Robert Reich wondered out loud what many people including me have been saying. He posed it as a question. Is Ron DeSantis a fascist? He didn’t even get into the damage that DeSantis has done to teachers, driving them out with low pay, gag orders, censorship, and replacing them with veterans and first responders without experience or knowledge of teaching. He also fired five elected officials and replaced them with cronies. Four were Broward County school board members who were criticized in a state report for the Parkland school shootings, the fifth was a county prosecutor who said he would not prosecute women who sought an abortion. He is on a roll, attacking teachers and anyone he considers WOKE (i.e., concerned about racism, injustice, etc.). He is rising by making hatred his brand.
Robert Reich writes:
I like to tweet. Not as much as I like to write here on Substack where I get to share my thoughts at some length. On Twitter it’s a different kind of conversation, and pace — like speed chess.
Last Tuesday I tweeted:
Robert Reich @RBReichJust wondering if “DeSantis” is now officially a synonym for “fascist.”August 23rd 20221,626 Retweets10,490 Likes
I was surprised at the outrage my little tweet provoked.
The Washington Examiner, for example:
Ultra left-wing elitist and former secretary of labor during the Clinton administration Robert Reich tweeted earlier this week, “Just wondering if ‘DeSantis’ is now officially a synonym for ‘fascist.’” This insulting slur has no basis, of course. This is just what left-wing ideologues do when they discuss Republican politicians who pose any threat to the existence of their political ideology. It’s not grounded in any reality and is a sham. Yet, it never stops any of them from repeating the lie. Anyone the Democrats don’t like or disagree with is a fascist…. Any person using such hyperbolic, unhinged name-calling is not a serious person, and anything they say should not be deemed credible.
Fox News’s digital outlet took umbrage as did many others, with rightwing rage at my tweet ricocheting through the echo-chambers of Republican social media.
Don’t worry about me. After a half-century in and around politics, I’ve got a thick skin. But the size of the blowback on my little tweet makes me think I struck a nerve.
DeSantis has become a favorite of the GOP’s Fox News-viewing base, and the most likely rival to Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024. The Harvard and Yale educated DeSantis (what dothey teach at Harvard and Yale?) has been called “Trump with a brain.” Lately DeSantis has been campaigning on behalf of Republican election-deniers around the country, including gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and US Senate candidate JD Vance in Ohio.
DeSantis is the nation’s consummate culture warrior. Consider what he has wrought in Florida:
- Discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity are now barred in Florida schools.
- Math textbooks have been rejected for what Florida officials call “indoctrination.”
- Abortions are banned in Florida after 15 weeks. (DeSantis recently suspended an elected prosecutor who said he would refuse to enforce the anti-abortion law.)
- A new state office has been created to investigate “election crimes.”
- Florida teachers are limited in what they can teach about racism and other tragic aspects of American history. DeSantis has got personally involved in local school board races, endorsed and campaigning for 30 board candidates who agree with him (so far, 20 have won outright, five are going to runoffs).
- Claiming tenured professors in Florida’s public universities are “indoctrinating” students, DeSantis spearheaded a law requiring them to be reviewed every five years.
- Florida’s Medicaid regulator is considering a rule to block state-subsidized health care from paying for treatments of transgender people. Florida’s medical board recently began the process of banning gender-affirming medical treatment for youths.
- Disney (Florida’s largest employer) has been stripped of the ability to govern itself for the first time in more than half a century, in retaliation for the company’s opposition to the crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. conversations with schoolchildren.
- Florida’s congressional map has been redrawn to give Republicans an even bigger advantage.
How much of a reactionary bully is DeSantis? Don’t take my word for it. Here’s a smattering of some of his pearls of (dare I say, fascist) rhetoric: “We are not going to surrender to woke,” DeSantis said last Tuesday. “Florida is the state where woke goes to die.” He has described an America under assault by left-wing elites, who “want to delegitimize our founding institutions.” DeSantis envisions his job as governor as fighting critical race theory, “Faucian dystopia,” uncontrolled immigration, Big Tech, “left-wing oligarchs,” “Soros-funded prosecutors,” transgender athletes, and the “corporate media.” The state of Florida, DeSantis says, has become a “citadel of freedom.” He charges — using a standard racist dog whistle — that “We’re not letting Florida cities burn down … In Florida, you’re not going to get a slap on the wrist. You are getting the inside of a jail cell.”
So, back to my tweet: Is it useful to characterize DeSantis’s combination of homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny, along with his efforts to control the public schools and universities and to intimidate the private sector (e.g., Disney), as redolent of fascism?
