MARY:
Hello everybody. It’s Mary Trump here with the great Ruth Ben-Ghiat and, luckily for me, my friend. Hi Ruth, how are you?
RUTH:
Hi Mary. I’m really glad to be in conversation.
MARY:
Especially as we are ending what has been what feels like perhaps the longest year we’ve lived through. Does that seem about right to you?
RUTH:
Oh, yeah. Every week is like a month. Every month is like a year and that’s by design. It’s like we don’t even have time to recover from each thing. They hit us with something else. Plus there are all the good things happening with protests and building resistance movement. So, there’s a lot going on I think it’s safe to say.
MARY:
Let’s start there for a second—they want us to be buried under by this endless stream of chaos, and we need to stay grounded when the things that are happening are objectively awful and need to be taken seriously. What’s the antidote to that if there is one?
RUTH:
Personally, I’m helped by being able to recognize that some of this is a playbook that others have used, including others who have come and gone. And that’s what I try to communicate to people. But yes, I think it’s important to know how much news and which news is good for you and when it’s counterproductive. And these are times that test us individually, test our courage and test our resilience, but also allow us to get to know ourselves better. Maybe we shouldn’t look at the news all the time. Maybe that’s not good for us.
MARY:
One thing that’s been happening with alarming frequency since January 20th since Donald has been unbound by the corrupt illegitimate super-majority of the Supreme Court and an entirely complacent Republican Congress that seems perfectly willing to abdicate its own constitutional responsibilities, is Donald has been trying with the use of American taxpayer money, to remake this country in his image, both literally and metaphorically.
In the last month alone, he’s renamed the Institute of Peace, the Donald Trump Institute of Peace, which is a particular kick in the teeth, considering it was taken over by armed guards. He’s renamed the Kennedy Center and he continues to build a now $400 million ballroom, which he just admitted is a monument to him. Plus we have the arc of Trump to look forward to.
On the one hand, I think that is just more reason to mock him and how pathetic and needy he is, but there are also very real-world consequences. I wanted to hear what you had to say about that aspect of it.
RUTH:
We are living through all of these things you mentioned that are part of the construction of a personality cult. And his huge picture on the outside of the Department of Labor, the other pictures of him, his name everywhere, this is what dictators do so that people can never forget about them. People think that the dictator’s always watching them. He’s omnipresent, he’s everywhere, and he’s all powerful.
The other part I found interesting with the Kennedy Center renaming is that in my work, and I write about this in my book, Strongmen, and it’s like it’s coming to life yet again, because they’re so insecure, these strong men have to vanquish those who have come before them. So any leader who in their country’s history might have been more popular or more charismatic or more handsome has to be erased or demeaned.
Kennedy cannot stand; it has to be [Donald] who is replacing Kennedy. And we all know how he keeps up his campaign against Obama. This is typical of what this kind of leader does. Everything has to be about them and they’re the only heroes who can exist in the universe.
MARY:
I think for Donald, that’s obviously because he’s not a hero and he’s characterologically incapable of being one. He’s had opportunities; he had an opportunity during COVID, as a matter of fact, to do that. And he did exactly the opposite and got a lot of us killed. But another thing I’ve been curious about this and have wanted to ask you about for a while, because it’s not simply that Donald is flooding all of our spaces with his image or remaking them in his image.
But then there’s a flooding of the zone with a particular kind of culture. For many years, Republicans have reviled the left for allegedly forcing our elitism down their throats. What Donald and the Trump regime are doing is remaking everything in the image of WWE or ultimate fighting or monster trucks. I want to read you a quote from John F. Kennedy, which I think is etched on the facade of the Kennedy Center: “I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty in America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft.” That’s exactly the opposite of the Trump regime’s agenda.
