Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat explained the importance of mockery as a tactic in the campaign to defeat GOP nominee Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance at the ballot box in November’s presidential election.
Democratic nominee Kamala Harris and running mate Tim Walz have fully leaned into the ridiculing of Trump, Vance and other Republicans with the single word, “Weird,” in recent days.
Humor has “long been one of the most effective weapons of anti-authoritarian politics,” Ben-Ghiat noted in a column for MSNBC published on Wednesday.
The piece is titled: “Trump can’t take a joke. Democrats need to use that.”
“Behind the facade of their omnipotence, most strongmen are brittle and insecure personalities. They don’t mind being called evil, but being ridiculed is a different matter,” explained Ben-Ghiat, the author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” history professor at New York University and frequent warner of what to expect from a potential second Trump administration.
Last year, Ben-Ghiat warned Trump will “be finishing the job that he started” if he wins back the White House.
It’s “not just destroying democracy internally,” she predicted, envisioning Trump also removing the United States from “the realm of democratic internationalism” and aligning it “with autocracies.”