The Second Leadership essay

The study of Political Science is really the study of how various governments try to make the economy work for their people. At least it is in most cases. In the case of strongmen, it is the study of how various people try to make the economy work for themselves. It is in times of economic uncertainty that those who had previously held most of the power and money within a nation feel threatened by the dissemination of that power and money. These times of economic strife usually happen due to inflation which leads to poor views of the government, even if the government had nothing to do with the cause of the inflation.

These groups of power are usually made up of ethno-nationalists that decide that they need someone to prop up as they regain control of the situation. They think that they can control the person they choose, typically a charismatic man who can charm the public and tell them who to blame. Fascism started in Italy where the traditional elites chose Benito Mussolini in response to the Socialism that was spreading across Eastern Europe at the time. If Socialism took hold in Italy, the elites would lose power and money, which scared them above all else. That economic uncertainty gives room for people who seek power for its own sake, the space to pray upon people’s fears and give them someone to blame, while saying that they are the only ones who can help the besieged retain power. Our tumultuous world frightens those that are not adaptable to change, in most cases they fear it leaving them behind. Each of the strongmen that Ruth Ben Ghiat focuses on in her book of the same title has used those fears to build followings behind them that they are not bound to, but that are bound to them. Mussolini’s writings for the Il Popolo d’Italia should have been a clue to these elites of what was to come. Strongmen always seem to find their way to the top of the information dissemination machines of their times.

Starting with the media, there’s a modern phrase in the United States that describes Mussolini’s approach, “Hearts and Minds”, you must win the hearts of the people through their emotions, for fascists it is through fear of the unknown or giving people a specific minority group to fear, and then show them that this would-be leader is the only one who can protect them from what they’re afraid of. It’s a simple concept really, the strongman offers protection to the in-group and casts out the unwanted. To do this completely, it helps if the leader owns or controls the means of communication and can control what the public sees and hears. Historically this was fairly straightforward, but with the advent of the internet, the public can choose their own adventure in reality in the form of what media they choose to consume. In the case of those that uphold democracy and value diversity, the media is used to discuss problems to hopefully solve them, or to unite people of all backgrounds toward a common goal of societal good. Strongmen choose to use it to control the narrative, venerate outsiders or simply honor themselves above all others. These men use direct communication with their people, much in the same way that Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his fireside chats to help reassure the citizens of the United States that they were going to work through the Great Depression together, but fascists use this type of communication to ingratiate themselves with their people on a personal level. By not giving credit to other people in the Government, they make the people feel only gratitude towards themselves. Gaddafi would go on to do this by also plastering his face everywhere and being the sole person who was given credit for the success of his country. Meanwhile Donald Trump puts his names on buildings and was on a reality television show that made people feel like they knew him. Strongmen everywhere want to stand at the top of the pile and claim every success that has happened under them as their own. To admit that the success was made possible by the work of others would be a show of humility, that singular thing that strongmen cannot claim as their own. Humility looks weak in the media, it reads as uncertainty, and strongmen must be firm in their convictions even if they’re wrong. Another thing that strongmen do as they’re rising to power is throw themselves large rallies to talk to the people directly, which we’re seeing en masse again. They want to be able to claim their followers, show off their virility in the form of military might, and compare the size of the crowds they draw as this directly feeds their egos. Earlier in our timeline, before the advent of the internet more emphasis was placed on small gatherings to meet politicians, and to a large extent this is still true for democrat politicians on either end of the political spectrum. What we see emerging is that the more extremist candidates at lower levels of the government are starting to employ these same methods as fascism continues to spread in these uncertain economic times.

On their way to the top of the democratic structures that enable their rise to power, they consolidate their power by moving it from the legislative and judicial branches to the executive branch of their nations.This consolidation of power makes it easier for strongmen to control each rung of the governmental ladder. Often they are in search of democratically given absolute immunity to prosecution for their actions, and seek free reign to do as they please in the name of building a great nation, as it had been before the economic crises. Hitler was given immunity by Hindenburg when he was made chancellor and allowed to rule by decree. Former President Donald Trump was recently given immunity by the United States Supreme Court for actions taken while fulfilling the duties of his office. This immunity puts them above the law, and while just leaders would not seek to use this power to validate or legitimize their actions against their perceived enemies, strongmen routinely do. Partially due to their consolidation of power, they tie their own greatness to the greatness of the nation, the two are one and the same. If their people are seen as doing well in a particular area, such as literacy in Libya under Gaddafi, then they themselves are seen as successful, but if the nation should fail in an endeavor, it is the fault of the people. In modern times we call this privatizing success and socializing failure.

