The real battleground of 2024 is emotion

A conversation with historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat about why the authoritarian right is so deft at playing to feeling -- and why pro-democracy leaders must catch up

Aspiring autocrats have one thing going for them: they understand the politics of passion; they know how to make people feel. As the journalist Roger Cohen said in an interview with The Ink last year, “The appeal of nationalism, of scapegoating, and of identifying an enemy is very powerful. It creates a tribal form of allegiance and it gets the blood up…