Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat was one of many who warned about Trump and his authoritarian leanings. But this didn’t seem to matter for the nearly 77 million Americans who voted for him. What conversations about authoritarianism should we be having in the U.S.
FILE - President Donald Trump welcomes Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to the White House in Washington, May 13, 2019.
But he has accomplished a kind of mass conditioning to see democracy as failing and see strongmen rule as something that emotionally, socially, can offer people what democracy could not. And so I was remarking on this, and it was like it hit home for all of us, and that's why the silence occurred. And so that's also part of the conditioning. So I'm not, I don't want to make this overly simplistic, because that would be an insult to the people who voted for Mr. Trump, who are many types of people. And this was a shock, simplistic models that Latinos shouldn't be voting for Trump. That doesn't work.
And in particular, when there have been gains in workers' rights, In gender equality, and in racial equality or emancipation. Those are the times when the strongmen comes up and Mussolini called fascism a revolution of reaction. And that's very important even to understanding America today. You disrupt everything.
Something has to happen to reverse this terrible progress, which is making me lose out. And so that's the pattern. And we were well suited for that from the very beginning. 2016 onward. BEN-GHIAT: It is, because the nature of our society is far more complex. We're a multi faith, multi racial society. However, the principle that the most successful strongmen have often been people who have a background in mass communications or marketing, and they make themselves into the everyman.
It occurs to me, though, that the folks watching MSNBC, and I suppose you could even argue listening to this show right now, may be predisposed to nodding in agreement about their concerns regarding a Trump presidency. Have you ever been invited by, I don't know, places like Fox News, to speak? And so they can go back further and retrench, when they're just beginning to realize that perhaps things are not as they seemed to them. And so we have to use love and kindness and understanding. And these are things we can do at the individual level, at the community level. There's really a lot of potential for faith leaders who have very disparate congregations.
Like, how do they deal with the fact that Trump is a convicted felon? It's not that they don't know it. It's just they don't, it's not high salience to them. It's not important to them. They just, it floated by them at some point, which is part of this information environment issue, is they're not digging deep on a lot of this stuff.
And he said, if you vote and then you pass away, it will be worth it. Who is it worth it to? Not them, not their families, to him, because authoritarians have a strictly use and discard philosophy of life. It's very bleak. And so they're not listening to, their filtering out, because it's upsetting to think that the person you spend so much time being devoted to doesn't care about you. So that's part of the problem.
Certainly, the DOJ is just rigged. Then the idea that somebody is a convicted felon lands differently. It's not a big deal, because none of it, these people aren't serious. They're just partisan hacks. And Trump has been very skillful, even with that, when he gave that speech to evangelical Christians, who are one of his biggest voting blocs, and he said, my dear Christians, you'll never have to vote again after this election, that appeals to people. I have quotes in my book with people from all over the world who are very happy to let the strongmen decide, because he knows best, and he will solve their everyday problems.
Things are bad. I will fix it. I alone, as you've said. And I think that sense of uncertainty in the future, regardless of what your skin color is, or your ethnicity is, in this country, is a key factor. And she didn't. She said, I agree. And so this fascism, the maximum height of this discourse about Trump is a threat, dominated the very end of the campaign. And that was not fruitful. And I myself rarely call Trump a fascist. I use the word authoritarian, and we can get into why that is.
And so that wasn't wrong. It's just, it shouldn't have been the only message, because what we really, to bring together a couple of threads, democracy has been seen as insufficient, as dispiriting, because it has led to gross inequality.
Everything that's going bad, everyone that's oppressed, quote-unquote, is being oppressed by white men. And DEI and all these things that are meant to lower the amount of white men in any sphere are things that Trump ran on. I would say that the election points to the fact that we're not as divided as we might have thought.
But when this was pointed out, said that it's not about his personal life, it's what he's done for these causes. And that is actually accurate in terms of authoritarian history, past and present, because they make these, they're called authoritarian bargains. And one of the most important is with faith institutions.
CHAKRABARTI: So let's talk then more about what president-elect Trump may accomplish in his next presidency. BEN-GHIAT: Meghna, you forgot that he authored a children's book that is a fable about him as a warrior who defeats the evil Queen Hillary and saves King Donald.CHAKRABARTI: I also didn't mention that on January 6th, he was in the Pentagon, right? He had just been put there when Donald Trump had removed the secretary of defense and put in the acting secretary, and he was there. And what was part of the, I think, mass confusion is a very generous way of putting it.
He stands for loyalty to the leader, King Donald and being willing to do anything, no matter if it's not legal, to help him in his goals. And that is the main, if you think about all the various and sundry people who have been nominated, that is what they have in common. And we're hearing so many analyses that talk about them as absolutely not qualified, even on a personal conduct level.
He's the one who loves his country more than Journalists, unelected government officials, what have you. They're not, he and folks like him are not saying, Oh no, we're not loyal to America, we're loyal to Trump. They're claiming that their actions, in fact, are in the best interest of this country, and that is by definition the demonstration of their patriotism, and anyone else who does not feel or behave in that way is the un-American patriot, anti-patriot.
And they will become patriots, and they've already become patriots in Trump's campaign. There's a January 6th prison choir and that sacralizes violence. This is very similar to early fascism, actually, I don't want to, I'm not trying to label it fascist. It's just very early, very similar to the sanctification of violence and law breaking, which becomes patriotism in the new order.
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