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Oh, I thought this newsletter was going to be an insightful analysis of rising authoritarian attitudes throughout American institutions, which is clearly a bipartisan phenomenon to anyone paying attention, especially around the issues of free speech and censoriousness. While there is a good argument to be made that Trumpism is more traditionally authoritarian than Woke Leftism, casting BLM as a movement opposing authoritarianism, rather than a movement pushing a quasi-Marxist totalitarian agenda in the name of "equity," is intellectually dishonest or deluded.

While the authoritarian right may carry more of the traditional trappings associated with authoritarianism (like recognized leaders), the authoritarian left carries with it far more institutional and cultural power, making it at least as dangerous. You reveal your extreme bias by casting the BLM "protests" as "96% peaceful" while in the next breath characterizing the 1/6 as "riots" and a "shock event." By any objective measure (damage to property, damage to immigrant-owned small business, loss of life, uptick in violent crime, etc.), the "fiery but mostly peaceful" BLM/Antifa riots were far more destructive than the 1/6 riots. Percent of "peacefulness" is a completely meaningless, and thus propagandistic, metric. Most wars are also "mostly peaceful" by the same measure, especially long-simmering civil wars, as most people in most wars do not spend most of their time in the act of killing each other. If you took MAGA rallies over the past five years, you would also find that they are overwhelmingly peaceful, almost surely exceeding the 96% mark.

While the attack on the Capitol was disturbing, so was the months-long coordinated assault on a federal courthouse in Portland and all of the other damage and destruction during the summer of 2020. The Capitol and federal courthouses are both symbols of our constitutional democracy. To condemn an attack on one while effectively praising or at least minimizing an attack on the other is the very height of the sort of naked tribal partisanship that is exacerbating American decay and dysfunction.

This newsletter is just more partisan cheerleading from another conformist academic rallying behind the authoritarian left. Get out of your ivory tower and get to know some working class Americans in fly-over country who are fed up with decades of liberal elite urban coastal sneering and condescension and active subversion of working-class interests. You might end up with a more nuanced conception of authoritarianism and its sources and causes in contemporary America. Until then, goodbye!

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Wow your work earned the attention of a right wing troll! Congrats! 👏👏👏

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Democracies in order to survive need robust system of transparency and accountability of institutions and constant education of people on the perils of complacency

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Thank you, Dr. Ben-Ghiat, for undertaking this enterprise on Substack in service of democracy. I’m sold and a new subscriber!

In the name of being solution-oriented with clear analysis, I have a wish for more clarity in regard to the term “good crowd.” I did a cursory Internet search in case I missed something, but found no results that were informative. Is this a term in academic literature?

As is, the term “good crowd” is too generic and gives no hint of its linkage to autocratic manipulation for social control or building power. A (pre-Covid) bar owner at the end of the night could say, “We had a good crowd tonight.” I could come home from a progressive rally and tell my friends, “A good crowd turned out.”

In order not to be the intellectuals sitting in a café (wearing our masks) who see it coming but are found by historians of the future to not have stopped the replacement of democracy by autocracy, we do need clear language. Words matter. Democrats continue to be criticized for not having the effective messaging that the Republicans have been utilizing for the past 40 years since coaching by Gingrich—and continue as they undermine democratic process by perpetuating the Big Lie and barriers to voting.

Brainstorming here. Autocrats utilize:

Engineered crowd?

Manipulated crowd?

Produced for PR crowd?

Image influencing crowd?

Image controlled crowd?

And the term has two components: (1) How the crowd was assembled, and (2) For what intention and effect.

What are the parameters of a crowd? The Jan. 6 insurrection started with online organizing of a Trump rally that turned into a march to the Capitol that turned into a deadly mob. By Florida Statute § 870.02, unlawful assembly is defined as when “three or more persons meet together to commit a breach of the peace,” for which each person can be convicted of a misdemeanor.

This is not an idle exercise. We the people are the government who make our voices heard though our votes, how we spend our money, and our communications. Historically, mass rallies, protests, and marches have been a means of effecting social change, as they have also been tools for autocrats to build power. We need to be crystal clear in calling out the signs of autocracy. We need to be crystal clear in planning social actions. Identifying a problem is the first step in coming up with solutions.

We also need to broaden our perception of the term “crowd.” Exerting influence and control is not just a public assembly or physical gathering of a mass of people. How influence and control operate through media is another discussion. And that is not just contemporary social media and video chats, but tracks through the history of pre-literate storytelling, the artwork and stained glass windows of churches and cathedrals, print media (newsletter/newspaper/book/magazine readership), radio, television, and today’s Internet.

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Group hatred is at the heart of creating a bad crowd, as you say about Trump and Black Lives Matter. Can be racism in US, as well as India. Or more around virility and homophobia, as in Philippines and Uganda.

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Lynn Roundtree22 min ago

I’m always anxious for your work to reach wide and far. It’s so important, and your presence & style links so nicely to Heather Cox Wilkerson’s work. I become better educated w/o a lot of outrage. These times are so difficult as it is, and I really appreciate what you’re doing. Thank you.

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Another very insightful piece from Ruth. It’s all about optics...Many Republican supporters said and thought Trump crowds good ...BLM crowds bad. I fear for the next five to seven years in the USA. While Biden manages to get many things accomplished, the Republicans are making all kinds of power moves. It won’t surprise me that the combination of voter suppression, Fox News and Facebook will create total chaos. Americans will soon discover that it can indeed happen here.

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Your essay reminded me of J.M. Post's description of the charismatic leader/follower relationship. "The sense of grandiose omnipotence of the leader is especially appealing to his needy follower. A hallmark of the destructive charismatic leader is absolutist polarizing rhetoric, drawing his followers together against the outside enemy."

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Very nicely written essay. How does this end?

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Are you hopeful or depressed? I mean that sincerely. Your book Strongmen and subsequent efforts to mobilize the public feels like the intellectuals in Europe who sat in coffee shops seeing this coming years and decades ahead of time and most didn't listen. My husband's beloved uncle was a history professor, black history professor and college president who died 4 years ago. I loved talking with him. He was dismissed by many. But, a decade ago he spoke about the current day exactly as it's unfolding. My husband and I went to Turkey and stayed with a dear friend in Istanbul in 2011. I remember being somewhat detached as she 'grumbled' about what was unfolding then with Erdogan's rise. It almost seems as if democracies inevitably die, because most don't heed the warnings, no matter how broadly they are shared. I literally follow you and 4 others who seem to be warning us all. The larger public seems checked out or relieved about the new administration. Media is back to both sides. The Republicans are overtly broadcasting their determination for authoritarian leadership and the Democrats seem largely to want to hold to 'principle' and 'civility'. How does this get better?

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