Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in the latest edition of her “Lucid” email newsletter, examined how both former President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin often publicly humiliate even their allies to retain control.
Recent examples include the four-times-indicted Trump’s onstage mockery of Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), and Putin’s mid-interview taunting of former Fox Newspersonality Tucker Carlson.
“These two episodes introduce us to a favorite strongman sport: ritual humiliation,” wrote Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University and the author of the 2021 book “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.”
“Autocrats are fragile and insecure creatures who are always looking over their shoulder to see who is after them,” she explained. “To build themselves up and deter others from challenging their power, they take others down in public, letting them know exactly where they stand and how much they scorn them.”
Ben-Ghiat has long warned of what may happen if Trump wins back the White House in November as a rematch of the 2020 election between Trump and President Joe Biden becomes increasingly likely.
Trump, who is the clear GOP front-runner despite his myriad legal woes, will seek to finish the job of “not just destroying democracy internally” but by also removing America from “the realm of democratic internationalism and align it with autocracies,” the professor last year said she feared.
The GOP, meanwhile, is “an autocratic party operating in a democracy,” she added on another occasion. “They have talking points just like the Kremlin does, and we have seen everybody use the same language about the weaponization of government.”
Putin has said he’d prefer Biden to stay in the White House because he’s a “more predictable” president.
Trump interpreted Putin’s comment as “a great compliment.”