America’s mainstream media is by now comfortable talking and writing about “authoritarianism.” Maybe it should also begin using the term “fascism,” where appropriate. (Even Joe Biden, who has never been known as a rhetorical bomb-thrower, last Thursday accused the GOP of “semi-fascism.” A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee called Biden’s comment “despicable.”)
Authoritarianism implies the absence of democracy, a dictatorship. Fascism (the word comes from the Latin fasces, denoting a tightly-bound bundle of wooden rods that typically included a protruding axe blade, adopted by Benito Mussolini in the 1930s to symbolize his total power) is different from mere authoritarianism. Fascism also includes hatred of “them” (people considered different by race or religion, or outside the mainstream, or who were born abroad), control over what people learn and what books they are allowed to read, control over what had been independent government units (school boards, medical boards, universities, and so on), control over women and the most intimate and difficult decisions they’ll ever make, and demands that the private sector support the regime.
Perhaps my “just wondering” tweet about DeSantis hit the nerve of the fascism now taking root in the Republican Party?
Or is DeSantis’s own nascent presidential campaign behind the outsized reaction to my tweet? After all, if you’re seeking a presidential nomination in today’s GOP, there’s nothing like an accusation of fascism to rally Trump supporters. It might be a particularly useful strategy if your primary opponent in 2024 will be Trump.
What do you think?
Fascism would have to include social security and medicare provided by the state.
Um, ??? How is taking care of the population considered fascism?
Many Fascist states have had social welfare programs. The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
To your point Bob.
The history of social welfare programs includes a major push by Bismarck to implement a disability program for the old and infirmed. A forerunner of Social Security .
It was an effort to diminish the influence of Socialists on the working class. Bismarck proposed lining the streets with the corpses of socialists hanging from street lamps and trees. Even a bit much for Wilhelm II.
A summary of the state Social Welfare program under Hitler and the Nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Socialist_People%27s_Welfare
Honorable David, just wondering, are you against Social Security and Medicare?
Reblogged this on dean ramser.
Reich need look no further that noted authority Robert O Paxton, who studied fascism in the Twentieth Century and had already written extensively by 1970 on this subject. Paxton wrote an op ed suggesting that he had been on the fence (what a historian) about the rise of American fascism until Jan 6. He had decided in the affirmative.
Fear appeals, the hardening back to a time that never existed, the reverence for power and strength…unquestionably fascism.
For a perspective far more learned and nuanced than that of the hysteric Robert Reich, read the linked essay below.
Ad hominem alert: Kevin Williamson is a strong conservative critic of Donald Trump, conspicuously refused to vote for him in 2020, and enraged Trump’s supporters by calling him “a witless ape.” Commenters here will have to criticize Williamson on substance rather than hurling the personal attacks against any dissent from left-wing orthodoxy that are all too common on this blog.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/09/a-clear-and-present-danger/
Quote, “….hysteric Robert Reich…” end quote. That sounds like an ad hominem or personal attack on Robert Reich. Was it really necessary to lie about Reich who is not hysterical just because he paints a true picture of the right wing libertarian ideologues. Talk about right wing/libertarian orthodoxy.
Joe Jersey, thank you for pointing out what is typical of folks like Paul Goldstein. They always accuse others of doing what they do in plain sight because they are so used to their privileged positions making them immune to criticism.
Paul Goldstein’s ad hominen attacks on Robert Reich speak for themselves. No doubt he is unused to having anyone call them out.
But I do love the irony where he admires when his fellow right winger calls Trump a witless ape (talk about ad hominem attacks!) and because Paul Goldstein is so impressed with that brilliant argument, he believes the rest of us would be just as impressed. Trump isn’t a “witless ape”. He is a man who has taken morally, legally and ethically repugnant actions, just like deSantis. And it is those morally and ethically repugnant actions that are done and excused by people who want to destroy democracy and make this country fascist.
Unlike Trump, Desantis won’t merely attempt to bring down the “administrative state”, he will weaponize it. He, and to a great degree Governor Abott, has wasted millions of tax payer dollars to pick on those like teachers and convicted felons who have no means to fight back. They’re followers seem ok with this. Desantis demonstrates the strategic and organizational chops Trump doesn’t have. Our democracy and all of it’s benefits, including free speech, will be gone should he become president.
Desantis demonstrates the strategic and organizational chops Trump doesn’t have. The analogy to musical ability, “chops,” is exact. Trump’s ignorance and stupidity made him ineffectual as an administrator–he wasn’t capable of getting to happen what he wanted to happen, politically, partly because he just didn’t know how and partly because even the clown car posse he gather around him typically said, no, you can’t do x, where x was something truly insane that Trump wanted to do (e.g., withdraw from NATO, shoot asylum seekers, buy Greenland). So, thanks be to all the gods, Trump was a wannabe Fascist strongman but didn’t have the ability to make it happen.
