Reprint: Strongmen Doomed to Fail!

 

The ‘warrior ethos’ promises victory — history says it leads to defeat

Hitler and Mussolini salute Nazi troops in 1937. Bettmann/Getty Images

John Broich, Case Western Reserve University

At Marine Corps Base Quantico in September 2025, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised assembled generals “maximum lethality” and no “stupid rules of engagement.” Under his leadership, the newly rebranded Department of War would “untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill.” Troops would be held to the “highest male standard,” he said. “Weak men won’t qualify.”

Hegseth also restricted anonymous whistleblower and discrimination complaints and limited how long past misconduct can be held against a service member, weakening internal rules and oversight processes the military had built over decades.

Months later, with the Iran war underway, he told reporters at a Pentagon briefing that the U.S. was “punching (Iran) while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be.” He has also said the U.S. will give “no quarter, no mercy” to its enemies, language legal experts say can constitute a war crime under international law.

Hegseth calls his military doctrine the “warrior ethos.”

Historians of fascism have catalogued similar rhetorical patterns — strongman posturing, contempt for constraint — for decades.

I’m a historian of race and nationalism and author of “Blood, Oil and the Axis,” a book about World War II and nationalism in Iraq and Syria. I’ve studied how fascist regimes fight. At its core, fascism is ultranationalism fused with a cult of masculine strength, racial hierarchy, paranoia about socialism and contempt for democracy. It also has a theory of war: Victory belongs to the ruthless and the ideologically pure. Rules are for the weak.

Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and Imperial Japan all built their military strategies on some version of this ideology in the run-up to the Second World War. And in each case, the strategy failed, undone by its own contradictions.

The fascist theory of war

Democracies don’t necessarily fight clean wars. During World War II, the Allies firebombed cities, created internment camps and dropped atomic bombs.

What distinguishes fascist powers from democracies is their contempt for rules based on their sense of superiority. In 1933, Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels announced that the Nazis would claim the absolute right to override democratic constraints. “This contemptible parliamentarianism … is gone,” he said.

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini said it more bluntly in 1936: “We do not argue with those who disagree with us, we destroy them.”

But rules of engagement function as a control system that ties tactical decisions to strategy, law and the risk of escalation. Discarding them tends to produce the atrocities and strategic blowback that lose wars.

Democratic procedure does similar work: Political scientists who studied 197 conflicts from 1816 to 1987 found that democracies won about 76% of their conflicts and non-democracies 46%, in large part because accountable leaders and public access to information force a government to notice when a plan isn’t working.

A fascist regime that treats democratic constraints as obstacles is likely to decide inconvenient information is an obstacle too. Because of this, in fascist governments, loyalists rank higher than experts. Fascist systems don’t remove people for being wrong; they remove them for insufficient loyalty. The man who tells the leader what he wants to hear rises. The man whose report contradicts the leader’s views endangers himself.

Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Elena watch a parade held in Hitler’s honor in 1938. Behind them, from left: Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano, Joseph Goebbels and Rudolf Hess. Bettmann/Getty Images

[ARCHIVES] Do Not Murder In My Name: The Rush to Federal Executions

This post first appeared in 2020. 

Now, in the waning days of 2020, the criminal in the White House has pushed through a string of murders. I realize I have used inflammatory language, but nothing less conveys the intensity of my outrage and revulsion. Simply put, someone who initiates and demands the ending of a human life is a criminal. The deliberate, calculated, cold-blooded taking of a human life is murder. 

From the BBC: 

As President Donald Trump's days in the White House wane, his administration is racing through a string of federal executions.

Five executions are scheduled before President-elect Joe Biden's 20 January inauguration - breaking with an 130-year-old precedent of pausing executions amid a presidential transition.

And if all five take place, Mr Trump will be the country's most prolific execution president in more than a century, overseeing the executions of 13 death row inmates since July of this year.

The five executions began this week, starting with convicted killer 40-year-old Brandon Bernard who was put to death at a penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana. The execution of 56-year-old Alfred Bourgeois will take place on the evening of 11 December.

