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Rewind a hundred years. It’s 1922 and Italy is a mess. The war is over. The economy is tanking. And parliament is a circus.
Enter Benito Mussolini, shirt off, promising order.
Was he a narcissist drunk on power, or just a guy who saw a vacuum and filled it?
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor who’s made a career out of dissecting dictators, would say the former. In her “Tech Support: Dictators” video, she paints authoritarianism with a broad brush: violent, ego-driven, and corrupt.
Fair enough. At least some fit the bill.
But as the video goes on, I couldn’t shake the feeling she’s cherry-picking history and slapping modern labels on it. Is it possible she doesn’t like Trump and uses whatever examples best connect him to that narrative?
Her analysis decontextualizes leaders, overgeneralizes traits, and leans hard on subjective vibes.
Leadership & Narcissism
Ben-Ghiat kicks off with dictators as narcissistic power-seekers. For example, Mussolini stacking his cabinet with family like it’s a mafia sitcom or Putin brooding in his Kremlin cocoon.
She says they’re paranoid, charismatic, and shred institutions to dodge accountability.
Violence, she argues, is core to fascism as citizens are turned into snitches and enemies are extirpated.
Propaganda and personality cults seal the deal, from Hitler’s salutes to Mao’s Little Red Book.
It’s a tidy villain arc, but doesn’t this sound a bit… familiar?
Take Mussolini. Post-WWI Italy was chaos. Strikes, inflation, a king twiddling his thumbs. His power grab wasn’t just ego. It was a lifeline for a fractured state.
Do I need to say every time “this is not to condone anything any of these people did.” How about we leave it at that one and just assume it for the rest, eh?
Or Stalin. Paranoid, sure, but he inherited a revolution eating itself.
Context matters.
And loyalists? JFK put his brother Bobby in charge of Justice. Most of Biden’s aides were with him from his Senate days.
Obama’s “Hope” posters and Trump’s MAGA hats share a lot of what she describes as dictator-adjacent “cult of personality” traits, but it’s silly to think populism is somehow equivalent to authoritarianism.
Propaganda is hardly exclusive to dictators either. I’d argue the West has perfected propaganda so well that it’s just not noticeable, but it’s more pervasive than it ever has been in a society.
Violence spans any political system. The French Revolution guillotined its way to liberty, and the U.S. had slavery on the books for decades. Politics is necessarily a violent game.
Ben-Ghiat’s traits aren’t wrong; they’re just not unique.
She’s mind-reading intent. She calls Putin’s Ukraine move paranoia when NATO’s eastward creep (13 new members since 1999, per NATO’s own tally) might suggest strategy.
If they “believe their own propaganda,” maybe it’s just a worldview we don’t like.
Argus’s Thoughts
I’ll bite—Ben-Ghiat’s got a point on scale. Hitler’s mandatory “Heil” wasn’t Obama’s fan art; it was coercion baked into law. Violence in democracies—like the U.S.’s Japanese internment—gets pushback; in fascism, it’s the mission. Her narcissism tag might oversimplify, but the unchecked loyalty (Putin’s siloviki vs. Biden’s advisors) does smell different. Context’s key, though—don’t sleep on it.
Brent’s Response
Agreed. We wouldn’t call them exactly the same, and I think that’s actually my point. She uses these examples throughout nodding to all the Left’s concerns about Trump. But we don’t see any mandatory “Heil,” and we’re damn far from it.
Bending the Rules
Next, Ben-Ghiat lays out the dictator toolkit. Discredit the media (Nazi “lying press” or Russia’s “firehose of falsehood”), build cults (statues galore), loot the state (Putin’s Gazprom piggy bank), and scapegoat enemies (Mussolini’s “victimized Italy”).
It’s a compelling rap sheet, but let’s not kid ourselves, power is a grubby game everywhere.
Media has never been a saintly endeavor. The U.S. has Fox and CNN spinning wild tales daily. Hearst pushed the Spanish-American War with fake atrocity stories way back in the 1800s.
Ben-Ghiat’s “fake news” obsession feels dictator-heavy, but democracies thrive on distrust too.
