Altered State: Florida’s DeSantis is teaching a master class in Authoritarianism 101 | Opinion

“Our government is a government of laws, not a government of men,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said last August.

When he gave that inspirational speech, DeSantis had just violated his own principles. Flanked by his cronies, he announced he had overturned the will of thousands of voters by removing from office a Democratic prosecutor elected twice in the Tampa Bay area.

While claiming to keep Florida “free,” DeSantis continues to act like an autocratic strongman, instead, going so far as to boast recently that he’ll “start slitting throats” of federal career civil servants if elected president. (Donald Trump only plans to fire them.)

DeSantis has used the state’s machinery to incite hostility against minorities, demand unquestioned obedience, concentrate power and punish dissenters — “an age-old authoritarian practice,” Harvard University political scientist Steven Levitsky told the Editorial Board.

Unlike thrice-indicted Trump, whom Levitsky describes as an “innate” authoritarian, DeSantis is an Ivy League-educated lawyer who understands the U.S. Constitution. In other words, he probably knows better. His authoritarianism is performative, meant to advance his ambition of becoming president.

DeSantis might not have staged a coup or arrested opponents, but modern authoritarians don’t need a police state. They use the law as their weapon, said Levitsky, author of the 2018 book “How Democracies Die,” which is just what DeSantis has done:

1. Quashing dissent

DeSantis retaliated against Disney’s right to free speech after the company publicly opposed the Parental Rights in Education law, known as “Don’t say gay,” last year. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers took away the company’s control over a special taxing district in Central Florida and put his allies in charge.

Hillsborough County State Attorney Warren might not have personally clashed with DeSantis, but he represented the liberal polices the governor has demonized. Before DeSantis suspended him, Warren signed a pledge to not prosecute abortion cases. An election, not a slighted governor, is the proper vehicle to let voters decide whether Warren’s action properly represented them.

2. Demonizing minorities

Democracies protect the rights of vulnerable minorities. Authoritarians demonize them.

DeSantis has sparked fear of LGBTQ+ Floridians — and drag queens — and painted them as enemies of parents and children. He also has accused teachers of sexualizing children when they talk about sexual orientation and gender identity in their lessons, now banned in K-12 under “Don’t say gay” legislation. But this is just a shameless iteration of an old homophobic trope labeling gay men pedophiles.

Despite opposition from several doctors and medical associations, the governor also banned gender-affirming care for minors. In June, a federal judge called Florida’s decision to revoke Medicaid coverage of the treatment of gender dysphoria an “exercise in politics, not good medicine.”

3. Attacking academics

While decrying so-called indoctrination in schools — if he perceives it as coming from the left — DeSantis is controlling the knowledge to which students are exposed, including what books are available to them. While book bans aren’t exclusive to authoritarian governments — it’s a long tradition in American politics — it is anti-democratic nevertheless.

DeSantis last year pushed lawmakers to pass the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” which limits what K-12 teachers and university professors can say about race. The bill was aimed at eradicating critical race theory from classrooms — though it was never taught in lower grades — and concepts like systemic racism. This year, he’s dismissed the horrors of slavery.

Prohibiting academics from teaching topics that aren’t state sanctioned is a dirty tactic to eliminate independent thinking. A federal judge last year found the portion of the Stop W.O.K.E. law that applies to colleges was “positively dystopian” and temporarily blocked it for violating the First Amendment.

DeSantis has replaced qualified and credentialed university leaders with conservatives whose main intent is ideological control. Another law allows students to secretly record professors to bring lawsuits against them or report them to their school, all to carry out his agenda.

3. Targeting media

Trump attacks the media as “fake news.” DeSantis goes further.

DeSantis’ office was behind a bill that would have taken away press protections and made it easier to sue news outlets and private citizens for defamation. The bill automatically considered false any information from anonymous sources. Unnamed sources are an important tool for journalists to obtain information on powerful people like DeSantis. The point was to force the media to muzzle themselves or risk costly legal battles. The bill died only after conservative news outlets in Florida said they, too, could face frivolous lawsuits.

DeSantis legitimizes partisan media, as when he barred all news outlets, except Fox News, from covering a bill-signing ceremony last year.

5. Consolidating power

In democracies, there are checks and balances. An authoritarian leader concentrates power, often with the help of complicit lawmakers who abdicate their duty for political expedience.

Obviously, DeSantis doesn’t like the give-and-take of democracy. He’s transformed the Republican-controlled Legislature, in many instances, into an extension of his thinking. Bills written by his office are presented as done deals, rubber-stamped by an obliging House and Senate.

DeSantis’ unprecedented move to force the Legislature to pass a map of congressional districts dismantled two largely Black districts to help Republicans to win elections. The Legislature historically has been in charge of redrawing districts, but the governor hijacked the process through intimidation.

After the state-sponsored relocation of migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard last year raised legal questions, Republican lawmakers rushed into a special session to give the governor unchecked power to continue to use taxpayer dollars for such political stunts. Worse, they let him award no-bid contracts to contractors without disclosing details to the public.

Although there’s little evidence of widespread voter fraud, the Legislature granted DeSantis an elections police agency. Last year, he announced the arrest of 20 felons who voted illegally in 2020, but most of those people were told by his administration they were eligible to cast ballots.

Instead of shutting this down, the ever-compliant Legislature increased the budget of the Office of Election Crimes and Security this year.

The Florida Blueprint DeSantis talks so much about? It’s great for those who enable his excesses. It’s not great if you believe this is a state, and country, where people of different ideologies and backgrounds deserve the same treatment under the law.

America, you’ve been warned.