'Strongmen' author Ruth Ben-Ghiat said Americans may not realize how close they are to authoritarianism. (ScreenGrab/YouTube)
An American writer and commentator is warning the Republican Party is collapsing into authoritarianism — and dragging the nation with it.
“There's been this shift in the American right over the last decade. I mean, I could feel it even in the late Obama years … but now I would argue that the whole Republican Party has moved to the far right, who feel this affinity for (Russian leader Vladimir) Putin, and it's based on tearing (democracy) down. It's based on a preference for autocratic politics over small-d democratic politics,” said Ben Rhodes, former deputy of National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications under President Barack Obama.
Putin is seizing advantage of the national shift, he claims, by demonizing LGBTQ issues and so-called “cancel culture” in the west in an attempt to install a “far-right internationale” that now includes Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and (Hungarian Prime Minister) Viktor Orban, among other despots.
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Rhodes said the “Trump component” of this is particularly troubling considering Trump makes no bones about his embrace of Putin’s strong man ideology.
“What is clear is that he wants to be like Putin. He would like to have the kind of power that Putin has. He would like to be unbridled in the way that Putin is, but I think part of the rot that's deeper that we have to acknowledge is that there are a lot of (American) … who (also) feel like they're on Putin’s team,” Rhodes warned. “[Vice President] JD Vance basically delivered a message — in Munich, of all places — Munich, the birthplace of Nazism. JD Vance goes there and tries to lecture the Germans to embrace their far right, the AfD party.”
The American Jewish committee considers the AfD “a party with a clear record of antisemitism and hostility to America.”
Rodes added that this intra-national culture shift is “bigger than the war in Ukraine.”
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“It's whether this new autocratic, ethno-nationalist politics that’s taken over the right wing of a bunch of countries is going to become normalized to the extent that it replaces small d democratic values, where we … we fundamentally agree upon the rule of law and things like state sovereignty and nations not being invaded.”
If the U.S. and other democracies discard the rule of law in favor of authoritarianism, Rhodes warns the world will be back to “living in the law of the jungle.”
“We're back (to the age) before the world wars, and that is an inherently dangerous place,” he said.
Author Ruth Ben-Ghiat agreed that Trump's goals are autocratic, so he will ally with the "new autocratic world order that's coming into being."
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"I think Americans maybe aren't aware to the extent that the GOP has been embedded into these transnational networks," said the 'Strongmen' author. "Talking points about LGBTQ people and social anarchy are things that Putin was circulating ten years ago. And we have absorbed and normalized these autocratic talking points, many of which come from the Kremlin.
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