Aug.11

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Dem 51

   

GOP 49

DeSantis Fascism Alert: A Whole New World

We've said it before, and we will undoubtedly say it again: Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is a frightening man. There is, first of all, his comfort with implementing his political agenda through violent means. In just the past week, he has said he would like to launch drone strikes against Mexican cartels, and also that on his first day in office as president, he would "start slitting throats" of employees of the federal bureaucracy. The first threat was literal, the second figurative, but both speak to DeSantis' "maniacal psychopath" tendencies, to borrow the characterization used by (non-violent) conservative Bill Kristol.

On top of that, DeSantis is plenty comfortable with abusing democratic norms, and using every loophole he can find in order to impose his will and punish his enemies. The latest news comes out of Orlando, which is ground zero for the Governor's culture war. This particular story doesn't involve Disney, however. It involves State Attorney Monique Worrell, who is now suspended, on DeSantis' orders.

According to a statement issued by DeSantis' office, Worrell was suspended for "neglect of duty and incompetence," which means that, in his view, she was supposedly not hard enough on defendants. This doesn't come close to passing the smell test, for a number of reasons:

• The Governor has exercised this particular prerogative only once before, and that other occasion was to punish a political opponent.
  
  
• Worrell just so happens to be the only Black, female State Attorney in Florida.
  
  
• Worrell is so "incompetent" that she won her last election with 67% of the vote.
  
  
• The man slated to replace Worrell is a far-right member of the Federalist Society and a friend of DeSantis.
  
  
• When DeSantis announced the news, he was flanked by two Florida sheriffs, who proceeded to display memes mocking Worrell while the Governor smirked. This hardly seems the behavior, or the tone, one would expect in dealing with serious corruption. As far as we know, then-Senator Sam Ervin never once held a press conference where he showed pictures of Richard Nixon with the head replaced by a penis, and the label "Tricky Dick."
  
  
• Somehow, some way, Fox had the story up roughly 5 minutes before DeSantis' press conference commenced.
  
  
• DeSantis' presidential campaign is in a tailspin, and he needs high-profile opportunities to show that he's tough on wokeness, tough on crime, and tough on people who are not white.

If any one of these seven things were true, then maybe we could squint carefully and see how the move might possibly be legitimate. Possibly even if two of the seven were true. But all seven? No, way.

Anyhow reinventing Florida as a site of violence, suppression of democracy, racial purity, draconian punishments for crimes, appeals to anger, cronyism, etc.? Again, those are among the key signifiers of fascism. We don't like writing that, but it is what it is. (Z)