"[[Ivana Trump|[H]is first wife]]... said that he had two books... one was Art of the Deal... which was ghost-written, and the other was Hitler's speeches, so he's very interested... in autocrats, and learning from them, but he doesn't read, so... it's a factor of having a similar personality... He wasn't in office to govern. He wanted to dominate people. He wanted to make money off of the presidency. ...[T]hey have similar personalities, and that's one reason they do similar things ...[T]hey ...very early ...start talking about violence. They start demonizing the press. They want to turn the public against journalists and make them political enemies, so that if anything comes out about their corruption, nobody will believe them. ...So there is this playbook that they use... [I]n the book I isolate these tools of... violence, , corruption, the myth of national greatness... and show what stays the same, and what changes over 100 years."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Non-fiction authors from the United StatesHistorians from the United StatesJournalists from CaliforniaUniversity of California, Los Angeles alumniNew York University faculty
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
"Ruth Ben-Ghiat: Recognizing Signs of Authoritarianism" (May 15, 2023) Youtube video source, 6:11, UH Better Tomorrow Speaker Series channel.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ruth_Ben-Ghiat
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Ruth Ben-Ghiat
17 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Ruth Ben-Ghiat →
Related Quotes
"Welcome to the shock event, designed precisely to jar the and civil society, causing a disorientation and disruption …"
"I happened to see a video of... presidential candidate Donald Trump at a rally. I saw him rouse the crowd to perform …"
"We're living in a time of intense of these past regimes... including to remove their violence, so... Putin erects sta…"
"[F]or 100 years authoritarian leaders have invested in propaganda to convince people to believe their lies, to partic…"
"We must... enact measures that reflect and reinforce the bedrock democratic principles of transparency, accountabilit…"
"People have to have circumstances that... they can't deny any more. ...[S]ometimes it takes a lot, like in the 1930a …"
"Trump wasn't just in office to wreck American democracy. He... was there to... detach America from a democratic world…"
"[A] really important thing is the predominance of... survivalist ideologies. Great replacement theory is one... [T]o …"
"American voters should take Trump's enthusiasm for autocrats seriously. He is previewing the kind of leadership he wi…"
"[T]he speed at which this is happening and the... concentrated push... doesn't have any parallel in situations where …"