RUTH:
[Donald] is a master of propaganda, and every strongman uses the state-of-the-art tools that he has. It could be news reels from Mussolini or radio for Hitler and social media for [Donald], but one of the twists that he’s brought to the strongman formula is this marriage of celebrity reality TV, not high culture, not art films, but real popular culture. And that’s been part of his persona since the start, as you mentioned, with wrestling, with reality TV. And so he’s, in a way, people could say he’s cheapened the brand of the presidency. Also, by becoming a vendor, there are corruption issues. He always had Trump wine, and when he first ran for office, he posed with his Trump steaks.
That has cheapened the brand and changed the presidency and made it more of a commercial enterprise, which is what authoritarians do. The presidency and the chief executive office are for sale. If you’ve been there long enough, like a Putin, it becomes a kleptocracy where the whole state machinery is about enriching you personally and your cronies.
I’ve lost count because it’s revised upwards every week, how much money, not just [Donald] personally, but also Trump businesses and thus his family, and the family of the commerce secretary. What you get is called the inner sanctum. Some of these people are cabinet ministers, like the Secretary of Commerce, and some are hangers-on or family members, the Witkoffs, the Kushners, and all of them have to make deals and make money from the leader being in office. The dynamics that are unfolding in the United States are exactly what’s happened in Hungary, in Turkey, of course, in Russia and other places.
MARY:
I want to shift gears in a second, but are you surprised at all by the almost total capitulation of any institutions and/or individuals in the Republican Party? There seems to be no pushback whatsoever.
RUTH:
I’m not surprised about the party because [Donald] and company used their power when they were out of office brilliantly to complete the domestication of the Republican Party. And the main thing they did was January 6th, which left Republican members of Congress running for their lives. And one of the saddest things is that this was traumatic for everyone there and some people, certainly Mike Pence, but others missed their appointment with violence by only 30 or 60 seconds. You don’t forget something like that. And yet [Donald] required them to forget their trauma, to bury it, and to proclaim that day as a patriotic day. Psychologically, that was such a shock that nobody’s allowed to talk about, that and other things like his criminal trial when everybody, like Matt Gaetz, came, dressed as [Donald] to cheer him on. There were all these occasions by the time he got back to office, the party was completely domesticated.
What I’ve been more surprised by is people like Tim Cook, people who have the means and the power just on their own, but certainly along with others at their level to oppose [Donald] and to make a difference in saving our democracy. Instead, all of them decided to fold and become collaborators and give him trophies and presents. That’s very dispiriting because they don’t have to do this. They actually have the power and the means not to do it.
MARY:
I think it’s also fair to say that by capitulating the way they have, instead of joining together and creating a united force against this corrupt autocratic government, it increases the size of the target of the backs of people who fight back even though they don’t have power and resources.
RUTH:
That’s the tragedy, but that’s the kind of “making an example of” that autocrats do. If one folds or they get one to become corrupted, it’s an example that others better do it too, or look what can happen to you.
MARY:
I want to shift gears and talk about a document that was released by the Trump regime a couple of weeks ago, the National Security Strategy. It’s essentially meant to identify the bad actors, the people from whom we need to protect ourselves, to explain we need to protect ourselves from them, which the resources we need to deploy, etc. And yet, Ruth, this was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
Could you talk a little bit about how suddenly it seems that China, Russia, North Korea and Iran and others that used to be at the top of the list of bad actors seem not to exist in the world anymore as far as the Trump regime is concerned, not threats we need to pay attention to. And suddenly it appears that our main problem is European liberal democracy and the EU.
RUTH:
This has been coming for a while. In fact, in June 2024, when [Donald] was campaigning, he gave a speech in which he said, “If you have a smart president, they are not going to be your enemies. You’re going to make them do great.” And he was referring to Russia, China, and North Korea. And that’s what he’s doing. A mandate of his administration is to solve Putin’s problems, and insert the America into this axis of autocracy. A lot of things that have gone on are to that end. I’m a scholar of autocracy, so I try to think the way they do. And if you think that way, a huge problem is the powerful US military.
