We have a lot to learn from Brazil/Lula

 

Kuttner on TAP

What Brazil Teaches America

Actually delivering for working people matters. It also matters whether elites support democratic institutions.

The two-point victory of progressive Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva over neofascist incumbent Jair Bolsonaro prompts comparisons with the containment of neofascism in the U.S. But let’s draw the right lessons. One is that Lula had an immense stock of goodwill to draw on from Brazil’s working people because of the stunning program of practical, easy-to-grasp help that he delivered during his two terms of office between 2003 and 2010. His program included the famous Bolsa Família, which gave cash grants to poor families as long as their kids attended school and got vaccinated. It was the world’s largest direct cash program and thanks to the Bolsa, Brazilian poverty under Lula dropped by 27 percent. Lula also worked closely with Brazil’s unions so that gains went to the middle class as well as the poor, and he began reversing deforestation in the Amazon. The Wall Street Journal quotes a lab technician, Germano Silva, recalling how under Lula’s presidency he could afford to travel by airplane for the first time instead of taking a long bus ride. He put three children through college, thanks to a new government scholarship program enacted under Lula. "My vote is one of gratitude," he said. Until Biden managed to get a one-year universal basic income for parents, Democrats delivered nothing remotely close over the past three Democratic presidencies. They are now having to rebuild credibility with cynical working-class voters, starting about 40 points down. Lula, by contrast, delivered the kind of unapologetic help to ordinary Brazilian people that a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren might have delivered. On Sunday, the people reciprocated. The second lesson, sadly, is that Brazil’s democratic institutions are better bolstered than ours. Lula has been certified as the winner in a direct popular vote, and there is no counterpart to the Electoral College or the formal certification by the U.S. House to invite mischief. Even so, Lula does not take office until January 1, and there has been conjecture that Bolsonaro will find ways to overturn the election. However, unlike in the U.S. in Bush v. Gore, the courts would oppose that. And the military, which supported coups in the 20th century as recently as 1964, leading to a brutal 21-year dictatorship, is no fan of Bolsonaro. A New York Times piece in August quoted an interview with Luís Roberto Barroso, a Supreme Court justice and Brazil’s former elections chief, about the last successful coup in Brazil, in 1964: "The middle class supported it. Business people supported it. The press supported it. And the U.S. supported it. Well, none of these players support a coup now." Also in August, more than a million Brazilians, including former presidents, leading academics, lawyers, and pop stars, signed a letter defending the country’s voting systems. Business leaders released a similar letter. Another instructive comparison is the role of corruption in both countries. In the U.S., working-class MAGA voters look past Trump’s gross corruption because in the absence of much practical economic help from Democrats, they are convinced that Trump is on their side culturally. In Brazil, Lula served time for an alleged corruption scandal, a conviction that was eventually overturned. This history didn’t bother a majority of Brazilian voters, who have proof positive that Lula is on your side. One further comparison is the role of economic elites. In Brazil, the business class backed the 1964 coup and many corporate and financial leaders backed Bolsonaro in 2018 to end the long-dominant role of Lula’s Brazilian Workers’ Party. This time, Bolsonaro’s personal instability and failed policies, including Brazil’s COVID disaster, gave just enough corporate leaders pause. In the U.S., corporate elites don’t much like Trump, but they back Republicans down the line. Democrats have a lot to learn from Lula.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Poor People's Campaign,

 

Eric Guerra - Campaign

 

Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas: Texas: Two Billionaires Want to Destroy Public Edu...

Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas: Texas: Two Billionaires Want to Destroy Public Edu...: Posting this piece by Diane Ravitch together with the actual, must-see CNN documentary titled "Deep in the Pockets of Texas" that&...

Elect Eric Guerra.

 

 

Issues

Fighting for Everyone to Have a Successful Future

Eric is running for Assembly to deliver for our neighborhoods and all of California — so that everyone has a chance to succeed. He will work on issues that matter most to our community, including:

Ensuring that our children get a top-level education from pre-k through college and that college is affordable for all families

Tackling the housing crisis by addressing housing affordability, including investments in permanent housing, rental assistance, and first-time homebuyer loans

Helping our economy and workforce by supporting small and mid-size businesses — during and after the pandemic

 

For details: Go to

https://www.electericguerra.com/issues

 

 

Teaching about Race and Racism

 

Why the Narrative That Critical Race Theory ‘Makes White Kids Feel Guilty’ Is a Lie Ursula Wolfe-Rocca and Christie Nold  August 2, 2022 The Heckinger Report Our classrooms are not sites of demoralized children who hate themselves and their country. Students are hungry for explanations — real explanations — for the world they have inherited.