I am the family member of a murder victim, and I speak from personal experience of the impulse to revenge the taking of my mother's life. I also know that this is a natural expression of grief, and that with healing, it passes. To me it is essential that those left behind be given the support and time to process that loss and to re-engage with their lives. To focus on killing someone else freezes us in retaliation mode. 

Over the years, I have spoken out against the death penalty, telling my story to groups as diverse as city councils, law students, death penalty abolition activists, and state legislators. In 2012, I was invited to participate in an international conference put on by Murder Victim Families For Human Rights. Then I met others like me, who had lost a single family member to violence, those whose loved ones had been executed or were on death row, and those who experienced both. Every single person who had experienced both was Black. There is no escaping the racial injustice in the way the death penalty is applied (or the way crimes are investigated and prosecuted). Yet the most moving part of that weekend was listening with an open heart to mothers weeping for their executed sons -- and realizing their grief and loss was no less than mine. 

If you, who are reading this, take away nothing else, remember this: every person who is put to death is or has been loved by someone, and is grieved by someone, and missed like an aching hole in the heart by someone.

In 2019, I penned a blog for Death Penalty Focus, called "When we focus on revenge instead of healing, we never heal." You can read it below.

#BookReview: Middle-Grade Fantasy With Universal Appeal (and a Hedgehog)

 The Raven Throne, by Stephanie Burgis (Bloomsbury Children's Books)

My introduction to the marvelous fantasy novels of Stephanie Burgis was through her adult novels. I loved the combination of humor, romance, dramatic tension, and quirky, lovable characters. When I snatched up The Raven Throne, I failed to notice that (a) it is a MG novel; (b) it is a sequel. Nevertheless, I dove in, trusting that I was in good authorial hands. I was not disappointed.

Instead, the story picked me up and carried me away, with adolescent triplets struggling to balance their new lives in the royal court of Corvenne with their unique talents, their psychic bond to the land and its creatures, not to mention the dastardly schemes of the self-serving aristocrats they have supplanted.

Cordelia now occupies the Raven Throne, and she’s deeply bonded to the ancient, powerful Raven spirits. But at the opening of the story, she has fallen ill and slips into a coma that threatens not only her life but that of the land itself. Her triplet siblings, warrior Rosalind and musician Giles, are facing their own challenges from the courtiers who surround them, persuading them to behave like “proper” royals and to forsake their unique magical gifts. Their allies turn out to be a hedgehog and a red squirrel (thereby earning my loyalty, since those are my daughter’s favorite animals, besides wolves). I love how universal their plight is. What child has not felt pressure to “behave” and ignore what their intuition tells them—in other words, to become less and different from who they truly are? As an adult reader who has had my share of life experiences that tried to silence or mold me into conformity, my heart went out to these children. Bravo, hedgehog and squirrel, for helping them be themselves!

As the story progresses, there are more instances that struck me as universal choices, ones that Giles and Rosalind rise to with the courage of clear-sighted children. They make mistakes, trust the wrong people, and give in to flattery and false hope. But through it all, their quest to save their sister and all of Corvenne shines through as universal.

A true delight.

Reprint: Resilience and "Bouncing Back"

‘Bouncing back’ is a myth – resilience means integrating hard experiences into your life story, not ignoring them

Into each life some rain must fall. Anastasiia Voloshko/Moment via Getty Images

Keith M. Bellizzi, University of Connecticut

When Maria looked at herself in the mirror for the first time after her mastectomy, she stood very still.

One hand rested on the bathroom counter. The other hovered near the flat space where her breast had been. The scar was raw and angry. The loss was quiet but enormous. Her body felt foreign.

In moments like these, people are often urged to be resilient – which can feel like being told to show no weakness, to push through no matter what. Or they imagine resilience as bouncing back: returning somehow unscathed to be the person you were before.

But standing in that bathroom, Maria knew there was no going back. And toughness wouldn’t change what had happened. The real question was how she could move forward, carrying this experience into her new reality.

