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The concept of “fascism” was originally entered into the Encyclopedia Italiana by Italian philosopher Giovanni Gentile, who stated that “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.” Benito Mussolini would later take credit for the quote as if he had written it himself, but it’s important to note because it outlines the primary purpose of the ideology rather than simply throwing the label around at people we don’t like as a dishonest means to undermine their legitimacy.
Despite the fact that leftists today often attack conservatives as “fascists” because of our desire to protect national boundaries and western heritage, the truth is that all fascism is deeply rooted in leftist philosophies and thinkers.
Mussolini was a long time socialist, a member of the party who greatly admired Karl Marx. He deviated from the socialists over their desire to remain neutral during WWI, and went on to champion a combination of socialism and nationalism, what we now know as fascism. Adolph Hitler was also a socialist and admirer of Karl Marx, much like Mussolini. It is actually hard to find where Marx, the communists and the fascists actually differ from each other – A deeper sense of nationalism seems to be one of the few points of contention.
Though Marx saw the existence of nation states as temporary to the proletariat and to the ruling class, he noted that the industrialists were erasing national boundaries anyway. Marx argues in the Communist Manifesto with some optimism:
“National differences and antagonisms between peoples are already tending to disappear more and more, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, the growth of free trade and a world market, and the increasing uniformity of industrial processes and of corresponding conditions of life.”
Marx saw the development of corporate power as useful and the next necessary step towards socialism, noting that joint-stock companies (corporations) and the credit system are:
“The abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself.”
In other words, corporations are viewed as a tool for the eventual transition to a socialist “Utopia” and the death of free markets. Once again, we see there is very little difference in motive between the political left and the fascists. The natural progression of every form of Marxism, communism, socialism, fascism etc. all ultimately lead to a kind of globalist ideology and erasure of cultural separation. The methods might differ slightly but the end result is the same. Some think this is a good thing, but it is actually quite poisonous.
Globalism requires an overarching social dynamic, a single hive mind, otherwise it cannot survive. If people have the ability to choose or create better options (or different options) for living then globalism loses significance. The existence of choice has to be erased. This is a behavior that the political left has fully embraced and they are more than happy to work hand-in-hand with corporate oligarchs to make their ideal system a reality. Long gone are the days of the anti-corporate progressive – They LOVE corporate dominance, but only if those companies promote and enforce leftist models for society.
Mussolini’s fascism is at the root of the very corporate governance that leftists applaud and lust after today. They have far more in common with fascists than they realize.
The new fascism is a re-branded philosophy best represented by something called “Stakeholder Capitalism.” It is a term often used by globalists at the World Economic Forum and the head of the WEF, Klaus Schwab. The media friendly definition of Stakeholder Capitalism is:
A form of capitalism in which companies do not only optimize short-term profits for shareholders, but seek long term value creation, by taking into account the needs of all their stakeholders, and society at large.
But who are “all stakeholders” in the opinion of the WEF?
Well, according to Klaus Schwab they are all of human civilization, now and in the future. In other words, the goal of SHC is for corporate leaders and globalist bureaucracy to take responsibility for the entire world, not just their own employees, shareholders and profits. And such leaders would not be acting as individuals, they would be acting as a collective. In other words, SHC requires all major corporations to act as a single unit with a single purpose and a unified collectivist ideology – An ideological monopoly.
As Klaus Schwab states:
“The most important characteristic of the stakeholder model today is that the stakes of our system are now more clearly global. Economies, societies, and the environment are more closely linked to each other now than 50 years ago. The model we present here is therefore fundamentally global in nature, and the two primary stakeholders are as well.
…What was once seen as externalities in national economic policy making and individual corporate decision making will now need to be incorporated or internalized in the operations of every government, company, community, and individual. The planet is thus the center of the global economic system, and its health should be optimized in the decisions made by all other stakeholders.”
The SHC concept is deceptive on its very face because it pretends as if corporations will be held accountable by the public within some form of “business democracy,” as if the public will have a vote on what the corporations do. In reality, it will be corporations telling the public what is acceptable to think and do and corporations in conjunction with governments using their power to punish people who do not agree.
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The great magic trick is that these same unified corporations use the shield of “private property” and business rights as a means to control society without repercussions. After all, a primary principle of conservatism and the US constitution is private property rights. So, stepping in to disrupt corporate governance would be violating one of our own beloved ideals. It sounds like a Catch-22, but it’s really not.
