REMINDER — Byline Supplement News Meeting with Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Please register at Byline Supplement to join our news meeting with special guest Ruth Ben-Ghiat
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“Many autocrats have gone after their own families — it's them or nothing, because they are fanatics. They are in their own way fundamentalists — political fundamentalists — and they are the church. They are the gods of their own religions.”—Ruth Ben-Ghiat
Byline Supplement’s news team is honored that Ruth will be joining our zoom news meeting on Wed., Nov. 8, at noon ET. If you already support Byline Supplement, you will have received your invite on Sunday. If you would like to attend, please consider subscribing to Byline Supplement, and supporting a small global team of investigative reporters. You will find the details in my report from Sunday below:
Here is an excerpt from that interview with her:
In weekly meetings with New York University Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat for members of her Lucid substack, I asked her what lessons from her book Strongmen — Mussolini to the Present does she consider most critical to the current temperature of the world.
Without blinking, she said: “Never appease autocrats, shut them down.”
At that moment, an embarrassing and dangerous spectacle was playing out in the US Congress. Those of us who report on these times are aware there are pro-Kremlin, MAGA Republicans engaging in a massive criminal cover up for their roles in the January 6 Insurrection.
What appears to be chaos and incompetence — a messy affair to elect a Speaker of the House — is actually an obfuscation of sedition and an intentional weakening of America — a pleasing of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
In our disarray, the centre cannot hold.
Ben-Ghiat said we can never appease autocrats because it sends the wrong signal to other nefarious world leaders…
I hope you can join us at the news meeting on Wednesday! Again, if you are a paid subscriber to Byline Supplement, you will be able to register by clicking on the story embedded above or looking for your email from Byline Supplement on Sunday.
Thank you to everyone who supports me here at Bette Dangerous and at Byline, and also to those who support Ruth’s very important work at Lucid.
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More info about Bette Dangerous - This magazine is written by Heidi Siegmund Cuda, an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter, author, and veteran music and nightlife columnist. She is the cohost of RADICALIZED Truth Survives, an investigative show about disinformation and is part of the Byline Media team. Thank you for your support of independent investigative journalism.
We just have to see that the battle for democracy is broader. It's deeper.—David Pepper
I need people to see they're on the frontline. Wherever you live, if you’re doing this work, you are the frontline.—David Pepper
The message should be a fair deal… fairness everywhere.—Martin Sheil
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