, studentreasures.com

The wave of state legislation and school board policies restricting what educators can and can’t teach shows no signs of slowing. These efforts rely on a narrative that learning about the history of racism and white supremacy harms students — particularly white students, leaving them feeling guilty and ashamed. We emphatically reject this narrative; it in no way matches our combined 30-plus years of experience as public school teachers. It is not teaching about racism that endangers our students, but the curricular gag-rules that seek to perpetuate their miseducation. Our use of the term “miseducation” comes from the 1933 Carter G. Woodson text, “The Mis-education of the Negro.” Woodson argued that the struggle for education was not just about access, but also curricula. How could formal education be liberatory for a child if “the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies?” Woodson was also clear that racist curricula affect Black and white children. To those who claimed children were too young to confront the history of racism in the classroom, Woodson replied: These misguided teachers ignore the fact that the race question is being brought before Black and white children daily in their homes, in the streets, through the press and on the rostrum. How, then, can the school ignore the duty of teaching the truth while these other agencies are playing up falsehood? We are white women, who teach mostly white kids, in two of the whitest states — Oregon and Vermont — in the country. Woodson’s argument — that all children deserve a curriculum that challenges the lie of white supremacy — has deeply shaped how we view our role as educators. Our identities and educational genealogies have made us particularly alert to the way white children have become props in the recent onslaught of miseducation policies.  Woodson asserted that the prevailing narratives in too many U.S. schools harmed Black and white children, albeit differently. Both groups were inculcated with scripts of Black racial inferiority and white racial superiority. Two sides of the same old and ugly lie. To avoid confronting this lie, the narrative of history lessons making white kids feel guilty has taken hold. Many of the recent “anti-CRT” bills ban any curricula that could lead an individual to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or another form of psychological distress solely because of the individual’s race or sex.” A Heritage Foundation commentary endorsing the laws asked, “How would you feel if your child came home from school and said her teacher had told her that everything that happens in the world is ‘racist’ and that she’s part of the problem because of the color of her skin?” The universal language here only thinly veils the assumed white subject for whom this concern is whipped up. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was more explicit in an appearance last fall on ABC’s “The View”: "One of the worries that I have about the way that we’re talking about race is that it . . . seems so big that somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past. . . . What we don’t do is make seven- and 10-year-olds feel that they are somehow bad people because of the color of their skin." We have been among those amplifying the now-common retort: “If kids of color are old enough to experience racism, white kids are old enough to learn about it.” But this formulation has limitations. Early in their encounters with the history of systemic oppression, white students sometimes express denial, disbelief, anger and yes, guilt. But the right would have you believe that those feelings are the end of the story rather than its beginning. We are lucky to work with students over the course of a school year or longer. Our lessons are not one-offs. There is space and time for students’ initial reactions to be named, understood and analyzed — and often transformed. In our experience, for many white students, learning about systemic racism is in fact not harmful, but generative. When students express denial or disbelief, we assist them in finding the resources they need to verify facts. We might ask, “I wonder why some of us struggled to believe this was true? Any ideas?” Through discussion, it is possible for students to understand that what they have been taught — and not taught — shapes their feelings about what they are learning now. We can also introduce a key idea for all critical consumers of information: Knowledge is contested. There are dominant narratives and counternarratives, state-sanctioned history (i.e., textbooks) and marginalized histories. When students understand that there is a struggle to define the past, they are less likely to deny history and more likely to investigate with curiosity why they know what they know and how they came to know it. When students respond with anger — “How could this have happened?” “Why did I never know about this before now?” — we again lean on questions. We might ask, “How would the world be different if more children were learning this history earlier and more fully?” and “So now that you know this history, what do you want to do with it?” When young white people display signs of guilt or shame — we have had students say things like “white people suck” or “I am embarrassed to be white” — our job is to help them process those feelings and foster a healthier sense of self and identity. In a recent podcast, the writer Clint Smith suggested that it is possible to reckon with the truth without allowing it to define your present beliefs. “You are not defined by the decisions that your great-great-grandfather made,” he said. “What would it look like to say, ‘My great-great-grandfather fought in this [Civil] War for a cause that runs counter to everything that I believe in today. And my family is not defined by that’?” Not only can this create a healthy separation between the actions of our ancestors and ourselves, but it also invites us to look for models of white people throughout history who acted for justice. These examples help students imagine and build an identity untethered from the perpetuation of racism. If one were to believe Fox News, a curriculum like ours — one that regularly and explicitly examines white supremacy’s manifestations, past and present — is a recipe for demoralized children who hate themselves and their country. But our classrooms are not sites of doom and gloom. Students are hungry for explanations — real explanations — for the world they have inherited, and in our experience, they often feel relieved to gain insight into why things are the way they are. Moreover, our curriculum emphasizes the varied, powerful and creative ways that people have resisted oppression and built justice. We are careful to offer students models of action, examples of people just like them who have tried to change the world and sometimes succeeded. No, our classrooms are not incubators of cynicism. They are brimming with curiosity, conversation and, yes, joy. To defeat the efforts to miseducate our children, we will all need to do our part: teachers, school administrators, school boards, labor unions, professional and community organizations, elected officials, parents, caregivers and students. We need to testify at school board meetings and state department of education hearings, write letters to the editor and op-eds and advocate to unseat the elected officials who are the architects of these attacks. And for those of us who are white, we need to know that when we emphatically reject the narrative of the guilty white child by telling our stories, the right’s lie will be obvious: Their concern is not that children will feel bad when learning about the fight for racial justice, but that children will feel good. Young white people with the capacity to act in solidarity with movements for justice are dangerous to white supremacy and its guardians. Those are the real stakes — not white children feeling guilty, but white children armed with truth, history and a righteous desire to work with others to change the world. Christie Nold (she/her) has been teaching in Vermont public schools for eight years. Prior to her experience in public education she worked at Shelburne Farms, an organization dedicated to education for sustainability, and taught in a village school in Nedryhailiv, Ukraine. Ursula Wolfe-Rocca (she/her) taught high school in a suburb of Portland, Oregon for 20 years. She is an organizer and writer with the Zinn Education Project and on the editorial board of “Rethinking Schools” magazine. This story about critical race theory was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter. Teaching About Racism