As mentioned above, corporations are at their very core a socialist concept: They are created through government charter, handed legal personhood and given special protections from government. They are NOT free market entities, and Adam Smith, the originator of most free market ideals, stood against corporations as destructive and prone to monopoly.
As long as they receive protections from government including monetary stimulus and bailouts, corporations should not enjoy the same private property protections as regular businesses do. They are parasitic creations, alien to the natural business world. In a freedom-based society they would be dismantled to prevent authoritarian outcomes.
Stakeholder Capitalism is also an incredibly arrogant premise because it assumes that corporate leaders have the wisdom or objective intelligence to expand their role beyond business and into social and political spheres. This has already happened in many respects with much chaos created, but open corporate governance is the end game and it is anything but objective or benevolent.
What are some examples of this kind of corporate/political governance (fascism) in action?
How about Big Tech social media censorship leaning HEAVILY against conservatives and liberty activists? How about evidence of collusion between Big Tech companies and government, such as the Biden Administration and the DHS working closely with Twitter and Facebook to actively remove voices and viewpoints they don’t like? How about corporate leaders colluding to destroy conservative based social media competitors like Parler?
How about ESG loans funded by corporate backers such as Blackrock or globalist non-profits like the Rockefeller Foundation?
If all corporate lenders applied ESG to their loan practices, all individuals and businesses would have to adopt leftist social ideologies and dubious environmental claims in order to have access to credit. ESG is a monetary incentive created by corporate elites to keep all other businesses in line. If it continues, ESG could wipe out political opposition to globalism in the span of a single generation.
And, what about the Council For Inclusive Capitalism? This is the most blatant expression of open global fascism I have ever seen, with money elites and politicians working in concert with the UN and even religious leaders like Pope Francis. Their goal is to institute a single centralized world governing platform built around the same agendas outlined in ESG and SHC, making corporations members of a new global council which they refer to as “The Guardians.” They aren’t even trying to hide the conspiracy anymore, it’s right out in the open.
Klaus Schwab takes special care to mention often that global crisis events are the “opportunity” that is needed to push the public into the arms of Stakeholder Capitalism through a nexus point called “The Great Reset.” Meaning, he thinks that widespread fear and desperation must exist (or be engineered) to perpetuate the SHC framework quickly.
Obviously, the globalists are on a shrinking timeline, though it’s hard to say why. They are tearing off the mask faster in the past two years than they have in the previous decade. More than likely they understand to some degree that if they go too slow the public will have time to mount a defense against them.
They will conjure all kinds of distractions and scapegoats to prevent liberty minded people from hitting them back. They’ll aim us at Russia, they’ll aim us at China, they’ll aim us at useful idiots among the leftists. They’ll aim Russia, China and the leftists at us. They will try to send us to war, they will call us insurrectionists, they will call us terrorists, they will say we started the whole collapse and that we are to blame for the world’s ills. None of this matters. What matters is that the globalists at the top pay the price for the harm they cause.
When the head of the snake is removed, only then can we sort out who is to blame; who were the heroes, who were the villains, and who were the idiots. Only then can we rebuild with true freedom in mind.
A Real American President: Ron DeSantis | Political Discussion ForumsShare
Pennsylvania Reelects Dead Democrat BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, NOV 09, 2022 - 06:20 PM
A Pennsylvania state representative who died in October was reelected during yesterday's midterm elections, according to the Pennsylvania House Democratic Caucus.
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Anthony "Tony" DeLuca, 85, died Oct. 9 "after a brief battle with lymphoma, a disease he twice previously beat," the Caucus said in a statement.
"While we're incredibly saddened by the loss of Representative Tony DeLuca, we are proud to see the voters continue to show their confidence in him and his commitment to Democratic values by re-electing him posthumously. A special election will follow soon," said PA House Democrats in a tweet, Fox News reports.
Some folks commenting that the voters here were oblivious. Some certainly were. But for others, they likely preferred the idea of a special election over electing the third-party candidate on the ballot
Challenger Queonia "Zarah" Livingston, who is living, ran a far-left campaign, with her top three priorities listed on her website as; environmental justice, ending the war on drugs and reducing gun violence.