Simple answer: Yes, along with Trump, de Sanchez, Abbott, and those like them.
Robert Reich should maybe keep quiet for a while as he recently encouraged war-monger, torture lover, anti-union, anti-abortion Liz Ceney (who voted with Trump 95% of the time) to run for POTUS. It doesn’t get much more fascist than the loving daughter of the architect of the Patriot Act and Abu Ghraib.
I sent a contribution of $100 to Liz Cheney’s doomed campaign. I applaud her courage in standing up to Trump and the Republican Quidlings.
Quislings
Bravo, Diane!!!
Please seek therapy. Soon. You’re experiencing major symptoms of mental illness.
BTW, DeSantis is the “Next (worse) Trump” I warned you about if Democrats elected a neoliberal candidate and failed to meet the needs of the country.
Doesn’t that make your day?
Geez, D-77, you are the only smart one, the only enlightened one and the rest of us are just a bunch of dummies???!!!!!!!!!! NOT! Spare us your bogus scolding reprimands, they are without merit or validity.
GregB,
We all warned dienne77 that her choice in 2016 to PREVENT a Democrat from filling an open Supreme Court seat and have RBG lead a progressive majority would be very damaging to the progressive movement.
dienne77 got what she wanted. She got the far right Supreme Court she said she was perfectly fine with because she knew the most important thing was preventing a Democrat from appointing Supreme Court Justices and NOT preventing a right wing Republican from doing so. She got what she wanted – no Democrat to appoint a replacement with the Supreme Court tied 4-4 in 2016 and the chance to repeal Citizens United and empower progressives.
No doubt she would rather have DeSantis win re-election than Charlie Crist because every comment she makes supports the lie that the way to a progressive nirvana is via defeating the party that believes in Democracy and not defeating the party that is trying to destroy Democracy. Fascism needs people like her.
Or maybe she just needs to alleviate her guilt by finding a scapegoat instead of acknowledging she was wrong. She has yet to acknowledge she was wrong about Putin, so when she spews this nonsense, why does anyone take her seriously?
dienne77
When you say the Democrats elected, who are you referring to. Did James Carville or James Clyburn vote multiple times to select Biden in the Primary. Is there some source of information available to you or even I that enlightens us. A source not available to the Democratic voter or the American people who elect political leaders.
The American people elected Joe Biden and Democratic voters selected both Hillary over Bernie and then Biden over a crowded field of candidates.
So if you have a problem it is with the American people. And you might be right.
Joel,
Haven’t you noticed that our resident Putin-apologist and Trump and his supporters have a lot in common?
If their candidate doesn’t win, this handful of privileged, anonymous self-described progressives frequently claim that the election was “stolen” and they would rather destroy democracy than do the hard work that people like Stacey Abrams does to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
To “save” the progressive movement they want to destroy democracy. It isn’t surprising that some of us believe they are simply far right wing pro-Trump trolls, since empowering Trump Republicans is always their preferred choice over any Democrat. And I don’t believe for a second that they would have been satisfied with Bernie as a Democratic candidate — they would parsing any negatives in his history and mischaracterizing all his comprises as “no different than Republicans” just like they did with Elizabeth Warren. Supporting Bernie was just a talking point. True Bernie supporters (as many of us are) don’t believe that having a right wing Supreme Court and empowering Republicans gets us closer to a progressive future.
Dienne, I warned you in 2016 that if Trump was elected, there would be a rightwing takeover of the Supreme Court and that many parts of the government would be crippled, like the EPA. You insisted that Hillary “stole” the nomination. No, she didn’t. She won more votes than Bernie. We love Bernie, but he lost. You consistently claimed that a Democratic loss to Trump was no big deal. It was a very big deal. A terrible event that threatens our future as a nation. You just can’t bring yourself to accept that elections have consequences and that your candidate lost.
Your continued contempt for the Ukrainians turns my stomach.
Your continued defense of Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is beyond my understanding.
His decision to launch the first land invasion in Europe—without provocation!—threatens the world and has made Russia a pariah nation.
Gorbachev wanted Russia to be a normal European nation. Putin did not attend his funeral because he has said the dissolution of the tryrannical USSR was the greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century. Putin thinks he can reassemble the old USSR and his invasion of Ukraine was his first move to do so.
I wrote months ago that this vicious and unprovoked war is an outrage. A crime against humanity.