RACIAL VOLCANO EXPLODES IN LOS ANGELES.

RACIAL VOLCANO EXPLODES IN LOS ANGELES.

BILL FLETCHER AND BILL GALLEGOS.

 

LOS ANGELES—The site of huge urban uprisings in 1965 and 1992 is once again a city on fire. The current blaze was ignited by revelations about an October 2021 meeting between three Chican@ members of the Los Angeles City Council and the Chican@ head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor regarding the redistricting of LA’s council districts. In a now-infamous conversation, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, racist remarks were directed against Blacks, Indigenous Oaxacans who live in the city’s Koreatown, Jews, and Armenians. 

 

One of the most outrageous utterances was council president Nury Martinez’s reference to the Black child of white LA councilor Mike Bonin as a “changuito” (monkey) who needed a “beat down.” The political thrust of the discussion was creating new Latin@ council districts—largely at the expense of existing districts that have Black representation. 

 

The three city council members, Martinez, Kevin de Léon, and Gil Cedillo have issued public apologies—and Martinez resigned from the city council on Wednesday. Ron Herrera, the fourth participant in the racist exchange, has resigned as head of the LA Federation of Labor.

 

 

Read more. 

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/racism-los-angeles-city-council/

L.A. Backstory: The History Behind the City Council’s Racist Tirades

L.A. Backstory: The History Behind the City Council’s Racist Tirades: Where did the behind-closed-doors racist garbage from some leading Los Angeles elected officials come from?

The SCTA-Endorsed Candidates for School Board:

The SCTA-Endorsed Candidates for School Board:: Tara Jeane in Area 1; Jasjit Singh in Area 2; Taylor Kayatta in Area 6 In addition, to SCTA, all three candidates have also been endorsed by SEIU Local 1021 which represents the SCUSD classified employees and the Sacramento Central Labor Council, the umbrella organization of the Sacramento area labor unions. The SCTA endorsed candidate […]

Poor People's Campaign. Sat.