DeLuca was a resident of Penn Hills for over 60 years. He got his start in politics serving on the Penn Hills Government Study Commission, then five years as a Penn Hills Councilman, followed by two years as Penn Hills Deputy Mayor before running for his legislative seat and defeating the Republican incumbent. -Fox News
DeLuca had four children, nine grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
A Real American President: Ron DeSantis | Political Discussion ForumsShare
The establishment media was setting us all up to accept a steal, proclaiming that on Tuesday evening, there might be a “Red Mirage,” that is, the appearance of overwhelming Republican victories that would later be overturned by bogus mail-in ballots, as soon as those who fix elections knew how many they needed. As it turned out, either the shenanigans are now so baked into the system that no prolonged period of fiddling with the totals is needed, or massive numbers of Americans actually like the way things are going under the misrule of Old Joe Biden’s handlers.
To be sure, not all the news was bad for those who don’t want to see the United States become an authoritarian third-world hellhole. The Republicans did win a majority in the House of Representatives, although we will now soon see whether this new Republican House will be a chorus of Mitt Romneys and Liz Cheneys, vying with each other to see who can implement the far-Left’s agenda fastest, or if it will articulate and implement a true America-First agenda, and hold the line against Old Joe’s socialist nostrums.
A couple of big-name Democrat former “rising stars” lost their races, suggesting the wholly welcome prospect that they might now actually fade from the scene. Fake Hispanic Robert “Beto” O’Rourke lost his race for Texas governor, giving this sinister far-Left fanatic the dubious distinction of having lost races for the presidency, the senate, and the governor’s chair. Fake Governor Stacey Abrams, who insisted that she had actually won the 2018 Georgia governor’s race until the Democrats opted to make “Election Denial” a cardinal sin and a dangerous threat to our “democracy,” won a second term as the pretend governor of Georgia. Yet as welcome as the prospect is that we might not hear from these sanctimonious, hectoring authoritarians any longer, O’Rourke and Abrams will probably now get lucrative jobs in academia and the media and continue scolding us for not going full Maoist (yet).
The night was, however, undeniably filled with disappointments. None of the COVID tyrants and Leftist ideologues who are destroying their once-great cities and states lost their elections. California has become a national joke, with astronomical tax rates that appear to pay for nothing at all, amid the daily stories of insane and violent homeless people defecating in the streets and terrorizing passersby, but Governor Gavin Newsom coasted to a second term, as did Michigan despot Gretchen Whitmer, who won fame during the height of the COVID hysteria by sealing off the children’s toys sections at department stores with police tape. Having fun, doncha know, could have gotten you the China bug. New York Kathy Hochul, another COVID tyrant presiding over the crime-ridden, decaying remains of a once-great state, was likewise reelected, which means that New Yorkers, the quintessential frogs in boiling water, will get more of the same, and love every minute of it.
Even worse, the stuttering, sputtering John Fetterman, a stroke victim who only rarely manages to utter a complete sentence, coasted to victory in the Pennsylvania Senate race, thereby proving that the Democrats’ willingness to put up with Old Joe Biden’s obvious incapacity was no anomaly. The Leftist elites are just rubbing it in now, showing that they have now filled a sufficient number of people with their propaganda that they can elect literally anyone to any position they want and perpetuate the governance of a shadowy, behind-the-scenes oligarchy. Fetterman is so clearly unfit for his new job that no one in his right mind could possibly think otherwise; like Biden, he will simply serve as a puppet for the people who are pulling the strings, and that seems to be just fine with Pennsylvanians. Watch for more drooling idiots to be elected to high office in the near future.
Apparently a large number of Americans are just fine with crime-ridden, crumbling cities, open borders, and galloping inflation rates. Emblematic of the results of 50 years and more of hard-Left indoctrination in the public schools was that O’Rourke lost nearly every county in Texas, with the startling exception of the ones that are right on the border with Mexico, the ones that suffer the most immediate effects of the ongoing migrant onslaught. So apparently the people whose lands are overrun and rendered dangerous by the steady migrant arrivals are just fine with it all, and want more. Hit us again, hit us again, harder, harder! Most assuredly, Leftists will be happy to oblige.
A Real American President: Ron DeSantis | Political Discussion ForumsShare
Old Joe Biden has been a liar far longer than he has been pretending to be president of the United States. His lying even predates the beginning of his endless and shameful political career. On Dec. 1, 1965, the faculty of the Syracuse College of Law published a damning report about Young Joe, stating that Biden “used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution” and recommended that he fail a legal methods course because of his plagiarism. A lifetime of lying began there and continues to this day, but nearly fifty-seven years later, on Monday, Nov. 7, 2022, Biden racked up another milestone achievement: he actually said something that was true.
