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   From: patriot1@protonmail.com   
      
   The Trump Ideology Cult Is Collapsing Under The Weight Of Its Own   
   Absurdity   
      
    The One Way History Shows Trump’s Personality Cult Will End   
      
   An expert on autocracy assesses how far America has slipped away from   
   democracy, and what it will take to get it back.   
   Illustration featuring Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis over a background   
   image of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol   
      
   By Michael Kruse   
      
   04/16/2022 07:00 AM EDT   
      
   Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer at POLITICO and POLITICO Magazine.   
      
   In the summer of 2020, Ruth Ben-Ghiat was putting the final touches on her   
   history of modern autocracy. She had to do it, though, without the benefit   
   of knowing whether one of her most important subjects would remain in   
   power come November.   
      
   But she wasn’t exactly in the dark either.   
      
   She had seen enough of Donald Trump’s behavior over the preceding five   
   years to know how neatly he lined up with other strongmen she had studied   
   and how his autocratic tendencies would influence his behavior whether he   
   won or lost.   
      
   “I just predicted that he wouldn’t leave in a quiet manner,” Ben-Ghiat, a   
   professor of history and Italian studies at New York University told me   
   recently. “He’s an authoritarian, and they can’t leave office. They don’t   
   have good endings and they don’t leave properly.”   
      
   Nearly two years later — after a riot, an impeachment, and a monomaniacal   
   campaign to punish the Republicans who tried to hold him accountable —   
   Ben-Ghiat has ample proof of her thesis. And she professes even more   
   concern that Trump’s sway over the GOP has permanently transformed the   
   party’s political culture. “He’s changed the party to an authoritarian   
   party culture,” she told me. “So not only do you go after external   
   enemies, but you go after internal enemies. You’re not allowed to have any   
   dissent.”   
      
   With the midterms and some key governors races approaching, Ben-Ghiat is   
   looking around the corner again. She sees dangerous signs of autocracy   
   seeping into state houses and governors’ mansions where leaders such as   
   Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are executing policies and enacting laws that   
   mimic Trump but with a smoother, less bombastic style.   
      
   She insists her urgent warnings should not be construed as fatalism.   
   Throughout our interview she leavened her direst predictions with a   
   pragmatic if not sunny optimism. Political violence is more likely than an   
   actual civil war; a Republican takeover in November would be catastrophic   
   but she remains heartened by the ability of American voters to “interrupt   
   an autocratic personality who’s in the middle of his project;” and ballot   
   box victories alone don’t stop autocrats but the law can. “It takes   
   prosecution and conviction to deflate their personality cults,” Ben-Ghiat   
   said. “That’s what it takes.”   
      
   This interview has been edited for length and clarity.   
   Portrait of Ruth Ben-Ghiat   
      
   Autocracy expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat believes that while America remains a   
   democracy on the national level, the system has been eroded particularly   
   at a state level. | Erin Baiano   
      
   Michael Kruse: We’re coming up on seven years since Donald Trump came down   
   the escalator at Trump Tower and announced he was running for president.   
   I’m wondering where in your estimation we are in this country in the   
   timeline of increasing authoritarianism.   
      
   Ruth Ben-Ghiat: When somebody like Trump comes on the scene and holds   
   office, it’s really like an earthquake or a volcano, and it shakes up the   
   whole system by gathering in this big tent all the extremists, all the   
   far-right people, and giving them legitimation. The GOP was already going   
   away from a democratic political culture, but he accelerated it and   
   normalized extremism and normalized lawlessness. And so the GOP over these   
   years has truly, in my estimation, become an authoritarian far-right   
   party. And the other big story is that his agenda and his methods are   
   being continued at the state level. Some of these things were on the   
   agenda way before he came in, like getting rid of abortion rights and   
   stuff like that. But these states are really laboratories of autocracy   
   now, like Florida, Texas.   
      
   The final thing I’d say is machismo [is] up there as a tool of rule   
   alongside propaganda and corruption. Getting ahead as a man [in this   
   political system] means being more like Trump. And so you saw Mike Pompeo,   
   who started talking about “swagger” and he was a very different kind of   
   State Department head. And now you have people like Ron DeSantis who even   
   absorbed the hand gestures of Trump. And so at the elite level, the   
   political system is shaped by Trump, and every day we see his legacy.   
      
   Kruse: What would you say to those in this country who say, “No, the   
   Republicans aren’t the autocrats. It’s the Democrats who are the   
   autocrats. It’s Joe Biden. It’s other Democrats with power who are making   
   us wear masks or take vaccines we don’t want to take. They’re the ones who   
   are behaving more in autocratic ways, not the Republicans.”   
      
   Ben-Ghiat: One of the big talking points and strategy of right-wing   
   authoritarianism, is to label democratic systems as tyrannical. Mussolini   
   was the first to say that democracies are tyrannical, democracies are the   
   problem. And there’s a whole century’s worth of the strategy of calling   
   sitting Democrats, who you want to overthrow, dictators. Biden as a social   
   dictator, [is] a phony talking point. It has so many articulations from   
   “They’re forcing us to wear masks.” And you have people like DeSantis who   
   are doing this very subversive thing of saying, “Florida’s the free state.   
   You can have refuge from the dictatorship of Biden here.” And what this is   
   designed to do is discredit the sitting democratic administration in order   
   to create, a myth of freedom. January 6 was actually marketed as the   
   violence [being] in the service of freedom, and you were overthrowing a   
   dictator.   
      
   Kruse: Where is Trump in his own timeline? Is he in your estimation   
   getting weaker, getting stronger, in a holding pattern?   
      
   Ben-Ghiat: The genius of the “big lie” was not only that it sparked a   
   movement that ended up with January 6 to physically allow him to stay in   
   office. But psychologically the “big lie” was very important because it   
   prevented his propagandized followers from having to reckon with the fact   
   that he lost. And it maintains him as their hero, as their winner, as the   
   invincible Trump, but also as the wronged Trump, the victim. Victimhood is   
   extremely important for all autocrats. They always have to be the biggest   
   victim.   
      
   So the “big lie” maintained Trump’s personality cult versus seeing him as   
   just another president who was voted out of office. Americans   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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