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Post by the Scribe on Jan 16, 2021 9:48:28 GMT
 www.youtube.com/user/sefarad2Why I Wrote Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present
19 views•Nov 28, 2020
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
26 subscribers
I wrote Strongmen as an attempt by an American to understand what the heck happened to us under Trump: it's the first book to place Trump's presidency in the context of a century of authoritarian history.
I also wanted to bust some myths about authoritarianism, namely, that it's been an efficient and productive "good for business" political system. I show instead that it's been the cause of chaos and destruction and so much human loss and waste of capital resources for a century around the globe.
I have a chapter on Resistance, and in it I tell the stories of people who pushed back against strongmen at great cost, so many lost their lives. I interviewed people who survived these regimes in Chile, Libya, and elsewhere, and some tell their stories for the first time. |
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Post by the Scribe on Jan 16, 2021 9:50:53 GMT
"Strongmen" Book Talk with Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Jason Stanley
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Post by the Scribe on Jan 16, 2021 9:52:59 GMT
Strongman in the USA - Ruth Ben-Ghiat | The Open Mind
cunytv75
33.8K subscribers
Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat discusses Trump’s defiance of the 2020 election results and the authoritarian playbook.
Taped: 11/9/2020.
Aired: 12/6/20
Premiered in May 1956, Open Mind was created and hosted by Richard D. Heffner, American historian, broadcaster, and University Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Fifty years after its first broadcast, Open Mind continues with a new host, Mr. Heffner's grandson, Alexander Heffner. Open Mind as a weekly public affairs program was designed to elicit guests' most meaningful insights into the challenges Americans face in a variety of contemporary areas of national concern.
Watch more The Open Mind at CUNY TV tv.cuny.edu/show/openmind |
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Post by the Scribe on Jan 16, 2021 9:53:37 GMT
It's not just historians who call Trump's fiction that he won the election the Big Lie. Republicans in Congress amplified Trump's falsehood. Conservative media (propaganda machine) is also behind these lies. They're all part of The Big Lie. The term originated in Nazi Germany, embodied in Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels and the great lie - you keep repeating the lie, repeating the lie. Hitler used the phrase Big Lie in his manifesto, "Mein Kampf." The Nazis' Big Lie, blaming Jews for everything wrong in the world, fueled anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Trump is the high priest of the Big Lie. And Trump has been our post-truth president.
When you take away facts, you're opening the way for something else. You're opening the way for someone who says, I am the truth. "I am your voice," to quote Mr. Trump. Which is something that fascists said, as a matter of fact. The three-word chants. Lock her up. Lock her up. Lock them all up. The idea that the press are the enemy of the people is also part of the big lie.
The Big Lie's roots are in Nazi Germany. Trump's claim that he won the 2020 election is a colossal falsehood meant to subvert the transfer of presidential power and to incite violence. This is clearly a lie on a large scale that was meant to have political consequences and was also intended to pit one group of people within society against another. Trump has told so many falsehoods that he has effectively normalized lying. And he's taken his cues from the autocrats he publicly admires.
Trump's use of the Big Lie comes from an age-old authoritarian playbook. It's part of a much larger discourse of throwing any mechanism of democracy, any democratic institution into doubt. While Trump will soon be gone from the White House he's also going to carry his victimhood cult with him, which will be stronger than ever. So we haven't seen the last of those lies and the pernicious effects they're going to have on our democracy.
THE LIE WILL OUTLAST THE LIAR!
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