ruthbenghiat.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Crowds of brave people have surrounded the ICE detention centre in Los Angeles. They are trying to liberate victims kidnapped by Trump’s regime forces. Victims were abducted and thrown into the basement of the building without due process. #3E

submitted 4 hours ago • 99 comments

live from the huge spontaneous anti-ICE protest after the agency used military-style tactics during a series of raids in Los Angeles today.

submitted 6 hours ago • 172 comments

The SEIU-USWW President was just arrested at an anti-ICE demonstration after ICE kidnappings in LA. PLZ SHOW UP! FRIDAY JUNE 6 AT 4pm PST DOWNTOWN LA FEDERAL BUILDING 300 N LOS ANGELES ST, LOS ANGELES, CA 90012 #StrongerTogether #LosAngeles #50501Movement #FiftyFiftyOne #NoKings #PeoplesMovement

submitted 9 hours ago • 147 comments

What fascists do

submitted 8 hours ago • 17 comments

@ruthbenghiat.bsky.social‬ puts it plainly: DOGE amounts to a coup, an ongoing "hostile takeover of the government," a secretive, illegal gutting of federal agencies that could create “a single centralized database with vast troves of personal information" about millions of Americans: is.gd/brQsRy

submitted 21 hours ago • 4 comments

When corruption is normalized, sunlight fades. Trump’s twist? Grift openly—and make the public stop noticing. @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social youtube.com/shorts/b-CTt... Follow The Ken Harbaugh Show here: linktr.ee/thekenharbau...

submitted 18 hours ago • 7 comments

Far from ending its "work," the lawless vanguard of DOGE is being assimilated into the larger Trump & Project 2025 authoritarian project. My latest for Lucid: open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/...

submitted 1 day ago • 15 comments

Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on authoritarianism, has updated her analysis to reflect how corruption—especially under Trump—plays a key role in sustaining autocratic power. @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social Watch the full video here: youtu.be/D51XQHBfu6w

submitted 2 days ago • 9 comments

💯

submitted 4 days ago • 26 comments

Fascist tactics

submitted 4 days ago • 13 comments

"This is a moment in history personified. This is not just people buying favors. This is about who controls this country, and everyone else is just a formality, and that is the worldview that we are up against right now." Interview: www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

submitted 4 days ago • 131 comments

Huge opportunity for a political party that believes government can do good things. Public opinion is finally shifting after 50 years of right wing anti-government propaganda. This isn't the time for cowering and throat clearing www.cnn.com/2025/06/01/p...

submitted 5 days ago • 119 comments

always encouraging to learn comments from readers

submitted 5 days ago • 3 comments

A reckoning is coming...

submitted 5 days ago • 37 comments

Trump's budget cuts and attacks on immigrant students & faculty are chilling innovation and groundbreaking research in the United States. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/w...

submitted 5 days ago • 5 comments

On Feb. 2, I published this Lucid essay, "A New Kind of Coup" about the Trump-Musk partnership. From my work on coups and #Strongmen I knew intuitively that this was an autocratic innovation. lucid.substack.com/p/a-new-kind...

submitted 6 days ago • 21 comments

My 19yo is on an absolute bender of auto-didacticism -- just devouring books. (He insists on paper books, too.) This is the pile he brought home from the book store today.

submitted 7 days ago • 446 comments

@jamellebouie.net this is typical of #strongmen and fits the psychological portrait laid out in my book. Democratic leaders represent the nation vs authoritarians who claim to embody it.

submitted 7 days ago • 21 comments

Moral collapse fully achieved! Essay here: open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/...

submitted 7 days ago • 25 comments

All about Fascist population engineering and remigration: open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/...

submitted 7 days ago • 13 comments

👀

submitted 8 days ago • 56 comments

“Hope is a precondition of resistance because it keeps alive the idea that another reality is possible in the future and that our daily actions in the courts, at the ballot box, and in the streets can make a difference.” @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social #hope

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

Excellent essay by @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social on self care in difficult times. open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

While Musk's been busy dismantling our government institutions, his company's stock is plummeting and endangering our members' retirement funds. We're demanding he focuses on his job at Tesla so workers can retire with security and dignity. www.thetimes.com/us/business/...

