Corporations are trying to vote in elections (and they often win them!). Our president continues to push the narrative that he won the 2020 election, and he’s not counting himself out for 2028! We’re regularly faced with these shameful, insulting, and profoundly harmful realities in America’s current political climate. We want to make sense of them and of a rapidly organizing system of surveillance, terror, and punishment for the far right’s political enemies that seems stronger than ever. So we invited Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat of NYU to the show to discuss, from her perspective as an academic expert on the history of fascism, the moment we’re in and how we can get out of it. Watch below:

Historical parallels between our autocrat-in-chief and the despots of the past abound. It’s hardly comfort to think that others have struggled under the many tyrants of history as we struggle now, but it is humbling and inspiring, of course, to see where mass anti-authoritarian and anti-fascist movements have prevailed and transformed their political circumstances. And we can learn a lot about Trump’s shambolic but still terrifying (and sometimes successful) agenda by comparing it to various examples from the past. Part of telling the psychological story of an erratic, inhumane leader like Trump, Professor Ben-Ghiat shows, is by looking at a repeated pattern in similar leaders that went before him: Trump had a serious past (and an upbringing) in criminal activity well before he went into the White House. Putin, Berlusconi, Netanyahu, Hitler . . . all had pending investigations, criminal records, looked forward to using dictatorial power to clear their records and bend the system to excuse illegal activities.

And when it comes to the most ugly and unprincipled uses of executive power, Trump is truly taking the pages out of the most reprehensible dictators in history. His Jan. 6 pardons and the new $1.776 billion “lawfare” victims’ fund mirror Mussolini’s protection of the Blackshirts whose organized violence brought him to power. Professor Ben-Ghiat reminds us that these pardons are a currency that buys loyalty from the supporters willing to break the putative law to keep their hero in power (and ensure the persecution of their enemies). And now there’s a slush fund bailing out and essentially remunerating Jan. 6 rioters for treasonous behavior Trump’s rebranding as patriotic. All of this, of course, coinciding with the nation’s 250th, invoked in the DOJ fund for Jan. 6 “victims” ($1.776 billion!) and heralded by Trump’s chintzy, tacky, and characteristically overblown decorations and preparations for the 4th. What we might be inclined to regard as silly, disgusting pomp and circumstance is indeed silly and disgusting — but it’s part of a bigger, darker picture.

We have so much more to talk about in this episode, including the creep of data centers and their increasing encroachment on our communities and on nature, plus our observations about Trump’s downward spiral and where, if ever, it will end. Thanks for joining us. This episode will be available tomorrow on major streaming platforms.