Was Old Joe Biden signaling yet another expensive project for the already weary and overburdened American taxpayer? We’ve already forked over billions upon billions to free Ukraine, and now there’s another captive nation whose liberation we have to bankroll? And while we’re busy underwriting all this freeing of everyone else, who will free the citizens of the United States from this woke tyranny that is progressively (well, that’s what progressives do — progress — but they aren’t progressing toward anything good) growing more assertive and authoritarian? That’s a question for Tuesday. Meanwhile, on the Thursday before his midterm come-to-judgment, Biden was using Iran the way he used cancer in the past: as the basis for empty promises that he hoped would get him some votes. “Don’t worry, we’re gonna free Iran,” he declared, no doubt to the surprise of Iranians everywhere.
NBC News reported Friday that Biden said at a rally for Rep. Mike Levin (D-More Socialism) at MiraCosta College near San Diego, “Don’t worry, we’re gonna free Iran. They’re gonna free themselves pretty soon.”
Well, which is it, Joe? Are they going to free themselves, or is the United States going to free them? Unfortunately, the Sage of Wilmington, as gnomic as ever, wasn’t about to explain. NBC notes that the so-called president “did not expand on the comment or mention any specific actions the United States might take.” It added, however, that Biden’s handlers announced the day before Biden vowed to free Iran that the administration was going to “try to remove Iran from the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women over its government’s stance on women’s rights, as well as its ongoing crackdown on the weekslong protests.”
Biden’s ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, appeared to be firmly on the side of “They’re gonna free themselves pretty soon” rather than “We’re gonna free Iran,” saying, “Change in Iran should only come from within Iran. But that does not absolve the world of the obligation to stand with the Iranian people as they protest for women, for life and for freedom.” Sure. You mean like how Barack Obama ordered the CIA not to do anything to help the Green Movement in Iran in 2009 because he wanted to court the Ayatollah Khamenei and get him to agree to a nuclear deal, the same nuclear deal that Donald Trump rightly called the worst deal that any American president had ever concluded about anything?
Much more recently, on Oct. 22, 2022, the Biden team’s Iran negotiator, Robert Malley, aroused the ire of all Iranians who want to see the end of the bloody Islamic regime in Iran when he tweeted, “Marchers in Washington and cities around the world are showing their support for the Iranian people, who continue to peacefully demonstrate for their government to respect their dignity and human rights.”
If you’re watching Fox News today — the “conservative” news network that’s owned and operated by Australian liberals — then you know that Ron DeSantis is being touted as the big victor in yesterday’s midterm elections, while Donald Trump is the big loser.
That’s odd because Donald Trump is the most popular politician in living memory, and the obvious leader of the Republican Party, and also the clear favorite in the 2024 election.
One more thing: Trump was not on the ballot in the 2022 midterms either.
Do you think mere logic would stop a RINO chop shop like Fox News? The home of Chris Wallace and Shep Smith and “Caitlyn” Jenner and many other Democrats-in-drag?
Mitch McConnell, for example, was not to blame for pulling money from Blake Masters in the Arizona Senate race — and for being the most unpopular GOP leader in the history of the Senate. Kevin McCarthy was not to blame for doing absolutely nothing the last two years — except for sleepovers with disgraced pollster Frank Luntz. Ronna McDaniel was not to blame — even though the RNC chief had failed to have any election lawyers in place to contest the 2020 election rigging.
According to Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, the blame rested with “radical candidates” who “put the Republican Party in a terrible position” — and who were chosen by Donald Trump.
Where was the future of the GOP to be found? Thiessen named DeWine, Abbott, and Kemp as politicans who were “the path to the future.”
This explains why nobody listens to Thiessen anymore.
Thiessen even said the quiet part out loud: “The big winner tonight is Ron DeSantis. He is just as much of a counter-puncher as Donald Trump. He's got a reform agenda and when he managed that crisis with that hurricane, people look at that and said...he's also a leader who can lead in a time of crisis.”
The rush to crown DeSantis and push him into the ring with Trump was not solely a Fox News operation.
It was a corporate media operation across the board.
A Real American President: Ron DeSantis | Political Discussion ForumsShare
Why has the Colorado District 3 race between Lauren Boebert (R) and Adam Frisch suddenly become frozen in time? It’s Thursday — and Colorado election officials suddenly can’t count a few thousand remaining votes.
That’s an obvious sign of cheating.
Forget for the moment whether you’re rooting for Boebert or Frisch — set aside whether you’re a Democrat or republican — and consider the number of obvious absurdities that America’s election officials regularly spout now to cover their corruption.
