STRONGMENMussolini to the PresentBy Ruth Ben-GhiatEver since the 2016 election, observers like Timothy Snyder, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt speculated that Donald Trump could undermine American democracy and move the country in an overtly authoritarian direction. That possibility grew more plausible over the years of the Trump administration, as he sought to undermine a growing list of American institutions that stood in his way, including the intelligence community, the F.B.I. Trump made his authoritarian instincts clear by refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the 2020 election. Unfortunately, Ben-Ghiat provides no conceptual framework for distinguishing between different types of strongmen, and gives us very little insight into Donald Trump beyond what is already widely known. What sense does it make to put Silvio Berlusconi in the same category as Muammar Qaddafi or Saddam Hussein?

Source: New York Times November 10, 2020 18:00 UTC