They employ fear to keep their military and populations in line. They give strict orders to their military and prune anyone who says anything to the contrary or tries to stand against the given orders. This tells soldiers and generals alike who is in charge, and that compliance to orders, no matter how unjust, must be given. The strongmen take away the humanity of those that they lead, and make them into supplicant cogs in their machines of destruction. By going after the minority groups that they vilify either by means of violence or deportation they are able to claim whatever wealth that the group had accrued over time and re-distribute it to their loyal followers. This would improve the lives of the loyal followers for a time and work as an incentive for them to turn a blind eye to the atrocities taking place around them. This served to help alleviate the economic hardships, but also make people more accepting of them at the same time, since their survival proved that they were doing better than the people who had disappeared. In dire situations where people are emotionally exhausted, anything that proves they’re doing better than someone else will often keep them compliant. Fear keeps people from looking too closely at any corruption taking place. It keeps them from asking questions, from standing up for themselves and others to the point where the unjust actions become normalized and people just accept the new status quo without pause. It kept people from wondering why there was so much ash in the air over the Ardens during World War 2, and people from doing more than counting the gun shots that they heard in the fields in Chile. Fear of death of oneself is chilling, but fear of death of one's loved ones is paralyzing. It keeps peoples heads down, their eyes unseeing, their ears unhearing, and hardens their hearts to those that are not part of them.

Strong men fear resistance, they fear those that inspire others to stop complying. It is in the darkness that their ability to thrive lives, and when someone shines a light into that darkness that has the ability to become a beacon they retaliate. The most difficult beacons to light are those within the physical nation, since that is the domain of the strongman, but the searchlights of those that were cast out to other nations have the ability to spark rebellion. Not all strongmen’s reign ends in rebellion, some take their own lives when their nations have failed them, some live long lives and die of old age, but that fear of rebellion haunts the footsteps of leaders who know that they might have gone a step too far, might have finally angered the group of people that they depend upon enough to warrant a change of leadership. They also fear losing aid from the international community that in many times helped them take power in the first place. Without that support, they are alone, and it is in those times that beacons within their borders light up the darkness, expose their corruption, their brutalities, and their weaknesses. There always comes a point where people decide that they are done waiting for other people to change unjust laws, written and upheld by people who want control over others. Martin Luther King Jr. warned that when the laws were unjust, it was up to good people to take action against them. There will always be someone making noise, acting as a beacon of change; if their needs are not met, they change tactics and violence usually ensues. Unfortunately Martin Luther King Jr. was not allowed to get to that point, as in typical fashion, his beacon was snuffed out. Good leaders accept their mistakes, do everything they can to correct them and work to ensure that they don’t make the same mistakes again. MLK’s mistake was in waiting for white church leaders to make noise about the injustices that they were seeing perpetrated upon black people, but as we see time and again, those that are part of the in-group rarely make noise until they become part of the out-group. Strongmen don’t have the ability to admit when they’ve made a mistake. To summarize Havel; power still held by the people, power coming up from the people. This is what scares strongmen, when the people find their collective power.

My hope is that people’s attitudes towards how they are governed and who is explicitly put into the positions of leadership continue to reflect the trends that we see in our economy.In the United States at least, during our regulated stage of capitalism from 1939 to 1991 (1973) we saw strong unions in most of our industries, unsurprisingly, citizens engaged with the government, and saw their votes and opinions as important to shaping the country that they were part of. Unions demanded transparency with their companies, keeping corruption and excess corporate profits to a minimum and led to extensive social safety nets. In this age of globalization, where we have watched high paying jobs leave the country, people feel abandoned, by their employers but also by the government that they think let those jobs move overseas. Some people lack a fundamental trust in everyone that they think is hiding something from them, creating that void of trust that was taken advantage of by someone playing by a playbook that they didn’t understand. Namely, Mussolini’s playbook, and Trump took each part of the playbook that he created, and that Hitler, Gaddafi, Franco, Pinnochett, Berlusconi, and Mbatu added to, and turned the volume up on each step so far. Then something happened that very few expected, the Covid 19 pandemic arrived. Suddenly whole companies were working remotely, as a result they started seeing the need for collaboration at all levels of their organizations. The thing is, for true collaboration, there must be transparency and each employee must take ownership of some part of the work. As a result, there’s a trend towards more bossless company structures, where your position in the company matters less than the good ideas that you may have for how to help your company succeed. Employees are becoming aware of how to use their own agency to achieve goals that they, themselves, are setting. If that translates to how they view the government, then aren’t they going to continue to demand involvement with their government that extends past rallies and voting? Are they going to become more engaged once again? It is my hope that the outcome of Donald Trump’s presidency is that our people see strongmen for the weak men/women that they are, and that they will demand more of their leaders. This needs to be resounding if we’re going to figure out how to navigate the next stage of capitalism so that our citizens have the opportunity to thrive. If fear is allowed to continue to run rampant will the beacons that rise in unison be blindingly bright? Or will they be snuffed out before they’re ever lit? That leads down the path of civil war, and no one will succeed. Ruth says that prevention is the only way to avoid strongmen, and I agree. We prevent them by restoring education to the high place that it should be, we continue to teach critical thinking, and we show people how to apply it to every aspect of their lives.

Bibliography:

Ben-Ghiat, Ruth. STRONGMEN : Mussolini to the Present. S.L., W W Norton, 2021.

Kellerman, Barbara. Leadership : Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence. New York Mcgraw Hill Professional, 2011.