Robert Hubbell writes a thoughtful, informative blog. I’m posting this as part of my personal project to understand the new face of white supremacy. White supremacy has always been there, simmering below the surface. Trump invited them to show their faces and step into the daylight. They did, and DeSantis is sending them signals that he wants to be their champion.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has set his anti-education sites on Florida’s state colleges. Through a series of political and legal maneuvers, he has ceded control over Florida’s state colleges to ultra-conservative culture warriors like Christopher Rufo. In short order, DeSantis has announced that he will rid Florida state colleges and universities of curricula not “rooted in Western tradition” or that “compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality.”
Amid the torrent of reporting on Ron DeSantis’s attack on critical race theory and intersectionality, the quiet part is often left unsaid. So let me say it: DeSantis’s educational agenda is code for racism and white supremacy. (Other parts of his agenda seek to erase the dignity and humanity of LGBTQ people.) DeSantis’s invocation of “Western tradition” is meant to suppress knowledge regarding the people (and contributions) of Asia, Africa, South America, Oceania, and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. See Talking Points Memo, DeSantis Makes 2024 Ambitions Clear As He Pours Gasoline On His ‘Woke’ Education Fire.
Given DeSantis’s generalized ignorance, his call to focus on “Western tradition” is a slippery slope that will inevitably lead to the discussion of unpleasant truths about America. For example, the enslavement of Black people was a “tradition” in North America for 246 years—and the abolition of that evil practice is relatively recent (155 years ago). So, a college course that honestly addresses the Western “traditions” of North America should include an examination that the role of slavery played in the economic, social, and political development of America.
But DeSantis isn’t stopping at converting Florida’s colleges and universities into re-education camps in the worst traditions of the USSR. He is seeking to up-end centuries of “Western tradition” embodied in the Constitution and the English common law: the requirement of a unanimous jury to impose capital punishment. DeSantis has floated the idea that a less-than-unanimous jury verdict can impose a sentence of death—an unconstitutional proposal designed to inflict the death penalty on more Black and Latino Americans. See Vox, Ron DeSantis wants to make it much easier for the state to kill people.
DeSantis is willing to do all this because he wants to capture Trump’s loyal base—which is the only hope that DeSantis has of becoming a credible candidate. As Trump becomes mired in criminal prosecutions, DeSantis will become emboldened and radicalized beyond his already extremist views. Doing so ignores the lessons of the 2022 midterms: persuadable Americans are done with Trump and his MAGA extremism. Like all military generals, Ron DeSantis is fighting the last war (the presidential election of 2020) and has failed to heed the tectonic shift that occurred in the midterms.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Re-education camps”…sounds like what Hitler had in store for so many who needed to be re-educated before being gazed.
Hitler didn’t run re-education camps. He gassed dissidents. Stalin and Mao ran such camps. It’s a Communist tactic.
If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and ruins your lawn with poop like a duck, well, it’s a duck. Or in this case an ambitious sociopathic white supremacist.
In the underbelly of DeSantis’ scourge is white supremacy. Conservatives are rattled to the core about shifting demographics that threaten the premier status of the aggrieved white male. His intolerant campaign intends to restore the pecking order of the 1950s when women, people of color and anyone with a gender issue kept quiet and suffered in silence.
I have no doubt that Texaas Governor Abbot will soon follow the lead of DeSantis and set up college/university “Re-Education Camps”. Two peas in a pod.
Retired teacher you absolutely nailed what’s driving the bus with all the recent attacks from the Right on Education and other topics – “Conservatives are rattled to the core about shifting demographics that threaten the premier status of the aggrieved white male. ” This Brookings article supports the shifting demographics you reference- “The US will become ‘minority white’ in 2045, Census projects Youthful minorities are the engine of future growth” https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/ “Minority white” tipping points differ by age Because minorities as a group are younger than whites, the minority white tipping point comes earlier for younger age groups. As shown in Figure 3, the new census projections indicate that, for youth under 18–the post-millennial population–minorities will outnumber whites in 2020. For those age 18-29–members of the younger labor force and voting age populations–the tipping point will occur in 2027.”
At the same time society is becoming more secular with non-religious membership reaching over 50% for the first time in 2021. The Christian Nationalists are a backlash to this trend. Like biased white men, religious groups would like to turn back the hands of time.
