DeSantis Is Not Trump or Even Trump-lite. Many Don’t Get That, and That’s a Danger.

Image courtesy of Politico

Today I want to explore and expand upon an excellent piece by Prof. Heather Cox Richardson about creeping authoritarianism, represented not only by Donald Trump but also by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is often seen as a likely successor to Trump within the GOP. Prof. Richardson had an “aha!” moment while reading the work from 2018 by foreign affairs specialist Zack Beauchamp, who wrote cogently about the stark similarities in the rise of authoritarianism in Hungary under Viktor Orbán and the use of the same playbook by right-wing U.S. politicians like DeSantis.

In Richardson’s view, Donald Trump should be viewed is a “family autocrat” whose primary focus has been on enriching himself and his family. But his victory in 2016 and subsequent hold on the GOP has opened the door to a new kind of danger. She observes,

“Trump’s election brought a new right-wing ideology onto the political stage to challenge the rule of law. He was an autocrat, interested not in making money for a specific class of people, but rather in obtaining wealth and power for himself, his family, and a few insiders. The established Republican Party was willing to back him so long as he could deliver the voters that would enable them to stay in power and continue with tax cuts and deregulation.”

Two types of opportunists arose. The first is exemplified by people like Gov. Abbott of Texas, who has leaned into well-worn “states rights” arguments to strip away abortion rights for women and voting rights for minorities. This is in some way familiar ground. Since the beginning of our Republic, the question of federal versus state power has gripped us, eventually leading to civil war over slavery, a long and bitter period of state terror under Jim Crow and racial segregation, and then through federal intervention during the Civil Rights era beginning in the 1960s. The pendulum is swinging back to the states presently, especially under the current Supreme Court conservative supermajority, but liberals and civil rights advocates in large measure do know how to fight this kind of battle, even if there have been multiple recent set-backs.

Less familiar are the recent and disturbing shifts toward authoritarianism, with which most civil rights activists and the American public at large have far less experience. The example of Hungary is notable and provides an important guide for what we might expect. Beauchamp calls Hungarian authoritarian “soft fascism,” which he describes as “a political system that aims to stamp out dissent and seize control of every major aspect of a country’s political and social life, without needing to resort to ‘hard’ measures like banning elections and building up a police state.” Orbán’s Hungarian state is one where control over the media, and therefore what the citizenry mostly hears, is paired with fear-mongering over refugees and immigrants and a stamping out of both the free press and opposition party organizing. This has resulted in a lock on power for his ruling Fidesz party. 

We in America can see this kind of media effect clearly here as well, with Fox News’s monopoly on the “conservative” narrative creating two entirely different realities within American society. Today, we not only disagree about our politics, we disagree about the very facts that underpin them, including importantly whether there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election. (There was not.) 

Orbán’s philosophical underpinnings for his rule are no secret. He is a longtime proponent of what he calls “Christian democracy” or more tellingly “illiberal democracy.” In a speech in July of 2018, he proudly summed this up, and his defense of illiberalism might well have described the modern GOP:

Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal: it is, if you like, illiberal. And we can specifically say this in connection with a few important issues — say, three great issues. Liberal democracy is in favor of multiculturalism, while Christian democracy gives priority to Christian culture; this is an illiberal concept. Liberal democracy is pro-immigration, while Christian democracy is anti-immigration; this is again a genuinely illiberal concept. And liberal democracy sides with adaptable family models, while Christian democracy rests on the foundations of the Christian family model; once more, this is an illiberal concept.

For these views, Orbán is idolized by the far-right in America, with media personalities like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson lionizing him and openly supporting the export of his brand of “illiberal democracy” to the United States. On May 18 of this year, CPAC (the Conservative Political Action Conference), which is the largest and most influential gathering of “conservatives” anywhere, will hold its meeting in Budapest with Orbán as the keynote speaker.

Beauchamp warns that Hungary is “what could happen when a ruthless, anti-minority populist backed by a major political party is allowed to govern unchecked.” He adds, “Americans need to pay attention.” Orbán’s grip on power tightened after he successfully pressured private media corporations to sell their assets either to the state or to oligarchs aligned with his party. (This is perhaps why the Twitter sale to yet another American oligarch is so chilling to many, and why the succession of Lachlan Murdoch as Fox News CEO cementing an even more conservative bent to the organization is worrisome as well.) Orbán used the power of the state to withhold government advertising dollars from certain media companies, to block mergers that would allow outlets to expand, and to hit his opponents with punitive taxes on ad revenue. 

It is not hard to see how a similar playbook is being tested in places like Florida, where the legislature recently fired a warning shot, albeit a clumsy one, across the bow of Disney, one of the state’s largest employers, for having dared oppose the “Don’t Say Gay” law. This bill, by the way, was modeled after one passed in Hungary that banned the teaching of LGBTQ+ content. At DeSantis’s urging, the state passed a law to strip Disney of its special tax district status, by which it develops and maintains its unique properties, in retaliation for its opposition to the law. And while that move is likely to be tied up in the courts, the chilling effect that law has on other companies cannot be discounted. Oppose DeSantis at your own peril, the bill might well have said out loud.

