat’s narrative. Though his critics regularly call Trump a small-f fascist, in Ben-Ghiat’s telling, he more closely resembles Vladimir Putin and Silvio Berlusconi. Like them, he doesn’t realize how ridiculous he looks on the world stage.

Ben-Ghiat’s narrative focuses on finding parallels between strongman leaders, living or dead. She doesn’t perform deep dives into any individual. (She’s written previous books on Mussolini’s power techniques.) Late in the book, though, Ben-Ghiat admits these parallels are more coincidental than strategic. Strongmen govern in an improvisational style that manifests certain patterns, basically because humans respond to despots in reliable ways, and strongmen respond back.

Both the strongman’s supporters, and his critics, feel like the strongman’s reign is never-ending. Sometimes it indeed drags on. But the strongman inevitably falls, both from power and from his supporters’ good graces, and when he does, he invariably leaves his country poorer and more vulnerable, according to Ben-Ghiat. This final message is both optimistic and bleak, and citizens should plan accordingly.