Book Review: Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present by Ruth Ben-Ghiat

Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present is a sweeping and impassioned examination of authoritarian leadership across the past century. With a focus on male autocrats from Benito Mussolini to Donald Trump, Ben-Ghiat weaves a narrative that explores how strongmen rise to power, consolidate it through violence, propaganda, and virility, and how they ultimately lose their grip, sometimes violently, often tragically. This work is especially relevant in a global political landscape marked by a resurgence of populist nationalism, democratic backsliding, and personality cults.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present in Review

Strongmen's Strengths: Intellectual Cohesion and Relevance

Ben-Ghiat’s most substantial contribution lies in the coherence of her “authoritarian playbook,” identifying recurring traits, personalist rule, misogyny, corruption, media control, and the fusion of masculinity with political legitimacy that echo across regimes as disparate as Francoist Spain and Gaddafi’s Libya. Her multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on political science, gender studies, visual culture, and history, offers an unusually rich analytical framework. She excels in illustrating the psychological and cultural underpinnings of autocracy, such as the symbolic power of virility and the weaponization of nostalgia, trauma, and fear.

The narrative is compelling and accessible, balancing historical depth and urgent contemporary commentary. Her chapters on the rise of Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump, whom she sees as innovators in fusing media power with authoritarian ambition, are particularly insightful. She also excels at drawing illuminating comparisons, such as between Mussolini’s and Putin’s shirtless displays of masculinity or between Hitler’s and Trump’s mastery of public grievance.

Strongmen - Weaknesses: Analytical Limitations and Ideological Framing

However, her book Strongmen also has notable shortcomings. First, while Ben-Ghiat’s analysis is lucid and well-researched, it can sometimes be ideologically rigid. The criteria for qualifying as a "strongman" seem flexible sometimes, but the ideological lens is not. Her exclusion of communist autocrats like Xi Jinping because they took power in “already-closed systems” creates a skewed comparative base that sidelines other significant authoritarian experiences.

Second, the narrative’s focus on personal evil occasionally eclipses structural analysis. Economic, institutional, and cultural conditions that enable authoritarianism are underexplored in favor of individual pathology. There is also a lack of engagement with conservative or centrist critiques of liberalism that some of these leaders exploit to gain power, leaving the book somewhat insular in its worldview.

Finally, while Ben-Ghiat is undoubtedly passionate, this often comes at the cost of nuance. Figures like Berlusconi and Trump are analyzed through the same lens as murderous dictators like Hitler and Gaddafi, which may obscure critical distinctions in regime type, violence, and scale of repression.

Comparative Perspective

Strongmen stands apart from Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works and Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny by offering more historical depth and a broader international canvas. Where Stanley is theoretical and Snyder aphoristic, Ben-Ghiat provides narrative history grounded in case studies. Compared to Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy, which focuses on intellectual enablers, Ben-Ghiat’s attention remains on the men in charge and the mechanisms of their rule.

Broader Implications

Ruth Ben-Ghiat's most significant contribution in her book may be its insistence that authoritarianism is not a relic of the 20th century but a recurring syndrome, adaptable to digital media, democratic frameworks, and capitalist economies. In identifying “strongman rule” as a transhistorical pattern rather than a specific ideology, she warns that no democracy is immune. However, her tone may not resonate with readers seeking detached or pluralistic analyses; it is a work of alarm more than one of dispassion.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat's Strongmen - Final Verdict

Strongmen by Ruth Ben-Ghiat is an urgent, articulate, and well-researched study of authoritarianism’s modern incarnations. It is indispensable for readers to understand the emotional and cultural dynamics behind strongman politics, though those looking for ideological balance or structural analysis may find it wanting. Scholars, activists, and concerned citizens will find it a valuable resource, even if its rhetorical tone narrows its interpretive reach.

⭐⭐⭐½☆ Rating: 3.5 / 5

Pros: Intellectually coherent, engagingly personal, strong on ideological background

Cons: Limited critique, narrow scope, lacks engagement with opposing views

Recommended for: Historians, political scientists, liberal democracy advocates, cultural theorists, and readers interested in authoritarian psychology

Reservations: Not suited for readers seeking ideological plurality, structural economic analysis, or nuanced distinctions among different forms of autocracy