Retired Teacher— Agree again-“At the same time society is becoming more secular with non-religious membership reaching over 50% for the first time in 2021”. “Religious groups would like to turn back the hands of time.” 70% of women who acknowledge having an abortion also admit to having a religious affiliation. IMO I believe this is one of the major reasons they worked so hard to overturn Roe.
If someone asked me what Western Tradition meant, I’d reply with,
“Western Tradition is NOT going shopping for Santa Claus day, Easter egg hunts, and eating Turkeys’ on a holiday called Thanksgiving.
“Yes, Western Tradition is European colonialism, supporting cutthroat capitalism through slave wages without health care, allowing only Caucasian men to hold power, starting wars to generate profits for Western weapons industries, starting religious wars and purges (Inquisitions) to favor Western Christianity over all other religions… et al.”
Remember the flurry of chaos in the first days of the Idiot’s “administration”? Now they know where they went wrong. They’re not going to make those mistakes again. And the target is and always will be “the administrative state.” In other words, functioning government as we sometimes knew it. DeSantis is doing this more effectively at the state level. He openly wants to attract like minded cult members to move to Florida (we have Florida state-funded ads here in Ohio) and wants the others to leave or stay quietly in their places, happy with what they get.
This is supposed to be public, outrageous, and spark controversy that will drown out other, more important substantive acts and selective law enforcement. It is a signal to friends and enemies alike. I paraphrase another comment I made a while ago, partly in response to a question posed by Diane:
At the end of 1933 there were 27,000 people in concentration camps. One year later there were 3,000. People fell in line quickly. May 1, 1933 was proclaimed a Labor Day of sorts, something that could never get done in the previous history of Weimar. It is demonstrative of how quickly the first phase of Gleichschaltung was; how rapidly people fell in line to the new order largely based on fear of state-sponsored terror. They targeted groups intended for concentration camps who were primarily outspoken Communists, but include all political opposition, even elected representatives. Although many of those 27,000 were tortured to death, the real goal was to treat them all brutally and then send them back into society as a warning to others of what might happen to them. This was incredibly effective. Workers districts that had been plastered with Communist flags in early March 1933 all had Nazi flags just two months later. When they saw their broken comrades and friends come back, they knew they either had to fall in line publicly and be very careful privately if they wanted to continue to resist.
So, as counterintuitive as it sounds, yes, there were only 3,000 in the camps by the end of 1934. This happened for two reasons: the overall size of original targets of repression shrank dramatically because the terror of the first year had been so effective, and it was a year of Nazi terror reorganization from a group of public thugs to one of an intricate bureaucracy that created thousands of Schreibtischtäter, literally desk-perpetrators. Eichmann became the poster boy for this concept. One who makes the decisions and orders but is far away from implementation.
Greg,
And it’s much worse now than in the 30s as the technology we have will make it easier to track people – their interests, movements and with whom they associate.
Brilliantly, perfectly said, Greg.
Addendum to comment above: There is another, more ominous act than Gleichschaltung called Selbstgleichschaltung, the self-alignment of behavior without legal or official pressure, in order to avoid it. But rather than satisfy, it gives short-term appeasement and demands more concessions, not the new status quo. It goes with what I describe above, the violence and threat of it to intimidate and change policy. The College Board just caved to DeSantis. That’s as good an example of Selbstgleichschaltung that I can come up with now. But there are many and will be many, many more. Look to Florida as the test market.
“Selbstgleichschaltung, the self-alignment of behavior without legal or official pressure, in order to avoid it. ”
That exactly describes what the so-called liberal media has been doing for years. In fact, it is often done the most by reporter/stenographers who believe themselves to be very liberal and are positive that only by aligning themselves with the far right (i.e. amplifying and legitimizing their false narratives) can they be “fair and balanced” (i.e. avoid criticism) and only by presenting truths that don’t support the false narratives of Republicans as “maybe-true, maybe-not opinions by partisan Democrats” can they be “fair and balanced.”