Please send future comments to far-left blogs that adore Putin.
This is not a far-left blog and I will not post any comments—from you or anyone else—defending Putin.
Actually his third or perhaps fourth invasion, Georgia , Kazakhstan, Crimea and Ukraine again. One could argue Chechnya which had declared its independence early on after the fall of the USSR and was totally crushed by Putin in 99.
Putin flattened and utterly destroyed Chechnya. He is doing the same to Ukraine. The Ukrainians are not rolling over.
Republicans get really upset when you call out Fascist behavior. They say that it’s just name-calling or that it’s an instance of Godwin’s law–using the pejorative for anything one doesn’t like. Here’s what they do no understand. We vowed after beating the Fascists in the middle of the last century, “Never again.” A noble goal. But you cannot prevent it from happening again if you do not call it out when it rears its head. Fascism is simple-minded but not simple. It’s a constellation of features, one of which is attacking enemies within, another of which is using state violence and state power generally to crush opposition or dissent. A friend called me out for describing Trump as a Fascist, so, I made a list of Defining Characteristics of Fascism, Fascist Leaders, and Fascist states, and demonstrated that Trump exemplifies each. If it quacks like a duck. If it steps like a goose. Here, that list of defining, essential characteristics of Fascism:
There are others, ofc, besides those I list–referring to enemies as vermin to be eliminated, co-opting terms for noble values and twisting their meanings, co-opting the legal apparatus to illegal and extremely immoral ends (the Enabling Act, show trials), and so on. But I think I’ve hit, in this, the major ones.
And yes, the size of the reaction is due to the fact that Ronda Santis is the heir apparent, the one who has been chosen by the big money (he had 172 million in his campaign war chest by last month) to assume the orange mantle. The smarter Repugnican Fascists know that if it’s Trump again, they lose again. And Don the Con got into a p—–g contest with Rupert, so he lost Fox. And who knows, maybe, just maybe, the Teflon Don will actually end up in prison for some one of his hundreds and hundreds of crimes. Ron is the Great White Hope now, and one dares not criticize Glorious Leader.
If the Pugs win both houses and the Presidency, we are in for a dark, dark time. We are Germany in 1932.
“Ronda Santis is the heir apparent, ”
Technically speaking , wouldn’t Ronda be an “heiress”?
And I thought the heiress apparent was the Ukrainian woman who snuck into Mal-A-lago by pretending to be an heiress.
So, now I am thoroughly confused.
Oops. Sorry. Got the spelling wrong.
Rhonda Santis
Time to develop the pilot script for my TV sitcom about two wacky sisters, Rhonda and Rhoda Santis, who run a catering service. Suggestions for names for the program?
If the Fascists do take over here, and it’s quite possible that they will, then things like this blog will be lost relics of the past. Those who dare utter the slightest doubt about the policies of Glorious Leader, will have state goons in riot gear knocking down their doors. If you think it can’t happen here, you haven’t been paying attention. It’s precisely what the Pugs intend–to create this kind of state. And all the while, as they are creating that state, they will talk of Freedom.
I always enjoy reading Robert Reich. He is an example of someone that has become more progressive with age. He admits the missteps from his time in the Clinton cabinet, and he criticizes Obama for his failings to stand up for the middle class. He ardently supports public education and teachers. He wrote a touching article about how he was bullied in elementary school and how his teacher looked out for him and took him under her wing by giving him special projects. She likely recognized there was lots of talent in this diminutive student. Here are his comments on the teacher wars. https://robertreich.org/post/694219847599603712/theres-a-war-being-waged-on-americas-teachers
Reich isn’t the only person notices DeSantis’ anti-democratic tendencies. The editorial from USA Today is very critical of DeSantis and his policies. Even though the public voted to restore voting rights to former felons, DeSantis refused to implement the policy and put expensive fines in the way of implementation. DeSantis knows better, but he has kept up the big lie in order to energize up his biased base. He also rejected the Fair Districts amendments and redrew gerrymandered districts that marginalized Black voters throughout the state. All of these are in addition to his endless culture wars and vindictive criticism of anyone that does not conform to his agenda.
If you come to DeSantis’s attention as someone who a) opposes him in the slightest way on some policy and b) is getting a little press, then he will find a pretext for sending armed goons to break into your house or show up at your workplace, arrest you, and send you to prison. And he happily creates his own private police forces answerable only to him. The business with felons and voting is typical.
