I’m sure you’re aware of Ron DeSantis’s ostentatious battle with Disney over their commitment to LGBT rights and his other initiatives to force the schools, government and businesses of Florida to adhere to his ideological line. He’s very popular.
Aaron Rupar interviewed Ruth ben-Ghiat, expert on authoritarianism for his newsletter today:
DeSantis rode the Trump cult of personality to the Florida governor’s mansion in 2018, but he’s since forged his own brand of right-wing demagoguery. Last Friday, he was on Fox & Friends, which has celebrated him for the stands he’s taken against public health regulations to combat Covid, against the LGBT community, and against liberalism in general. These have won him some passionate adherents, including the Van Zant brothers, who wrote a bizarre DeSantis propaganda anthem that was played on the show.
More importantly, DeSantis’s Fox & Friends appearance gave him a platform to rail against Disney, Florida’s largest employer, for publicly speaking out against “Don’t Say Gay” legislation he signed into law that allows parents to sue teachers who bring up gender or sexual orientation in K-3 classrooms.
“This wokeness will destroy our country,” DeSantis declared.
Florida has a large LGBT population and Disney is a major economic driver for the state, so from one standpoint DeSantis picking a fight with Mickey Mouse doesn’t seem to make much sense. But he has his reasons. To better understand them, I reached out to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert on authoritarianism and professor of history and Italian studies at NYU.
Ben-Ghiat has written about how DeSantis is following in Trump’s authoritarian footsteps for both CNN and MSNBC. Last month, she wrote on her blog (“Lucid”) about how he’s turning Florida “into his own mini-autocracy.”
“DeSantis is a particularly dangerous individual,” she wrote. “He may be up for re-election as governor in Florida, but he has designs on the White House as soon as two years from now. It’s not hard to see what he is doing in Florida as a rehearsal for illiberalism on a national scale.”
A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity, follows.
Aaron Rupar
Why do you think DeSantis warrants so much attention right now?
Ruth Ben-GhiatHe seems to have learned the lessons of Trump the best, absorbed them, and made clear he wants to surpass the master. DeSantis is somebody who at first was this kind of Reaganite, and then he had an epiphany under Trump and became what he called a “pitbull Trump defender.”
For me, he’s an example of how when somebody like Trump is in office, the political system ends up populating with these imitators. What we see now is Trump’s gone, but DeSantis is using all of his agendas and lessons and making them his own and making Florida into this illiberal state.
Aaron Rupar
I know this is a really big question, but when you mentions the “lessons of Trump,” what do you mean?
Ruth Ben-GhiatIt’s a combination of ideological agendas, such as anti-LGBTQ sentiment, and also slogans that worked for Trump and then became slogans of the whole GOP, such as the claims of election fraud.
DeSantis himself always tried to be a bit cagey when he was asked whether Trump won the election or not. He’s the ultimate cynical opportunist, because he clearly assessed what worked for Trump and what was working for the GOP and he decided to double down on those points. You could say that’s what a good politician should do, but it’s creating a state, Florida, that is investing in Trump’s election fraud lies. He has this new office of election security. So it gets elevated into policy.
Also, with a lot of these measures, the point is to turn Americans against each other. He has a voter fraud hotline so you can report people. So it’s a combination of talking points that become policy that work to radicalize people, and work to keep you in power using questionable methods, but also personal style. And here his bullying authoritarian personal style is very important. I’m sure he was always somewhat like this, but this is someone who made a video of himself, as a campaign video, that showed his whole house decked out like it’s a Trump altar.
DeSantis clearly has this very bullying style. You can see that not only in this episode where he told high school students not to wear masks, but in how he speaks to people and how he doesn’t work brook any dissent.
That’s very Trumpian. But again, he sees that this is what makes politicians popular on the right now and he goes full in on it. That’s why I think he’s worth focusing on.
Aaron RuparDuring the Trump years there was obviously lot of concern about and attention to the national drift towards authoritarianism and what Trump represented in that respect. But do you think that the state-level drift toward authoritarianism in Republican-controlled states like Florida is an underrated threat?
Ruth Ben-GhiatI do think that it’s an underrated threat. Trump was able to do certain things, what I call autocratic capture — like remaking federal agencies and hiring corrupt people. And then the model is in a sense being continued and perfected at the state level. And certain states stand out.
Obviously Florida stands out because it has a very dedicated ideological governor. And Texas as well, and there are some others. I really think in DeSantis’s case, because he’s also very clear about seeking national office, it’s like a rehearsal for things that could be then funneled back at the national level. So it would be a completion of what Trump started.
But DeSantis is also dangerous because when you have somebody who’s very toxic like Trump, who’s very extreme in his personal style and has so much baggage, other people who are less unscrupulous seem better. So DeSantis seems palatable in a way that perhaps Trump isn’t. DeSantis doesn’t have the same baggage. For that reason, too, what he’s doing in Florida, we really need to look very closely at it because in the future he could indeed have a chance at the national level, unlike somebody like [Texas governor] Greg Abbott.
I agree. He’s the most dangerous politician in America. He’s distilled the essence of what everyone loves about Trump: he’s a straight up, no frills asshole.