The Center for the Humanities is inviting you to join us for the first Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professors Lecture of the year with Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. She is an MSNBC Opinion Columnist and commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and other media outlets about authoritarianism, Fascism, and threats to democracy around the world.
Authoritarianism is spreading across the globe, and Ben-Ghiat argues that the United States has become the latest front of the struggle between autocracy and democracy. This talk covers the key elements of the authoritarian playbook—corruption, violence, propaganda, machismo, and leader cults—and how they are deployed today by autocratic forces in Italy, Hungary, the US, and elsewhere.
Ben-Ghiat also looks at the most effective strategies to push back against authoritarians. We are living through a global renaissance of mass nonviolent protest which is giving energy to the fight to save democracy. We in the US can learn from the struggles of those facing autocrats abroad, she argues. We can not just save our democracy but rethink it to make it stronger and more appealing to future generations as well.
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is Professor of History and Italian Studies at New York University. She is an MSNBC Opinion Columnist and commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and other media outlets about authoritarianism, Fascism, and threats to democracy around the world.
Her latest book, Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present (W.W. Norton & Company) examines how illiberal leaders use corruption, violence, propaganda, and machismo to stay in power, and how resistance to them has unfolded over a century.
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