Can We Vote Our Way Out of This? : A Conversation with Authoritarian Expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat

The PoliticsGirl Podcast

MeidasTouch Network, Leigh McGowan

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.9 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2026

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ruth Ben Ghiat reminds us that unless we want America to become a white, christian ethno-state, we need to be engaging now. Now is the best time as the administration sets everything on fire and people start to feel the pain. According to Ruth, we’re actually ahead of the curve in terms of resistance, so we need ramp it up, if anything overcompensate with positive action. Autocrats want us to feel helpless and hopeless, but we’re not. Getting out of this mess is going to be an uphill battle, but it’s not a lost cause. In fact, if we play our cards right, we might even be able to build something way better than we had before. As always, if you find worth in what we do, please consider SUBSCRIBING to PoliticsGirl Premium. You’ll get this podcast ad free, along with a bunch of other perks, like the rants directly to your inbox and the knowledge that you’re making this kind of highly researched, factual information possible. If that interests you, please go to https://www.politicsgirl.com/premium and subscribe today!! Thank you so much! xoPG Guest social: Website: https://ruthbenghiat.com As always, please RATE and SUBSCRIBE so we can grow the show, open the dialogue, and inspire change moving forward! All show links here!: https://linktr.ee/politicsgirl This episode is sponsored by… iQBar: TEXT PG to 64000 https://Quince.com/politicsgirl https://SundaysForDogs.com/PoliticsGirl50 code: politicsgirl50 https://laundrysauce.com code: politicsgirl20

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	We all know somebody who probably doesn't vote or never voted.
0:03.3	We have comparatively a quite high number of people who don't vote for a democracy.
0:09.2	Well, guess what?
0:09.9	It's time to have conversations with those people and get them to vote.
0:27.5	Hello, and welcome to the Politics Girl podcast. I'm your host Lee McGowan. Let's get into it.
0:38.4	Well, I'm not sure if you watched that travesty in China last week, but I'm sure you saw what the Supreme Court did to the Voting Rights Act and what the former Confederate states are doing as a result. Data centers are going up around the country against the will of the people. We're spending money hand over fist on Trump's
0:42.9	vanity projects at home and even more money abroad on an unwanted war. Our president is dropping
0:48.4	memes, presenting himself as Jesus, building a 22-foot gold statue to himself, and just letting
0:53.8	his friends and family
0:54.6	rob us blind while the Supreme Court allows him to get away with it all. With all this going on,
1:00.0	where does America sit as a democracy? Can we even call ourselves a democracy anymore with this
1:05.7	kind of leader at the helm? To help us understand the moment we're in, we're going to be talking
1:09.7	to Ruth Ben-Giatt, author of Strongman, from Mussolini to the present, a literal expert on the rise of heads of state who damage and destroy democracy and promised law and order only to legitimize lawless behavior by themselves and their inner circle.
1:24.5	A professor of history and Italian studies at NYU, Ruth is also an advisor
1:28.8	at Protect Democracy and the recipient of the Guggenheim and other fellowships, the author of the
1:33.6	lucid newsletter on Substack about abuses of power and how to counter them, and a regular columnist
1:38.8	and writer for mainstream media as an expert on authoritarianism and its threat to democracies
1:43.5	around the world.
1:44.8	So without further ado, please welcome my guest, Professor, author, and expert on authoritarianism,
1:50.1	Ruth Ben-Giott. Welcome back, Ruth. Thank you. I'm delighted to be speaking with you again.
1:55.1	Oh, thanks for coming back. Honestly, I hear people saying things these days and I'm like,
1:59.8	I should check that with Ruth. I should check that with Ruth.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 10 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from MeidasTouch Network, Leigh McGowan, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of MeidasTouch Network, Leigh McGowan and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.