Maria’s story, one I came to know personally, is far from unique. Loss, trauma and illness often bring the same wrenching questions of identity and the painful uncertainty of what comes next.

I’ve spent more than two decades studying resilience, particularly among individuals and families navigating these kinds of life-changing events. I am also a four-time cancer survivor and author of a new book, “Falling Forward: The New Science of Resilience and Personal Transformation.” If there is one myth I wish society would retire, it’s the idea that resilience means “toughness” or “bouncing back.”

Resilience doesn’t rely on relentless positivity in the face of traumatic challenges. pocketlight/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Rethinking resilience based on research

Moments like Maria’s reveal something important: The way people tend to talk about resilience often doesn’t match how people actually live through adversity.

In popular culture, resilience is often equated with grit, toughness or relentless positivity. People celebrate the warrior, the fighter, the triumphant survivor.

But across research, clinical practice and lived experience, resilience is something far more nuanced, raw and human.

It’s not a personality trait that some people simply have and others lack. Decades of research show resilience is a dynamic process. It’s shaped by the small, everyday decisions and adjustments individuals make as they adapt to significant adversity while maintaining, or gradually regaining, their psychological and physical footing over time.

And importantly, resilience does not mean the absence of distress.

Research on people facing serious life disruptions shows that distress and resilience often coexist. For example, in my study of adolescent and young adult cancer survivors, participants reported being upset about finances, body image and disrupted life plans, while simultaneously highlighting positive changes, such as strengthened relationships and a greater sense of purpose.

Resilience, in other words, is not about erasing pain and suffering. It is about learning how to integrate difficult experiences into a life that continues forward.

Book Review: A Brilliant Ecological Disaster Fantasy From Martha Wells

City of Bones (Updated and Revised Edition) by Martha Wells (Tor)

This is an updated and revised, “author’s preferred” version of a novel by the same name that was published by Tor in 1995. Somehow, I missed the earlier edition, but this one is a long, intricately detailed story that is part ecological apocalypse, part mystery, part fantasy, part racial conflict in a rigidly hierarchical society, and pure adventure.

In a world like Earth, and yet unlike, an ecological cataclysm has reduced human life to a chain of cities on the edge of the Waste, an immense desert that is all that remains of once-mighty oceans. Water and food are scarce, and poverty ensures starvation, except for the nonhuman semi-marsupial krismen, whom legends say were bred by the Ancients to withstand desert conditions. The story begins with Khat, a kris, and his human partner, Sagai, who deal in relics in the bottom tiers of the city Charisat, trying to stay one step ahead of the dreaded Trade Inspectors, for Sagai has a measure of protection as a human, but Khat has none. When Khat is approached by Elen, a magic-wielding Warder, to find relics hidden in a deep-desert artificial structure called a Remnant and believed to be part of one of the Ancients' arcane engines, he really has no choice. What begins as a reluctant expedition quickly turns into a struggle for survival, a deepening mystery, betrayals upon conspiracies, a fanatical cult bent on transforming what remains of human civilization, and revelations about the technology and nature of the Ancients.

Although City of Bones was first released three decades ago, this version represents Wells at her best. Her characters are vividly drawn, especially Khat, and the gradual way she peels back layers of past and personality is superb. The world-building, contrasting the rigidly hierarchical Charisat against the lawlessness of the Waste and the utter chaos of the looming cataclysm, is intricate, well-thought out, and revealed without ever overwhelming the reader with a mass of details. There’s enough context and backstory to fill an entire series.

And then there’s Khat, as human emotionally as he is alien in physiology. I loved his combination of confidence, physical prowess, inner wounds, capacity for tenderness, and courage. Most of all, his integrity shines through the story so that in the end, his choices ring true. Wells created a character I cared deeply about and then refused to cheapen him with a too-easy solution.

This is a long book, worthy of being savored, and sure to inspire readers to return to it for all the nuances we missed the first time.

Highly recommended.