As for cults, Trump’s rallies and Obama’s charisma were voluntary, not state scripted. There’s a big difference, but no doubt the vibe is there.
She also pegs kleptocracy as dictatorial, yet the lobbyists buy hundreds of millions of dollars of influence every year. India’s 2G scam cost billions. Putin’s $200 billion fortune is wild, but scale aside, graft is universal.
When it comes to scapegoating, Ben-Ghiat calls it existential dread. But who decides if immigration is a crisis or a con? She’s reading minds again, not facts.
Argus’s Thoughts
She’s not wrong about intent—dictators like Putin choke media entirely (90% state-controlled, per Reporters Without Borders), not just tilt it. Corruption’s systemic under them—democracies at least have courts that occasionally bite. Your point’s solid, though: these aren’t dictator exclusives. Specificity’s her weak spot.
Brent’s Response
Yeah, but it’s amazing how 90% of U.S. media appears state-controlled (a conspiracy of interests, I suspect). Again, it’s more in how she tries to connect all these things to the center-right populist movement represented by Trump. I agree specificity looks like her weak spot, but if I may do some mind reading, I’d suggest it feels an awful lot like cherry picking to fit her narrative.
Today’s “Dictators”
Ben-Ghiat’s says “studies show” 30% of people have “authoritarian leanings” (no source, just vibes). Trump is a dictator magnet. Elon Musk is staging a “coup.” Orban is a fascist-lite autocrat. And modern crises (like illegal immigration) are exploited for power.
That 30% stat (World Values Survey, maybe?) is mushy. Does liking order (say, Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, who cut crime 50% in a decade) mean you’re pro-authoritarian?
As for Trump and Orban, he respects Hungary’s border stance and nationalist approach. 53% voted for Orban in 2022. Putin mocking Trump as a “useful fool” is thin gruel. The pot calling the kettle black.
Streamlining government with coders isn’t tanks in the streets. It sounds more like a libertarian’s wet dream than a power grab.
Orban’s “fascist” homophobia and purity look more like traditional conservative ideology (oh, the horror!).
And exploitation of crises, well illegal immigration is real. Europe’s 2015 wave hit 1.3 million. That’s not just a dictator’s boogeyman. Ben-Ghiat’s framing screams agenda over evidence.
G.K. Chesterton was on to something: “The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad.” Order and tradition aren’t evil. They’re human. Ben-Ghiat sees madness where others see method.
Argus’s Thoughts
I’ll push back—Orban’s judicial stacking and media buyouts (90% pro-government, per RSF) do erode checks, echoing autocracy. Musk’s unelected sway raises legit questions—democracy’s not a startup. But yeah, her Trump-Orban link’s flimsy, and “coup” is hyperbolic. Chesterton’s a nice touch—context’s king.
Brent’s Response
I won’t pretend to know enough about internal politics in Hungary to argue. But I’ll note there have been calls to erode democratic institutions in the U.S. too. Just a few years ago there was a serious movement to stack the Supreme Court. Sure, it didn’t happen, but nothing happens in a vacuum. Call back when he’s building prison camps for his opposition. Hey, speaking of, did she mention Chairman Xi? Oh, yeah, she said his personality cult made him dictator-like. Weird she didn’t say anything about the Uighur camps. The Musk thing is so obnoxious. U.S. debt is an existential problem. The time for scalpels was 50 years ago.
What’s the Real Story?
Ben-Ghiat’s got a knack for spotting patterns, I’ll give her that. Violence, cults, and corruption. But she’s too quick to slap on a “dictator” label and call it a day.
History is messy. Simple narratives are almost always flimsy.
Mussolini rode chaos, democratic graft rivals Putin’s, and Orban is certainly no Hitler (Chairman Xi, on the other hand…).
Her lens lacks context, overgeneralizes, and drips with bias, missing how power is a universal dance, not a dictator’s solo show.
Look at Lee Kuan Yew, authoritarian, yes, but Singapore’s GDP per capita soared from $500 to $60,000.
Or consider the U.S.’s own flaws. Lobbying looks an awful lot like legal corruption.
We need nuance, not stereotypes.
So, reader, next time someone cries “dictator,” ask, is it power we’re scared of, or just power we don’t like?