The Democrats used a democratic process. The created a ballot referendum that said that if a felon serves his or her time, the debt to society has been paid, and the felon is then allowed to vote again. There were exceptions for those convicted of murder and of sex crimes. Well, DeSantis came up with a rule that the Pugs of the Flor-uh-duh State Legislature and Gun Club passed: yeah, you can vote, ex-felon, but ONLY after you have reimbursed the state for any court fees or fines before they can vote. These are often stiff and are given in addition to jail time, and felons often cannot afford to pay them. That law effectively undercut the will of the people of the state as expressed in the referendum. It was a big FU to the people. DeSantis has gotten a LOT of political mileage out of being Trump’s Mini-Me–being a Covid protections denier and claiming that Democrats engage in widespread election fraud. So, despite the fact that only a handful of election fraud cases were found nationwide after the 2020 election, DeSantis created a state election police office, at a cost of 3.7 million a year, and they just arrested a few ex felons who served their time and then applied for and received voter registration cards and weren’t aware of the fines restriction. Because putting hapless people back into prison is fine if it makes political leeway.
DeSantis is running for reelection on his “success” in keeping Flor-uh-duh businesses and tourist spots, such as beaches, open during the Covid pandemic. “Florida has preserved freedom and kept the economy open,” is a typical DeSantis statement about this. However, he was perhaps the nation’s chief Covid denialist after Trump, and he ignored the freedom of Floridians not to be exposed to Covid and die because of careless people who refused to mask and socially distance and quarantine during the worst of the pandemic. One of DeSantis’s first actions as governor, after winning by an extremely narrow margin, was to go after freedoms of speech and assembly by signing into law HB1(2021), a bill that responds to the BLM protests by allowing local authorities to declare a group of any 3 people a riot, makes it illegal to block a street with a protest, and, appallingly, removes the ability of people or their loved ones to take civil action against someone who runs over protestors with a car. Because Freedumb.
He plays into the national fear-based narratives of the Republican Party by going after the supposed Great Socialist CRT Conspiracy (Help! CRT is leaving dirty dishes in my sink! CRT is trampling my flowerbeds!) and “wokism,” infamously potentially costing Floridians billions of dollars by removing Disney’s self-governance after a fight with the company of the DeSantis’s Don’t Say Gay bill. And he resurrected a defunct Florida Guard, answerable only to him, as an alternative to the National Guard, which can be mobilized by the President of the United States. So, authoritarianism with a backward, antidemocratic agenda, based on having barely won an election, not on some overwhelming mandate. With DeSantis, it’s clearly his way or the highway. And Republicans love this. It means he’s tough. Fascists love strongmen.
All of this is extremely frightening. The Republican Party has chosen a culture warrior authoritarian as its standard bearer for 2024 and beyond. I am pretty certain that he will be our next president.
If Trump or DeSantis is elected President in 2024, our country and our Constitution will be over. They will write the rules to assure that their minority wins all future elections.
Exactly right. So, these elections coming up are critical. After November, if the Pugs have won both houses, democracy will be hanging by a thread.
That’s disgusting.
Today, Chileans are voting on a new, progressive constitution to replace the Pinochet one. The United States is doing the opposite.
And they overwhelmingly rejected the proposed Constitution Amendment 2-1.
😦
Ugh.
DeSantis has been called “Trump with a brain.” That is very freaky. Trump is an ignorant buffoon.
…………………………..
Opinion DeSantis is smarter than Trump. That may make him more of a threat.
July 6, 2022
By Max Boot
Columnist
…DeSantis refuses to say whether President Biden was legitimately elected and criticizes the Jan. 6 committee hearings. He created a special task force to police voter fraud even though there is no evidence of widespread fraud. In the name of election security, he also pushed through a bill restricting voting rights that was largely struck down by a federal judge as unconstitutional. A DeSantis-backed “anti-riot” bill, passed in response to Black Lives Matter rallies, was blocked by another federal judge for infringing on the First Amendment.
DeSantis signed a “don’t say gay” law restricting discussion of gender and sexuality issues in public schools — and then took away tax breaksfrom Disney for criticizing the legislation. In a similarly vindictive vein, he vetoed state funding for a Tampa Bay Rays training facility after the baseball team had the temerity to call for gun-safety legislation to stop mass shootings.
DeSantis signed legislation to limit what schools, colleges and workplaces can teach about race and identity, while promulgating teacher training wrongly claiming that the Founders didn’t really want separation of church and state. He also signed legislation that would give the state greater control over what is taught in universities under the guise of promoting viewpoint “diversity.” He is even threatening to investigate parents who take their kids to drag shows…
https://wapo.st/3TH7p7t
What do I think about Despot DeSantis? Anyone that reads my comments here already knows what I think.