In the end, does it matter what label we paste on him? They all stink.
Well, so much for that pesky “freedom of the press” nonsense.
It’s true Ron DeSantis doesn’t have that, but a key difference is that he’s already the head of state of a subnational government governing 22 million people, so he can direct his hatred against things like Disney or schoolchildren reading by using the apparatus of state.
Everything DeSantis is doing is so gross. I don’t know how any American that actually loves the USA can support him or the GOP. I just don’t get it.
He is also destroying public education from K all the way through college. He is mis-using the power of his office to decide what public school students learn. And he uses coded language and vagueness to scare educators away from teaching. He uses phrases like: “Real history” as in “Classical Western Civilization,” you know great white man stuff. Particularly Christian rich
white men. This, to me, is more proof that this guy is a Fascist looking for a country to terrorize.
DeSanis march to Fascism:
Private army: It’s not just his "Election Police he also wants a “national guard” unit under him and not the Pentagon.
Control of private business: Is Disney the end? I doubt it.
Freedom of the Press: Having to “register” with the state. Hmm, now where have we seen that before?
Demanding his brand of propaganda be taught in schools: He’s just getting started on that one too.
Hating on marginalized groups: See immigrants, don’t say gay, “canceling” AP Black history. All the Trans hysteria, shipping immigrants from a different state…you know the story.
I don’t know what else he has to do to prove he’s a Fascist. Maybe tattoo it on his forehead?
Fair points Im almost convinced. The missing piece is, is there actually a coherent (but vile) ideological vision behind this, or is he merely an idiot wanking for coins?
What you have convinced me is that de santis is actually worse than trump, who is at least lazy and stupid and distractable.
I mostly agree with you. But I read somewhere (probably the SDMB) that when Trump visited his businesses managers would quietly remove any black employees.
And Trump made it difficult for black people to rent his properties.
I’m sure Trump doesn’t think he’s racist. Or even knows what that means. He just doesn’t like black people.
But that’s not because he’s racist, it’s just that he is catering to his racist tennants.
Which, IMO, is worse.
Never heard that. And I agree. It’s worse if true.
There is a common misnomer that fascism is fundamentally ideological. Fascist regimes often espouse ideological tenets on often fabricated grounds of ‘racial purity’, eugenics, imposition of moralistic norms, et cetera but these are often inconsistent and vary with time, and are ultimately about holding a powerful sway over the population for inspire horrific actions under the guise of nationalist protectionism. For instance, Nazism is most well known for its persecution of people with Jewish ancestry and homosexuals but there were people high in the National Socialist party and eventual regime who had Jewish ‘blood’ or were known homosexuals and a blind eye was turned even as the government was rounding up millions of people and murdering them for these transgressions.
So far as there is any core ideology, fascism is about exclusionary hypernationalism, corporatism (i.e. merging state and business interests in ways that bolster the political regime), and almost reflexive persecution of some identified ‘other’ whose existence is deemed as a threat even though they are typically disenfranchised and powerless, along with a strong cult of personality around an ostensibly irreplaceable ruler whose leadership and propaganda inspires hatred and ultimately self-destructive divisiveness and hatred. Napoleon Bonaparte was a proto-fascist, and the ideology of racialised fascism has strong roots in mid-19th century France with Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (later Napoleon III) arguably being the first true fascist head of state, even though Mussolini was the first successful leader of an explicitly fascist party. Hitler was and remains the most well-recognzsed leader of a murderous fascist regime but you can see the underlying tenets of fascism in a variety of regimes, and while political scientists often classify fascism as a “far right” ideology (such as it is), if you ignore the left-right political definition it is pretty apparent that the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union met most of the categorical definitions of fascism despite the prevarications of Marxism.
Fascism is ultimately about gaining and maintaining power through manipulation of the public by instilling fear, appealing to nationalist and prejudicial sentiments, and scapegoating vulnerable and typically disempowered groups which is exactly what DeSantis is trying to do. Whether he has the charisma to develop a cult of personality is in question but he certainly aspires to power through engendering hatred and appealing to bigotry while controlling education, media, and business interest who may oppose him, which is essentially the definition of fascist political methodology.
Stranger
Does it matter?
If you knock somebody off a cliff by gross negligence or on purpose, they’re equally likely to be dead when they hit bottom. And somebody likely to do either one is not a safe hiking partner, and should certainly not be in charge of the expedition.
Again, for what it’s worth: I think DeSantis is motivated, at least in significant part, by what he considers to be a coherent religous ideological vision. That the particular theology works well with trying to put himself in particular in the position of enforcing it may well be, to him, an excellent bonus; and it may be one reason he holds to those religious values instead of to others. But I don’t know whether he’d be aware of the latter.
I don’t know about worse; but he may be more dangerous; though whether the ability to appear sane and to plan outweighs charisma may be a question.
As usual, Stranger sums it up perfectly.
TFG’s minions are rooting around in the remains of the GOP, looking for their next hit. It may or may not be as good quality as 2016, but they will find something in there to ingest and get behind, and it looks like DeSantis will have to do.
This thread has been illuminating as to Ron’s behaviors being alarming, no matter what it is called.
I mostly agree, but a few points:
I think Nazism was quite ideological, and certain aspects of it were consistent over time: anti-Semitism, German nationalism, and Lebensraum. They murdered 6 million Jews at high cost and little gain. That’s ideology at work.
Erhard Milch was Göring’s right-hand man, and he was half-Jewish. Göring claimed at his trial at Nuremberg that he wasn’t himself anti-Semitic. That’s believable enough. He was just monumentally selfish and evil. Milch is the highest-level Nazi I know of.
Head of the SA Ernst Röhm was gay, and he was fairly out of the closet, too, but he was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. That said, the Nazis attitude toward gay people was ambivalent and inconsistent (i.e., it was not like Nazi anti-Semitism, which was loud, official, and consistent throughout the regime).
I don’t agree with this. Not every totalitarian regime is fascist; otherwise the two words become synonyms. One thing that the Nazis constantly harped upon was the explicitly internationalist nature of Bolshevism. There was a Comintern, after all, and the Soviet Union was involved in Communist agitation in many countries. Marxism was all about global revolution of the proletariat, whereas Nazism was about German expansionism for the sake of Germans (Lebensraum). The two regimes also spoke and behaved quite differently (both completely awful, of course).
The key question for me is whether he intends to establish authoritarian rule in the US under himself as dictator. If he doesn’t–and my guess is that he doesn’t–then he can be described as fascistic perhaps, but he is ultimately not a fascist.
I thought that was his father’s policy. Y’know, the guy who marched in DC with the KKK.
Would you prefer citations [stating that Republicans have moved further right than the Democrats have moved left]? The graph is a nice way to see it without having to read a bunch of papers, but if you prefer more detail then have at it.
Hertel-Fernandez, A. (2019). Asymmetric partisan polarization, labor policy, and cross-state political power-building. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , 685 (1), 64-79.
Finkel, E. J., Bail, C. A., Cikara, M., Ditto, P. H., Iyengar, S., Klar, S., … & Druckman, J. N. (2020). Political sectarianism in America. Science , 370 (6516), 533-536.
Grossmann, M., & Hopkins, D. A. (2016). Asymmetric politics: Ideological Republicans and group interest Democrats . Oxford University Press.
Sides, J., & Hopkins, D. J. (Eds.). (2015). Political polarization in American politics . Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
Do you think it would be easy? I was referred to this thread from another one, and I haven’t read this whole thread yet. I’ll try to catch up.
From the article:
Wouldn’t that be a federal crime as well? Is Florida going to prevent federal agents from pursuing and arresting kidnappers within its borders?