Strongmen

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Ruth Ben-Ghiat lays bare the blueprint leaders from Mussolini to Trump have followed over the past 100 years, and empowers us to recognize, resist, and prevent their disastrous rule in the future. Authoritarian rulers promise law and order, then legitimize lawbreaking by financial, sexual, and other predators. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon, and they use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power. Vladimir Putin and Mobutu Sese Seko's kleptocracies, Augusto Pinochet's torture sites, Benito Mussolini and Muammar Gaddafi's systems of sexual exploitation, and the relentless barrage of misinformation utilized by the former Trump administration: all show how authoritarian rule, far from ensuring stability, is marked by destructive chaos. Ben-Ghiat makes vividly clear that only by seeing the strongman for what he is - and by valuing one another as he is unable to do - can we stop him, now and in the future