One district in the county is taking too much time to count its remaining votes. Why is that? They’ve told the local Colorado newspaper that it’s because they’ve got “5,000 - 6,000 votes to count and report.”
Ok, so they have maybe 6,000 mail-in ballots left?
No, they don’t. “About 2,300 are from in-person voters in Pueblo” according the county officials — while “approximately 1,000 Republicans, 1,000 unaffiliated voters and 500 Democrats cast ballots on in-person machines.”
Now, folks— if “approximately 1,000 Republicans, 1,000 unaffiliated voters and 500 Democrats cast ballots on in-person machines” then those machine results could have been reported two days ago.
In other words, the Pueblo County Clerk is really telling you that Pueblo County is withholding those machine results until they’ve counted the other ballots.
No doubt, those approximately 2,500 ballots “on in-person machines” are being withheld until the other “2,300 votes” are counted in order to manage the results.
By the way, how do Pueblo County election officials know that they’ve got exactly “1,000 Republicans, 1,000 unaffiliated voters and 500 Democrats cast ballots on in-person machines” yet to report unless they’ve already counted them?
Why would they count 2,500 ballots but delay reporting them?
Exhibit B: Final Vote Counting Slows Down
The next thing that the Pueblo Chieftain tells you is that Pueblo County only countedand reported 50,322 ballots of the 61,534 ballots it received on Election Day.
How fast did Pueblo County count and report those 50,322 ballots?
It took Pueblo County less than five hours to count and report 50,322 ballots.
Do you know what that means? It means that Pueblo County has taken more than 32 hours already to count and report the remaining 11,212 ballots.
That’s another obvious sign of cheating. The Pueblo County Clerk Gilbert “Bo” Ortiz has no explanation for this vote-counting slowdown of course — it’s not because they’re short of staff or judges.
He makes no excuses for the obvious fraud.
What Gilbert Ortiz does explain is that he’s sure that Pueblo County will be making “headline news, maybe nationwide” very soon.
A Real American President: Ron DeSantis | Political Discussion ForumsShare
After winning a decisive victory to secure his third term as Kentucky Senator, Rand Paul promised to end the “COVID cover up,” by forcing Anthony Fauci into court.
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Paul told supporters that he intends to focus on uncovering the evidence for COVID emerging from a lab, and whether it was manipulated with funding from Fauci’s NIH.
“Thanks for coming out to Dr. Fauci’s retirement party!” Paul joked.
“I promise you this: the COVID cover-up will end,” the Senator urged, adding “I will not only hold Dr. Fauci accountable, we will finally investigate why your tax dollars were sent to fund dangerous research in Wuhan.”
In a broader message during the speech Paul focused on freedom, declaring that “Liberty should bring people together because each and every citizen is left alone to enjoy their own personal freedoms.”
“Liberty is that great harmonizer that allows us to live together despite our differences,” the Senator added.
“We don’t come together to rejoice in the dissipation of power. We come together to reaffirm our support for the 10th Amendment — that powers not explicitly granted to the federal government are retained by the states and the people,” Paul further proclaimed.
The Senator continued, “We come together under the belief that government is instituted among men and women to preserve our God-given liberty — period! Our desire is not to rule over others but to largely leave people alone. It is this system of constitutional checks on power that has allowed America to become the free-est nation ever known.”
“With freedom has come great prosperity. But we do not choose freedom because it makes us rich. We choose freedom because it is part of our very nature,” Paul said.
“Liberty, or the absence of government intrusion, should allow people of widely differing beliefs to live together, each according to their own beliefs,” Paul further urged, adding “To preserve this liberty, we must especially defend the freedoms our Founding Fathers chose to put first in the Bill of Rights: the freedom of speech, the freedom of religion, the freedom to associate with whomever you choose.”
Paul also called for an end to censorship, noting that “While the First Amendment does not prohibit private censorship, our founders certainly prized free speech.”
“One can only imagine our founder’s reaction to see government actively engaged with private enterprise to censor speech. To protect free speech, Congress must, absolutely must, prohibit government’s collusion with Big Tech,” the Senator averted, adding “The greatest originator of misinformation, the government, cannot be the arbiter of truth.”
“Both Left and Right need to wake up and acknowledge that government — should never be allowed to create any entity that even resembles a Ministry of Truth,” Paul warned.