submitted 8 days ago • 46 comments

My latest for Lucid: Trump insults the military because he knows they embody a courage and integrity he will never have. open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/...

submitted 10 days ago • 19 comments

Thank goodness we have historians like @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social to sort things out for us. If you haven't read her book, "Strongmen: Mussolini To The Present," it's highly recommended. It has echoes of what we're living today. lucid.substack.com/p/corruption...

submitted 11 days ago • 6 comments

Yes, we got a tip when the $TRUMP whales (biggest buyers of his crypto) were going to show up Friday at the White House for their VIP tour and The NYT was there. We had a list with their names. So we knew who they were. But they did not want to chat. I still tried...

submitted 13 days ago • 130 comments

Qatari donations to U.S. institutions are “a subtle and pernicious form of influence peddling designed to launder Qatar’s reputation—a form of soft corruption that Trump has now characteristically taken to cartoonish excess,” writes @yair-rosenberg.bsky.social:

submitted 14 days ago • 25 comments

Very clear explanation of how authoritarians take over. @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social youtu.be/-y6Byx77qxM?...

submitted 14 days ago • 5 comments

The anti-Tesla movement is one of the most successful cases of social coordination in American history. In the span of six months the Tesla brand has been made radioactive. This isn’t a subjective view. You can see it in the data.

submitted 17 days ago • 119 comments

@ruthbenghiat.bsky.social I just started your book, “Strongmen, Mussolini to the Present” and I’m already impressed. Looking forward to learning more in the pages ahead!

submitted 16 days ago • 12 comments

Great news! I'm told a few moments ago US Institute of Peace Board Chair Amb. George Moose went to the USIP building where he and legal counsel were able to retake possession after the recent court decision. They were accompanied by a small team securing the building and assessing maintenance needs.

submitted 16 days ago • 123 comments

Guys the whole point of authoritarianism is being above and beyond the law which is why it attracts "lawless" individuals such as Noem. Habeus corpus is an annoyance for authoritarians.

submitted 17 days ago • 24 comments

Trump's war on Medicaid will institutionalize millions of people

submitted 17 days ago • 29 comments

My latest for Lucid: Arresting Judges, the Trump Administration Follows the Authoritarian Playbook. open.substack.com/pub/lucid/p/...

submitted 18 days ago • 14 comments

💯

submitted 18 days ago • 16 comments

DEMOCRATS! Throwing Joe Biden under the bus won’t help you. •It won’t win over the base. •It won’t boost your approval. •It won’t bring back voters who sat out 2024. •It won’t fix 2026. It makes you look petty while Trump is burning it all down. REPAIR AND BUILD THE PARTY!

submitted 21 days ago • 668 comments

"...in all my studies of authoritarian regimes and wreckings of democracy, I've never seen a government so quickly try and wreck a country in a holistic manner: public health, foreign policy, disaster relief, information..." @ruthbenghiat.bsky.social @wajali.bsky.social

submitted 20 days ago • 9 comments

Jeff Bezos once grieved Jamal Khashoggi’s killing—now he’s in business with the man who orchestrated the savage murder, in a deal that lays bare his true colors, @passantino.bsky.social writes for the Saturday edition of @status.news. Read the piece here: www.status.news/p/jeff-bezos...

submitted 20 days ago • 470 comments

DOGE took control of the FAA, fired hundreds of air traffic employees—and then our air traffic control system mysteriously started shitting itself. Probably just a coincidence!

submitted 22 days ago • 33 comments

I had a great convo with @jimacosta.bsky.social today!

submitted 23 days ago • 12 comments

TODAY the NYT publishes an investigation into the Trump memecoin $TRUMP and how it has turned into a extraordinary venue for foreign influence campaigns. What we are seeing is potentially corrupt attempts to change US policy by paying the Trump family money. This is no "Russian Hoax" nyti.ms/4kkv7D7

submitted 25 days ago • 519 comments

This administration is becoming the tool of the Persian Gulf autocracies...they do not give without expecting in return...

submitted 26 days ago • 56 comments

This is how authoritarian state security forces behave in Turkey, China and other countries. Now America joins them.

submitted 27 days ago • 92 comments