DeSantis, Florida, and the seeds of Fascism

 

Heather Cox Richardson:

The attempt to take over schools and reject the equality that lies at the foundation of liberal democracy is now moving toward the more general tenets of authoritarianism. This week, one Republican state senator proposed a bill that would require bloggers who write about DeSantis, his Cabinet officers, or members of the Florida legislature, to register with the state; another proposed outlawing the Democratic Party.

DeSantis and those like him are trying to falsify our history. They claim that the Founders established a nation based on traditional hierarchies, one in which traditional Christian rules were paramount. They insist that their increasingly draconian laws to privilege people like themselves are simply reestablishing our past values.

But that’s just wrong. Our Founders quite deliberately rejected traditional values and instead established a nation on the principle of equality. 

 

NBC: Florida bill would require bloggers who write about the governor and legislators to register with the state

The bill proposed by Republican state Sen. Jason Brodeur would also require bloggers who write about state officials to disclose who is paying them and how much.

 

  

  . . . the seeds of Fascism begin in fear & contempt . . . 

Curmudgucation - The DeVos School Privatization Plan Turns Twenty-One: 

Way back in 2002, Dick DeVos, husband of Betsy, was at the Heritage Foundation, where he was introduced by former education secretary Bill Bennett. In a speech there, he laid out strategy for the dismantling of public education and replacing them with a privatized system. 

It would, he said, have to be done on the state level, with a certain amount of stealth. 

We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities. Many of the activities and the political work that needs to go on will go on at the grass roots. It will go on quietly and it will go on in the form that often politics is done . . .

 

Daily Beast - Batshit Bill Would Force Bloggers Who Write About DeSantis to ‘Register’ With the State: 

The bill, which sounds better suited to Soviet Russia than the Land of the Free, includes a dizzying list of requirements. If a blogger writes more than one blog post, they would have to submit monthly reports that disclose, among other things, the amount of compensation received for each post. Failure to do so would result in fines of at least $2,500 per article, and a subsequent requirement to file a notice of failure to file.

 

DeSatan Is A Stinking Fascist

Continued depravity by Republican Party in the longest state to hang precariously off the bottom of the eastern United States is reaching a fever pitch!

Governor Ron DeSantis leads his merry band of womb wreckers into “F*ck Free Speech” territory, inspiring the  one-upsmanship that is currently on display by  white nationalist legislators in New Disney—I mean Florida.

 

Holocaust Encyclopedia

Starting in 1934, it was illegal to criticize the Nazi government. Even telling a joke about Hitler was considered treachery. People in Nazi Germany could not say or write whatever they wanted.  

Book Burning

 

Herald Tribune: Banning books has nothing to do with liberty | Editorial

There are public school classrooms in Florida where teachers wrapped paper around bookshelves to shield the books from students. Why? If one of the books were to fall afoul of the new state law on book appropriateness, the teacher could face a felony charge.

Some, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, call this liberty and freedom.

To us, it looks anything but.

Book banning are two words that don't partner with the ideas of liberty and freedom. 

 

(How) Fascism Is When People Don’t Want You to Exist - Umair Haque

DeSantis banned…teaching…books…words…classes. He’s realized that, well, why bother with any of the niceties of democracy at all — let’s just ban people we don’t like from existing. Let’s disappear them — first, ideologically, in the mind, then socially, as in, they’re not really allowed to exist…and it hardly takes a genius to see where that particular road ends. 

Meanwhile, the new “Women’s Health and Safety Bill” makes it a crime for women to…use the internet. Remember when I pointed out that it wasn’t just “the end of Roe” that the Supreme Court had brought about, but had effectively eviscerated the rights women have, the basic ones, from expression to association to speech to privacy? Now — think about this — just using the internet in ways the GOP doesn’t want you to is to be a crime. More...