Words That Shaped History
Speeches Under the Microscope
27 speeches — from Mussolini and Hitler to Roosevelt, Churchill, Obama, and Trump — each scored against three independent scholarly frameworks: Eco's fourteen features of Eternal Fascism, Levitsky & Ziblatt's four democratic warning signs, and Mudde's five features of populist ideology. Sort, filter, and explore how rhetoric maps to ideology across nine decades.
At a Glance
Scoring Frameworks
Each speech is scored against three independent scholarly frameworks. A feature is counted as present when the speech employs that rhetorical or ideological pattern — regardless of whether the speaker identified as a fascist, authoritarian, or populist. Scores reflect interpretive judgment, not algorithmic matching.
Umberto Eco's Ur-Fascism
In his 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism," Eco identified fourteen features of "Eternal Fascism" — a loose cluster of traits that appear across fascist movements regardless of national context. No single feature is necessary or sufficient; fascism is a syndrome, not a system. Features are grouped into three clusters: Identity & Fear (6), Power & Control (6), and Rhetoric (2).
Scores of 8 or more (≥57%) indicate dominant fascist rhetoric; 4–7 (29–56%) shows significant overlap; 0–3 (≤28%) indicates few or no features present.
Umberto Eco, "Ur-Fascism," New York Review of Books, June 22, 1995
Levitsky & Ziblatt's Democratic Warning Signs
Political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt studied how democracies die — not through sudden coups, but through elected leaders who gradually erode institutional constraints. Their four behavioral warning signs identify the difference between normal democratic competition and authoritarian behavior: (1) rejection of democratic rules of the game, (2) denial of the legitimacy of political opponents, (3) tolerance or encouragement of political violence, and (4) readiness to curtail civil liberties.
A single warning sign warrants concern; two or more indicate serious risk; all four characterizes leaders who have historically dismantled democratic institutions.
Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, Crown, 2018
Cas Mudde's Populist Ideology
Political scientist Cas Mudde defines populism as a "thin-centered ideology" that divides society into two homogeneous, antagonistic camps: the pure people versus the corrupt elite. Importantly, populism is not inherently authoritarian — it can combine with left or right ideologies — but its exclusionary logic makes it a frequent enabler of democratic erosion when combined with nativism or authoritarianism.
Mudde's five features are: (1) people-centrism, (2) anti-elitism, (3) an exclusionary definition of "the people," (4) prioritizing the general will over pluralism and institutions, and (5) Manichean framing of politics as a struggle of good versus evil.
Cas Mudde, Populism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2017
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