"Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present"
Bribe, Swindle or Steal
Alexandra Addison-Wrage of TRACE International
4.9 • 582 Ratings
🗓️ 4 January 2023
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins the podcast to discuss her book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, which examines 100 years of authoritarian rule. She describes the characteristics of a strongman and the strange virility cult surrounding these leaders before turning to the central role of corruption in the autocrat's playbook.
(This episode was originally published in November 2021.)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the podcast, bribes, swindle, or steel. I'm Alexander Rogi, and today I'm speaking with Ruth Ben-Giatt. Ruth is a professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and the author of Strong Men from Mussolini to the present, which examines 100 years of authoritarian rule. |
| 0:23.6 | She writes and speaks frequently on major media outlets |
| 0:26.6 | on threats to democracy around the world. |
| 0:28.6 | Ruth, thank you for joining me. |
| 0:30.6 | Thanks for having me on. |
| 0:32.6 | To frame this very large conversation, |
| 0:34.6 | can you walk us through at a high level your definition of a strong man? |
| 0:40.3 | What are the characteristics that you argue they have in common? |
| 0:44.7 | Strong men is a, I see them as a subset of authoritarian. And all authoritarian use this kind of |
| 0:51.2 | playbook, tools of rules that include propaganda, corruption, violence, |
| 0:57.8 | myth of national greatness. And the strong men also use machismo or virility, as I call it in the book. |
| 1:05.7 | So there are a subset of authoritarian who really make this kind of macho lawlessness central to their popular appeal. |
| 1:14.9 | They sometimes use their bodies as Putin who strips his shirt off in the Mussolini tradition. |
| 1:21.2 | But it's this machismo connects to all of the other tools. |
| 1:26.4 | And these are the central characteristics of the strong men. |
| 1:29.3 | Before we go on, because I want to circle back and talk about the virility aspect. It's a very strong theme through the book. But if we could digress for just a moment, you addressed this very early on in the book, but I think it's an important distinction. Why did you decide not to include nominally communist leaders |
| 1:46.1 | like Castro and Xi, for example? Many communists fit the mold of the strong men, but I was |
| 1:53.6 | interested in people who wrecked a democracy. Somebody like the leader of China, you know, |
| 2:00.5 | basically the system was already a closed |
| 2:02.4 | system and then they come in. And I wanted to look at system change. So for the most part, |
| 2:08.1 | they may come through fascist takeovers or military coups. Today they get to power by elections, |
| 2:14.2 | but I wanted to look at people who changed a political system for the most part. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Alexandra Addison-Wrage of TRACE International, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Alexandra Addison-Wrage of TRACE International and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.