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A Real American President: Ron DeSantis | Political Discussion ForumsShare
Trump unleashed a revolution that opened the door to people like DeSantis. Now the Florida governor and his supporters want to continue that revolution without its original leader
‘The turn from DeSantis to Trump mirrors developments in Europe, where crude far-right politicians like Matteo Salvini are being “upgraded” to more subtle peers like Giorgia Meloni.’ Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Thu 10 Nov 2022 13.55 GMT
The day after the midterm elections, the knives were out for Donald Trump. On rightwing social media, people were emotionally debating the alleged toxicity of the former president and his hand-picked nominees, while Fox News highlighted the victory of the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, emphasizing that he is “reviled by Trump”, while heralding the “ dominating win” of the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. A Fox News contributor pronounced DeSantis “the new Republican party leader”. In fact, the idea that DeSantis is the big Republican winner of the midterms – and Trump the big loser – seems to be the broad consensus in today’s media.
There is, of course, at least one dissonant voice: Trump himself. Sensing that the tables are turning rapidly, he went on Fox News to warn DeSantis to stay out of the 2024 presidential election. In his typical mafioso way, Trump said, “I don’t know if he is running. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly. I really believe he could hurt himself badly.”
There is no doubt that DeSantis had a great night. He won his own race convincingly, while delivering three new House seats to the Republican party, courtesy of his blatantly partisan gerrymandering. At the same time, DeSantis did less than 2% better than Marco Rubio in the Senate race, putting some doubt on his particular appeal. Moreover, as too few media noted, Florida Republicans undoubtedly profited from DeSantis’s years-long campaign of voter intimidation, which entailed unleashing a newly created “ vote-fraud squad” on mostly innocent voters; against the broader national trend, Democratic turnout seemed significantly down in Florida.
It is important to note that the shift from Trump to DeSantis does not indicate a return to “ normal”, in the sense of old-school conservatism. DeSantis and Trump are both clearly far right and there is little ideological space between the two. Rather, it is about strategy and style. As far as Republican voters had any problems with Trump during his presidency, it was always more about his delivery than about his policies. It is not just his style but also his strategy – Trump largely operates outside of the traditional party establishment and political system.
Trump is not a politician and has no desire to become one. In sharp contrast, DeSantis is and has already significant political experience with running one of the biggest states in the country in terms of both economic power and population. Whereas Trump mainly shouts from the sidelines, respecting neither the institutions of liberal democracy nor the political practices of Washington, DeSantis practices what Princeton professor Kim Lane Scheppele calls “ democratic erosion by law”: the weakening of liberal democracy from within both the legal and the political system.
In this way, the turn from DeSantis to Trump mirrors developments in Europe, where crude far-right politicians like Matteo Salvini are being “ upgraded” to more subtle peers like Giorgia Meloni. It is, if you will, the Orbánization of the far right. The Hungarian leader is the prime example of democratic erosion by law, having effectively destroyed democracy in Hungary by perfectly legal means. It is no coincidence that Orbán is a hero of the so-called “national conservative” wing of the Republican party – mostly politicians with law degrees, such as DeSantis and Josh Hawley.
What Trump lacks in legal and political expertise, however, he compensates in charisma, something DeSantis sorely lacks. The Florida governor has gained nationwide Republican support by what he does, not by who he is. DeSantis is a rather uninspiring speaker who neither draws large crowds nor captivates smaller ones. It is his actual fights with “woke capitalism”, in the form of Disney, or “woke academia”, in the form of the University of Florida, that supporters point to. As he bragged in his victory speech on Tuesday night, “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
Moreover, DeSantis lacks that unique quality of Trump, authenticity, something the former president identified in bestowing the new moniker “ Ron DeSanctimonious”. And while Trump, rather uncharacteristically, seems to have dropped the nickname for now – after a barrage of criticism from rightwing media – you better believe he will return to it, or to even worse names, should he face DeSantis in a Republican primary.
Poll after poll might show the divisive nature of Trump, as well as his dropping favorability among both independents and Republicans, but he was still twice as popular among Republicans before the midterms. Although this can change rapidly, particularly if Fox News would support DeSantis over Trump, Trump will continue to command a modest but highly mobilized hardcore – who could make or break Republican candidates in many races, including the presidential one.
While DeSantis’s star might be rising, the Republican party remains at the mercy of Trump. The former president unleashed a revolution within the Republican party that has opened the door to people like DeSantis. Now the Florida governor and his supporters have less than two years to figure out how to continue that revolution without its original leader.
Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist and the Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF professor in the school of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia
A Real American President: Ron DeSantis | Political Discussion ForumsShare
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