Self-alignment in support of those who are in positions to either help or hurt you seems to be the “new journalism” of too many entrenched reporter-stenographers. Thus they ignore those who challenge the false narratives of the right because reporting the truth when the right wing doesn’t like the truth is not in their self-interest. It’s very possible that is the shocking reason why Eliza Shapiro so nastily dismisses everything that Diane Ravitch says without even trying to understand it. Her own self-interest is not served by trying to understand Diane’s evidence-based positions, and her self-interest is very much served by her simply claiming that her reasons for not bothering to listen have to do with Diane being partisan while her many pro-charter sources apparently never are (to her). The fact that presenting her pro-charter sources as being far more credible than Diane Ravitch is in Eliza Shapiro’s professional self-interest speaks for itself — Eliza Shapiro should own it. (And apparently she proudly does when she nastily attacks Diane).
Selbstgleichschaltung describes why the NYT could publish multiple “her email” stories daily for months in 2016, write a big story saying Trump was totally exonerated by the FBI in 2016, spend the last 2 years giving credibility to right wing folks like William Barr, John Durham, DeSantis, Ted Cruz, et al and still have NYT reporters (and former reporters like Jeff Gerth) telling themselves that the NYT is extremely biased against Trump and in favor of Democrats. In the end, it’s about self-interest over practicing real journalism.
Very astute point. Because most of today’s media and, unfortunately, most of the young people who strive to work in it one day, access is more important than journalism. If one keeps bowing and making concessions, especially to untruthful or slanted agendas, you keep access and get exclusive invites. See NBC’s Kirsten Welker’s “reporting” for one of the most pertinent examples today.
“and has failed to heed the tectonic shift that occurred in the midterms”
Tectonic shift? No, not at all except in the minds of a few of the self-deceived Dimocraps.
A demographic shift is occurring as AlwaysLearning points out which will eventually seal the fate of the regressive xtian fundie theocrats. They will attempt to take down as many of the “others” as possible on their way to permanent, insipid and impotent status.
Duane,
I agree with you. There was no “tectonic shift.” Where Dems won, it was often by a tiny margin. Katie Hobbs won in AZ by a tiny margin over a totally unqualified election denier. Hobbs has government experience, and is serious. Yet she won by a tiny margin. Many election deniers were re-elected, like the execrable Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
Also agree completely. Can you imagine how horrible the world would be today (we’ve just put it off a couple of years) with the loss of just a little bit of hubris? Recent poll analysis reveals that ticket splitters defeated Lake/Masters. Does anyone really believe that if republicans had put Glenn Youngkin/Nancy Mace candidates up in Arizona that they still would have split their tickets? Not me. I’ve seen their state legislature and the kooks who intimidate whenever they can.
The quiet part is left unsaid.
The effectiveness of
“food for thought” isn’t
determined by where it’s
served. If the institutional
cafeteria doesn’t serve your
“just deserts”, you are still
free to dine elsewhere.
The co-opted NYT take on this:
“DeSantis Takes on the Education Establishment, and Builds His Brand”
I am copying and pasting from some NYT critics on twitter:
@jordanzakarin
This may be the worst headline I’ve ever read from any major national news outlet.
The Times transforms DeSantis’s aggressive, state-sponsored campaign of bigotry into a savvy brand-building venture by an edgy politician.”
@craigcalcaterra
Ron DeSantis: ushers in book-bannings, state-sponsored bigotry, and appoints conservative lackeys to destroy a college.
New York Times: Bad boy Ronny is building his brand and taking on liberal orthodoxy!
It’s pathological at this point.”
@ijbailey
“DeSantis Takes On the Education Establishment” – instead of saying he’s attacking the most vulnerable students with bigotry – sounds like something straight out of his presidential campaign literature but is sold by the “liberal media” as objective.”
@victorerikray
The Times branding DeSantis’ anti-Black plan to destroy of Florida’s education system as “taking on the educational establishment” at the start of Black History Month is a bit much.”
@tzimmer_history
A staunchly illiberal politician is ruthlessly pursuing his authoritarian agenda. Yet what the New York Times wants us to take away from the situation in Florida is that DeSantis is taking on the “establishment” and successfully building “his brand.”
Enough said. Very scary times. More fascist-complicit reporting by the NYT.
There’s another, somewhat related, German word that is appropriate here: Gleichgültig – indifferent, uninterested, apathetic, impassive, trivial, immaterial, couldn’t care less.
NYCPSP,
I agree. The headline about DeSantis “taking on the education establishment” was an outrage when in fact he was seizing control of higher education and imposing his bigoted views on every public college and university.
Thank you, Diane.