To drive the point home, DeSantis also recently leveraged the culture wars over “Critical Race Theory” and the generalized fear that parents have been led to feel over what and how their children are being taught in schools. His Department of Education, with his blessing, moved to ban over 40 percent of math textbooks in the state. The action is not just performative. It also intentionally sends a strong signal to any who want the state’s lucrative contracts: Stand on our side on this or lose millions of dollars.

Beauchamp felt back in 2018 that it was hard to imagine a military coup succeeding in America or the open overthrow of our national government by fascist forces. He might amend this now after we came perilously close to electoral chaos and martial law back in late 2020 and early 2021. But in the absence of a coup or martial law he notes, “Hungary points to a different scenario: a series of changes to electoral rules and laws imposed over time that might individually be defensible but in combination with corruption and demagogic populism creates a new system — one that appears democratic but functionally is not.”

This is indeed what is happening across much of red state America. The redrawing of political boundaries after the 2010 census resulted in Republican supermajorities in state legislatures and the most extreme GOP politicians maintaining a lock on their primaries. Florida is a prime example: While it regularly votes within a few percentage points in statewide elections, its state legislature and congressional delegation are packed with “safe seat” GOP extremists because of the way assembly and congressional district lines are drawn. As I wrote about recently, DeSantis now wants to double down on this with his own newly proposed Congressional maps, which he pushed through against the will of even his own GOP-controlled legislature. These maps would wipe out all but one majority African American congressional district, leaving just a single Black-held seat out of 28 in a state that is nearly 17 percent Black.

Given the dangers and his record to date, DeSantis must be watched carefully and opposed at every move. He has national political ambitions, and if he is ever elected president he would do to the country what he is now doing to Florida, especially with respect to the use of state power to force companies to bow to his will and policies. This is never something Trump was very interested in, perhaps as he and his family were too concerned with lining their own pockets first. DeSantis is far more unafraid to go after and destroy his opposition (recall his crusade against a Covid data whistleblower), to impose state authority over elections (he recently formed an “election security force” answering to him), and to target the most vulnerable in society to bolster his own political power (for example, his ongoing attacks on immigrants and trans youth). Trump toyed with these notions from time to time, but never in the cold, calculated way that DeSantis has deployed them.

While DeSantis lacks Trump’s natural abilities to charm and beguile his followers, he makes up for this in his cynical power grabs and his deft exploitation of weaknesses within our democratic system. In short, DeSantis is no Trump—but as Richardson and Beauchamp warn, he is following the Orbán model and ultimately may become far more dangerous. The first obligation we have in opposing him is to understand how his playbook works and to call elements of it out as soft- or proto-fascist when we see it in operation. This means viewing DeSantis in a very different light than even Trump or men like Gov. Abbott of Texas. As Richardson writes,

Trump’s type of family autocracy is hard to replicate right now, and our history has given us the knowledge and tools to defend democracy in the face of the ideology of states’ rights. But the rise of “illiberal democracy” or “soft fascism” is new to us, and the first step toward rolling it back is recognizing that it is different from Trump’s autocracy or states’ rights, and that its poison is spreading in the United States.

We also have an opportunity this fall to knock DeSantis out of power in Florida, even though he remains very popular there, especially among his aggrieved base. Democrats came to within some 30,000 votes of defeating him four years ago, and a mobilized base (admittedly a tall order in the face of strong headwinds) could achieve it in November. 

The courts are yet another avenue to restrain DeSantis’s power grabs. A recent federal decision struck down many parts of Florida’s egregious voter suppression law as illegal. And DeSantis’s blatantly discriminatory Congressional redistricting maps can still be challenged as racially motivated and unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, even after the Supreme Court gutted so much of the Voting Rights Act.

Above all, we need to educate our fellow citizens about the dangers of Orbán-esque forms of populism and autocracy. There is perhaps no better time to find a receptive audience. We are in a unique period where the horrors of fascist dictatorship are now on full display daily in Ukraine, where big American majorities are worried about the rise of autocratic regimes like Russia, and where there remains a general consensus around the need to shore up democracy and protect it against misinformation, corruption, and oligarchic rule. Less clear but equally vital is the struggle against populist demagoguery, which is really democracy turned in to devour itself, particularly where it targets those perceived as most on the margins of society. 

Trump, Abbott, and DeSantis may be cut from the same cloth as Orbán, but Richardson is correct that DeSantis is the one who waves his in a similar manner. It’s time to call out the cancer in Florida, push back hard, and then defeat it resoundingly before it metastasizes into something we can no longer contain.