 

Join Sacramento rally for National Day of Action Saturday Oct. 15, 10am (gather), 11am (march) Crocker Park: 211 O St., Sacramento CA 95814 Sacramento is the California site for the PPC National Day of Action, when we’ll bring our demands to Main Streets all across the nation. This is a key component of our midterm election campaign to mobilize poor and low-income people and low-wage workers to the polls. Voting rights are on the ballot. Living wages are on the ballot. Reproductive justice is on the ballot. Healthcare is on the ballot. Our climate is on the ballot. On October 15, we'll make them hear us coast to coast! (Photo above by David Solnit.) Let us know if you can be with us for this historic march. We also need volunteers to help organize. Contact us if you can come or lend a hand. Brother Carter: kcwethepeople@gmail.com Steven Payán 530payan@gmail.com

Immigration and Dog Whistle Politics

 On Immigration

 

A Race-Class Narrative About Immigration

Regardless of where we come from, what our color is, or how

we worship, every family wants the best for their children. But

today, certain politicians and their greedy lobbyists are putting

all of our families at risk. They rig the rules to enrich themselves

and avoid paying their fair share of taxes, while they

defund our schools and threaten seniors with cuts to Medicare

and Social Security. Then they turn around and point the finger

for our hard times at new immigrants—even tearing families

apart and losing children. When we reject their scapegoating

and come together across racial differences, we can make this a

nation we’re proud to leave all of our kids—whether we’re white,

Black, or brown, from down the street or across the globe.

 

From Ian Haney Lopez;  Merge Left. 

Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America

A response to Ron DeSantis

Latino/Hispanic/Chicano Heritage Month

 As I contemplate the significance of Hispanic Heritage Month, which began September 15, I can’t help but recall Fredrick Douglass' seminal 1869 speech, “Composite Nation.” In this speech, delivered four years after the Civil War, Douglass outlined a bold vision of a pluralistic America that remains profoundly prescient:

“If we would reach a degree of civilization higher and grander than any yet attained, we should welcome to our ample continent all nations, kindreds and tongues and peoples; and as fast as they learn our language and comprehend the duties of citizenship, we should incorporate them into the American body politic.”

As posted by Congressman Ro Khan

Florida, Texas Dial Up Their War on Immigrants

Florida, Texas Dial Up Their War on Immigrants: Martha’s Vineyard episode spotlights deep disrespect for migrants and broader interstate rifts.

Back to School

 

09/18/22

Back to school

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by Randi Weingarten

President, American Federation of Teachers

I have been crisscrossing the country lately, as students and staff start the new school year. For the first time since March 2020, school feels familiar. There are challenges, of course, including staff shortages and worries about gun violence. But scientific advances and funding from the federal government have given us the tools to address COVID-19. Educators didn’t need to see declines in test scores to know what to do right now: Focus like a laser on helping our kids recover and thrive. Teach them core skills and knowledge, and to think critically. Teachers will need all the support we can give them.

This is the unheralded work that happens in public schools every day, in every community across America. But, too often, ideologues’ scaremongering and sensational headlines divert attention from educators’ dedication and from what is needed to support high-quality teaching and learning for all children.

As extremists are trying to ban books, the AFT is well on our way to giving away 1 million books this year—and we will give another million books to kids and families next year. From Scranton to Socorro, from Nashua to Neshaminy, children are delighting in picking out books of their own. As critics complain about student debt forgiveness, the AFT is working to make higher education accessible without a “debt sentence,” by offering student debt clinics, suing fraudulent loan servicers, and promoting public service loan forgiveness so people can choose professions like teaching without being forever buried in debt. And as extremist politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis make baseless, politically motivated claims that there is “woke indoctrination in our schools” around race and sexuality, educators are doing everything they can to create safe and welcoming environments for students and to help them recover and thrive—academically, socially and emotionally. The AFT’s What Kids and Communities Need campaign is grounded in a simple premise: Teachers want what students need. Those needs are great due to the systemic inequities that have always existed in our schools and society, the trauma and disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the strain of teacher and school staff shortages, and the cynical attacks on educators and schools by extremists.

The message from parents is equally clear: They don’t want culture wars infiltrating our schools. They support honest, age-appropriate teaching of history. Polling shows that parents like their public schools and appreciate educators’ herculean efforts to support students during the pandemic.

This is the time to bring joy and support into our schools, not politics and hate. This is the time to support America’s largest civic institution—our public schools—to bring our divided country together and nurture our children’s and our nation’s healing. Educators and families are leading the way.

