Essays & Op-Eds
- All
- Cultural Criticism
- Donald Trump and American Democracy
- Fascism and the Global Right
- Gender Politics and #MeToo
- Propaganda
- The Authoritarian Playbook
- War
Clinton’s straight talk on Trump and alt-right
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton came into her own Thursday in Reno. She spoke with righteous anger, painting her rival Donald Trump as a hate-monger beholden to white nationalist causes. …
An American Authoritarian
Fascism has been back in the news with Donald Trump’s candidacy for the American presidency. His populist claim to speak for the white everyman, along with his menacing leadership style, …
Can we separate the life and work of artists?
What happens when we learn that a person whose creative work we admire supports causes we find offensive, or has engaged in acts contrary to our values? Does this change …
Trump’s fatal mistake on women
It’s no secret that Donald Trump has a problem with women. So it’s no surprise that he has started to attack his main rival for the American presidency, Hillary Clinton, …
Is Trump the new Silvio Berlusconi?
Donald Trump this week retweeted, and then defended, an Italian popular saying made famous by Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than …
Women should have to register for the draft
**This article is assigned for debate by the U.S. Army and at West Point. Should United States women be required to register for Selective Service when they turn 18, as …
Donald Trump’s Cult of Personality
Cults of personality: the term might evoke dictators like Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Kim Jong-un today. Yet cults of personality can flourish in a variety …
What repulsive swastika retweet tells us about Trump
On Tuesday, Donald Trump, who would like to be our President, retweeted a message about Jeb Bush. It featured a swastika among its gallery of Bush-bashing images. And with this …
Why it’s good to speak Spanish in America
Should people living in America speak English? Should they be derided, viewed with suspicion, or even asked to leave, if they primarily speak a different language? Judging by the CNN …
How We See the Migrant Crisis: Toddler’s image stops us in our tracks
Images of migrants’ suffering, and of humanitarian rescue, have filled our news feeds for more than a year now. Men, women, children — more than 300,000 on the move so …
Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s essays and op-eds translate her vast knowledge of the logic of power and the authoritarian playbook into analyses of the operation and endgame of the global right today, including in Donald Trump’s America. Her writings on hate speech, leader body politics, and the power of symbols reveal how propaganda works and remind us of power of images to shape opinion and feeling. Her op-ed on photographs of the Trump-Putin summit was one of CNN’s “Top 10” for 2018, and her 2017 New Yorker essay on the persistence of Fascist monuments in Italy sparked an ongoing international debate on the legacy and memory of Mussolini’s regime.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s essays and op-eds translate her vast knowledge of the logic of power and the authoritarian playbook into analyses of the operation and endgame of the global right today, including in Donald Trump’s America. Her writings on hate speech, leader body politics, and the power of symbols reveal how propaganda works and remind us of power of images to shape opinion and feeling. Her op-ed on photographs of the Trump-Putin summit was one of CNN’s “Top 10” for 2018, and her 2017 New Yorker essay on the persistence of Fascist monuments in Italy sparked an ongoing international debate on the legacy and memory of Mussolini’s regime.
