Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Florida' is associated with 1 posts.

Soft Fascism Florida-Style: Ron DeSantis’s War on Amendment 4

A fas­cist to the core. That’s how retired US gen­er­al Mark Mil­ley, who direct­ly served Trump as the chair of joint chiefs of staff, as described in Bob Wood­ward’s upcom­ing book. As Mil­ley put it, “He is the most dan­ger­ous per­son ever. I had sus­pi­cions when I talked to you about his men­tal decline and so forth, but now I real­ize he’s a total fas­cist. He is now the most dan­ger­ous per­son to this coun­try.” And while they may be true, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that Don­ald Trump is far from the only aspir­ing fas­cist in con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. The Sched­ule F/Project 2025 scheme orches­trat­ed by the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy is a group effort, after all. And as we’re going to see, Flori­da Gov­er­nor Ron DeSan­tis has been lay­ing the ground­work for the kind of ‘soft fas­cism’ that we should antic­i­pate a lot more of under a sec­ond Trump pres­i­den­cy. The kind of ‘soft fas­cism’ that is shaped less by Trump’s per­son­al mad­ness and more by the theo­crat­ic ambi­tions of the move­ments that have long ani­mat­ed the Repub­li­can Par­ty. Which brings us to DeSan­tis’s war on Amend­ment 4, a bal­lot ini­tia­tive that would enshrine abor­tion rights in Flori­da’s state con­sti­tu­tion up to the moment of via­bil­i­ty, com­ing months after Flori­da Repub­li­cans put in place a restric­tive new 6 week abor­tion ban. After first try­ing to get Amend­ment 4 thrown off the bal­lot, the DeSan­tis admin­is­tra­tion has pro­ceed­ed to spend tax­pay­er funds on an anti-Amend­ment 4 pub­lic mes­sag­ing cam­paign includes tv and radio ads. An unprece­dent­ed inves­ti­ga­tion into the Amend­ment 4 bal­lot sig­na­tures has also been opened, with police show­ing up at peo­ple’s homes to con­firm they signed the peti­tion. Local elec­tion super­vi­sors are also under sus­pi­cion of ver­i­fy­ing invalid sig­na­tures. And as we’re going to also see, there’s no pos­si­ble way this inves­ti­ga­tion can get the Amend­ment 4 removed from the bal­lot even if it suc­ceed­ed in reveal­ing some fraud. It’s pure intim­i­da­tion. More recent­ly, the Flori­da gov­ern­ment has threat­ened tele­vi­sion sta­tion employ­ees with crim­i­nal charges if they air a pro-Amend­ment 4 ad. Why? Because the state claims the ads — which raise ques­tions about whether or not wom­en’s health is ade­quate­ly pro­tect­ed under the new 6 week abor­tion law — pose a threat to pub­lic health because the new law in no way endan­gers women. Yes, if you run an ad sug­gest­ing the new Flori­da abor­tion law — one of the strictest in the US — could put women at risk, you could be crim­i­nal­ly charged. So if you were won­der­ing how the GOP is plan­ning on han­dling pub­lic dis­con­tent over the unpop­u­lar pol­i­cy that are about to be imposed on the pub­lic at large, look to Flori­da. Ron DeSan­tis is one of the Coun­cil for Nation­al Pol­i­cy’s favorite politi­cians for a rea­son.