Download the Column (788.83 KB)

 

Sen Padilla Endorses Eric Guerra for Assembly

 

U.S. Senator Alex Padilla Endorses Eric Guerra for Assembly 

 
 
Sacramento, CA — The Eric Guerra for Assembly campaign announced today that Eric Guerra has received the powerful endorsement of California U.S. Senator Alex Padilla in the race for Assembly District 10. 
 
“I’m pleased to endorse Eric Guerra for State Assembly. Through his years in public service, Eric has demonstrated that he is not afraid to tackle our toughest problems. In the Assembly, Eric will continue working to uplift working families, support small businesses, protect our environment, and ensure that California remains a place of opportunity for all. I’m confident that Eric will make a tangible difference for the people of Sacramento and Elk Grove, and I look forward to working with him to deliver for all Californians,” said Alex Padilla. 
 
Padilla joins a significant group of endorsements across a wide political spectrum backing Guerra, including the California Democratic Party, Planned Parenthood Advocates Mar Monte, NARAL California, the CA Nurses Association to the California Medical Association and California Labor Federation.
 
“I am honored to receive the endorsement of Senator Alex Padilla,” said Guerra. “Like me, Senator Padilla is a proud son of immigrant parents who came to the United States from Mexico in pursuit of the American Dream. From local office, to the Legislature, to protecting our voting rights as the California Secretary of State, to now serving as our Senator, Alex has always fought for those most in need and continues to fight for our communities — I am honored to have him in my corner.”
 
Guerra has been on the Sacramento City Council since 2015, winning three elections to his District 6 seat. He has championed affordable housing, job creation, childcare resources, air quality improvement, and direct services for families. He has also served on several regional boards and commissions, including the County Planning Commission, the Sacramento Air Quality Management District, and the Sacramento Public Library Authority. 
 
Eric Guerra has called Sacramento home for over 20 years, serving on the CSU Board of Trustees as an appointee of the Governor, President of the Tahoe Park Neighborhood Association, Chairman of the Sacramento County Planning Commission, and President of the Sacramento State Alumni Association. He graduated from Sac State with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and a Master of Public Policy and Administration. With over 18 years working in the Legislature, Eric knows how to get things done. He lives with his wife and sons in the Tahoe Park neighborhood.
 
Visit ElectEricGuerra.com to view a full list of endorsements and to learn more about the campaign. 
 

Is DeSantis of Florida a Fascist ? - check his school programs

 

Robert Reich: Is DeSantis a Fascist?

By dianeravitch

September 4, 2022 //

31

Robert Reich wondered out loud what many people including me have been saying. He posed it as a question. Is Ron DeSantis a fascist? He didn’t even get into the damage that DeSantis has done to teachers, driving them out with low pay, gag orders, censorship, and replacing them with veterans and first responders without experience or knowledge of teaching. He also fired five elected officials and replaced them with cronies. Four were Broward County school board members who were criticized in a state report for the Parkland school shootings, the fifth was a county prosecutor who said he would not prosecute women who sought an abortion. He is on a roll, attacking teachers and anyone he considers WOKE (i.e., concerned about racism, injustice, etc.). He is rising by making hatred his brand.

Robert Reich writes:

I like to tweet. Not as much as I like to write here on Substack where I get to share my thoughts at some length. On Twitter it’s a different kind of conversation, and pace — like speed chess.

Last Tuesday I tweeted: 

Robert Reich @RBReichJust wondering if “DeSantis” is now officially a synonym for “fascist.”August 23rd 20221,626 Retweets10,490 Likes

I was surprised at the outrage my little tweet provoked. 

The Washington Examiner, for example: 

Ultra left-wing elitist and former secretary of labor during the Clinton administration Robert Reich tweetedearlier this week, “Just wondering if ‘DeSantis’ is now officially a synonym for ‘fascist.’” This insulting slur has no basis, of course. This is just what left-wing ideologues do when they discuss Republican politicians who pose any threat to the existence of their political ideology. It’s not grounded in any reality and is a sham. Yet, it never stops any of them from repeating the lie. Anyone the Democrats don’t like or disagree with is a fascist…. Any person using such hyperbolic, unhinged name-calling is not a serious person, and anything they say should not be deemed credible.