How are you going to dominate the world when you’ve got the U.S. military everywhere? Well, in comes [Donald] who says, “Well, we’re going to shift the priority of the U.S. military. We’re going to reduce its footprint. We’re going to reduce our science and research and soft and hard power; we’re going to focus on the Americas, which I also predicted. That way, Putin can have Europe and Eurasia and Xi can do what he needs to do in Asia and we will no longer act as a deterrent to autocracy. That’s the underlying thing about this document. When Hegseth and [Donald] renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War, that was my first thought: It’s not going to be defending democracy anymore. It’s going to wage war on democracy.
MARY:
Yes. That just sent chills down my spine, even though I’ve read the document and commentary about it. James Rubin, who’s the former head of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, referred to this document as “a unilateral act of disarmament.” There’s one sentence in the NSS that’ s a tell:
We seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other societal change.
So, democracy be damned, essentially.
RUTH:
What’s interesting is that you can make change by actively supporting certain causes, but you can also prompt change by deciding to stand back and roll back. And that’s what the Trump administration has done. They just roll back the commitment to defend democracy. They roll back the commitment to humanitarian assistance. That’s why Musk was allowed to destroy USAID. It’s a holistic plan to destroy any kind of American influence that brought goodwill—not just democracy, but humanitarianism, science, brilliant medical research. That whole footprint of America has to be destroyed. That alone is a lot to take in. Yes, they’re chaos agents. Yes, [Donald] can’t string together two sentences sometimes, but he has people like Stephen Miller and others who do have a design, and that’s why it’s working across disciplines in a quite coordinated fashion.
MARY:
You mentioned earlier that the people behind the scenes had been working diligently on this project throughout the time Biden was in office, domesticating the Republican Party and writing their fascist manifesto Project 2025, which has mostly been implemented. I don’t really believe in fate, but there are times I think, “Why is it that the worst possible person on the planet is in charge during a global pandemic? Why is it that the people who do have an agenda and an ideology like Stephen Miller and others, like the Peter Thiels of the world, are able to achieve their goals?”
I think the only way they could have gotten it done is with a leader like Donald greenlighting all of it. How do we educate the American people so they understand that it actually does matter who you vote for. It actually does matter that, just because somebody shares your views or pretends they have a plan to save the economy, they’re a fascist. How do we make that connection to people? Because as long as Americans are one-issue voters, I don’t know how we turn this around.
RUTH:
That’s a hard one. It’s easy to think that there’s nothing we can do against these billionaires. And that was part of the psychological warfare of having Musk be like a co-president. It was easy to kind of think, “Well, there’s nothing I can do. I’m not a billionaire.” But they’re only there because Americans voted in [Donald] and company. Sometimes people write to me and ask, “Why do you keep talking about voting? You can’t vote your way out of fascism.” And I always push back, because we still have elections. One of the principles of resistance is that you use all the tools and spaces you have while you have them.
Many places don’t have functioning elections anymore. Look at the wins that we’ve been having; each win tells us that it matters what we each do. Trying to connect the dots for people is challenging, but that’s the way to go so that they understand that there is this worldview and it’s all connected. It’s only by making a change and maybe getting out of their comfort zone in terms of voting or other things that this will be defeated.
MARY:
I like that. Use every tool at your disposal and never, never give up in advance because you’re right, this is still a democracy, if a very weakened one. We still have the franchise and we’d better use it. As you mentioned, this year people have been showing up and it’s made a difference. All the more reason for us heading into 2026 to fortify ourselves.
Thank you, again, everybody for joining us. Ruth’s Substack is called Lucid. It is essential reading as is her brilliant book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present. Subscribe to Lucid, pick up a copy of Strongmen.
Both personally and professionally, Ruth is one of those people who has helped me tremendously since I arrived on the scene in 2020. I value you, I value your work tremendously, and I consider you an essential voice for our time. So thanks for hanging out and spending time, and I hope you have a most wonderful holiday, and I hope you get some downtime.
RUTH:
Me too. And I feel the same, Mary. Thank you so much.
