Diane

“The special psychological climate that strongmen create among their people—the thrill of transgression mixed with the comfort of submitting to his power—endows life with energy, purpose, and drama.”
― Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

“As leaders stabilize their rule, they use propaganda to legitimate their authority. Discrediting the press is a kind of insurance policy. When journalists turn up evidence of the government’s violence or corruption, the public will already be accustomed to seeing them as partisan.”
― Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present

“Here’s a theory: Maybe I had not really been broken this whole time. Maybe I had been a human—flawed and still growing but full of light nonetheless”
― Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

“Many strongmen, past and present, have used populist rhetoric that defines their nations as bound by faith, race, and ethnicity rather than by legal rights. For authoritarians, only some people are "the people," regardless of their birthplace or citizenship status, and only the leader, above and beyond any institution, embodies that group. This is why, in strongman states, attacking the leader is seen as attacking the state itself, and why critics are labeled enemies of the people or terrorists.”
― Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present