Fox News’s digital outlet took umbrage as did many others, with rightwing rage at my tweet ricocheting through the echo-chambers of Republican social media.

Don’t worry about me. After a half-century in and around politics, I’ve got a thick skin. But the size of the blowback on my little tweet makes me think I struck a nerve. 

DeSantis has become a favorite of the GOP’s Fox News-viewing base, and the most likely rival to Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024. The Harvard and Yale educated DeSantis (what dothey teach at Harvard and Yale?) has been called “Trump with a brain.” Lately DeSantis has been campaigning on behalf of Republican election-deniers around the country, including gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania and US Senate candidate JD Vance in Ohio.

DeSantis is the nation’s consummate culture warrior. Consider what he has wrought in Florida: 

• Discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity are now barred in Florida schools. 
• Math textbooks have been rejected for what Florida officials call “indoctrination.” 
• Abortions are banned in Florida after 15 weeks. (DeSantis recently suspended an elected prosecutor who said he would refuse to enforce the anti-abortion law.) 
• A new state office has been created to investigate “election crimes.” 
• Florida teachers are limited in what they can teach about racism and other tragic aspects of American history. DeSantis has got personally involved in local school board races, endorsed and campaigning for 30 board candidates who agree with him (so far, 20 have won outright, five are going to runoffs). 
• Claiming tenured professors in Florida’s public universities are “indoctrinating” students, DeSantis spearheaded a law requiring them to be reviewed every five years. 
• Florida’s Medicaid regulator is considering a rule to block state-subsidized health care from paying for treatments of transgender people. Florida’s medical board recently began the process of banning gender-affirming medical treatment for youths. 
• Disney (Florida’s largest employer) has been stripped of the ability to govern itself for the first time in more than half a century, in retaliation for the company’s opposition to the crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. conversations with schoolchildren. 
• Florida’s congressional map has been redrawn to give Republicans an even bigger advantage.

How much of a reactionary bully is DeSantis? Don’t take my word for it. Here’s a smattering of some of his pearls of (dare I say, fascist) rhetoric: “We are not going to surrender to woke,” DeSantis said last Tuesday. “Florida is the state where woke goes to die.” He has describedan America under assault by left-wing elites, who “want to delegitimize our founding institutions.” DeSantis envisions his job as governor as fighting critical race theory, “Faucian dystopia,” uncontrolled immigration, Big Tech, “left-wing oligarchs,” “Soros-funded prosecutors,” transgender athletes, and the “corporate media.” The state of Florida, DeSantis says, has become a “citadel of freedom.” He charges — using a standard racist dog whistle — that “We’re not letting Florida cities burn down … In Florida, you’re not going to get a slap on the wrist. You are getting the inside of a jail cell.” 

So, back to my tweet: Is it useful to characterize DeSantis’s combination of homophobia, transphobia, racism, and misogyny, along with his efforts to control the public schools and universities and to intimidate the private sector (e.g., Disney), as redolent of fascism? 

America’s mainstream media is by now comfortable talking and writing about “authoritarianism.” Maybe it should also begin using the term “fascism,” where appropriate. (Even Joe Biden, who has never been known as a rhetorical bomb-thrower, last Thursday accused the GOP of “semi-fascism.” A spokesperson for the Republican National Committee called Biden’s comment “despicable.”)

Authoritarianism implies the absence of democracy, a dictatorship. Fascism (the word comes from the Latin fasces, denoting a tightly-bound bundle of wooden rods that typically included a protruding axe blade, adopted by Benito Mussolini in the 1930s to symbolize his total power) is different from mere authoritarianism. Fascism also includes hatred of “them” (people considered different by race or religion, or outside the mainstream, or who were born abroad), control over what people learn and what books they are allowed to read, control over what had been independent government units (school boards, medical boards, universities, and so on), control over women and the most intimate and difficult decisions they’ll ever make, and demands that the private sector support the regime. 

Perhaps my “just wondering” tweet about DeSantis hit the nerve of the fascism now taking root in the Republican Party? 

Or is DeSantis’s own nascent presidential campaign behind the outsized reaction to my tweet? After all, if you’re seeking a presidential nomination in today’s GOP, there’s nothing like an accusation of fascism to rally Trump supporters. It might be a particularly useful strategy if your primary opponent in 2024 will be Trump.

What do you think?