Left-Wing Salon Warns DeSantis Will Make U.S. ‘Florida’: Lab for ‘Fascist Cruelty’

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis “turned Florida into a laboratory for fascist cruelty and authoritarian oppression” and will do the same to the entire country if president, according to a recent Salon piece warning under such a scenario more women will “die,” the LGBTQ community “will be terrorized on a national scale,” more will be done to “prevent black and brown people from voting,” education will be replaced with “right-wing, ‘patriotic’ indoctrination,” and “right-wing terrorism” will proliferate.

The Tuesday essay, titled “Ron DeSantis wants to ‘make America Florida’: That’s a dire threat,” was penned by Salon politics staff writer Chauncey DeVega, who charges that the Trump-DeSantis race is an “unmitigated disaster” for Americans.

“Ron DeSantis has been terrible for the people and state of Florida — even if many people in that state don’t yet understand that — and he will be even worse for America as a whole.” https://t.co/0oYP55Bsvf

— Salon (@Salon) May 30, 2023

According to DeVega, DeSantis, who announced his 2024 presidential bid last week, has “turned Florida into a laboratory for fascist cruelty and authoritarian oppression.”

“Liberal schadenfreude undoubtedly feels good to those who indulge in it as they celebrate DeSantis’ incompetent campaign launch,” he writes. “But in reality, outside the pundit and journalist class as well as other overly online people, DeSantis’ initial failure will mean little or nothing for prospective voters and campaign donors.”

“In the wake of DeSantis’ announcement, the 2024 Republican primary is now a dramatic contest between the main villain and protagonist — Trump, of course — and those who hope to stop him or succeed him as leader of the Republican Party and the larger white right,” he added.

DeVega also bemoans that the mainstream news media “will default once again to its obsolete approaches to covering politics in the Trump era, including all the “bad practices associated with ‘both-sides-ism,’ ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’ that have collectively normalized the entire Republican fascist movement.”

The Salon essayist goes on to warn readers of the consequences if DeSantis “gets his way” and is able to “Make America Florida.”

Women, he claims, “will have their reproductive rights and freedoms taken away through forced pregnancy and forced birth.” 

“Many will suffer grievous physical and emotional harm from being unable to terminate their pregnancies or receive other reproductive health care,” he adds, warning that “when women’s reproductive rights and freedoms are taken away, more women die.”

According to DeVega, the LGBTQ community, and especially transgenders, “will be terrorized on a national scale.” 

“Gender nonconforming people will literally be at risk of imprisonment (or worse) because of their identities and personhood,” he writes. “Nowhere in America will be safe for LGBTQ people, their families and the people they care for and love.”

In addition, he claims, the country will see a “new Jim and Jane Crow regime of voter suppression, voter nullification, intimidation, threats and other harassment — including the criminal prosecution of imaginary ‘voter fraud’ — to prevent black and brown people from voting and exercising their other civil rights.”

Attacking the Sunshine State’s “Orwellian thought-crime laws barring certain subjects from discussion and barring certain kinds of books,” DeVega claims such policies “will become the norm across the country.” 

“Teachers, librarians and other educators who violate these perverse and arbitrary laws will face fines and possible prison sentences,” he writes, while “high-quality public and even private education at all levels will be aggressively attacked and undermined, with the goal of replacing it with right-wing, ‘patriotic’ indoctrination.”

“The inevitable result will be that Americans become even more ignorant, poorly informed and unable to engage in the types of critical thinking and creativity demanded of a healthy democratic society,” he adds, claiming that “Republican fascists, neoliberal gangster capitalists and Christian fundamentalists want… compliant citizens, mindless consumers and subservient flocks of churchgoers.”

Laws, he argues, will be “further weaponized in service of the ‘conservative’ campaign to end multiracial pluralistic democracy, in the interest of a tyrannical minority.”

On Second Amendment rights, DeVega foresees the country’s “already weak gun safety laws” being “gutted entirely” under a DeSantis presidency. 

“Carrying concealed firearms without a permit will become an unquestioned ‘right,’” he writes, while warning that deaths from gun violence will soar yearly as a result of new gun policies.

Accusing the 44-year-old Republican governor of having “further shredded the social safety net in Florida,” DeVega cites Rev. William Barber II who accused DeSantis of “weaponizing racism to hide behind his dangerous policies… that only further the cycle of poverty statewide, harming Floridians of all races.”

Americans can also expect more “right-wing terrorism” under DeSantis’ leadership, according to the author, given that he has vowed to pardon many of the Jan. 6 prisoners. 

While the mainstream news media may exaggerate differences between DeSantis and Trump, “those differences are largely cosmetic,” DeVega claims that in reality, “today’s Republican Party is a fascist, revanchist, white supremacist organization as well as a de facto criminal enterprise, to this point still led and controlled by Donald Trump.”

“Whether Trump is the 2024 nominee or not, the party will continue to reflect those values and policies,” he explains.

WATCH: DeSantis: In Chicago “You’re More Likely To Get Shot” Than Get a World Class Education:

@GovRonDeSantis / Twitter

According to DeVega, DeSantis “has been terrible for the people and state of Florida — even if many people in that state don’t yet understand that — and he will be even worse for America as a whole,” adding that if the American news media “were acting as real guardians of democracy, they would be explaining that reality to their audience on a daily basis.”

“In the end, a choice between DeSantis and Trump is like an executioner asking a condemned prisoner if they want to be shot or hanged,” he concludes. “Either way, the outcome is the same.”

The Salon writer has a history of expressing radical anti-white and anti-Republican rhetoric.

In March, DeVega claimed today’s Republican Party and larger “conservative” movement are “waging a fascist war against multiracial pluralist democracy and human freedom.”

In June, he accused the GOP of being a “de facto terrorist organization” as well as the “world’s largest white supremacist” group.

WATCH: DeSantis: Trump Siding with Disney a “Multinational Corporation that Wants to Sexualize Kids”

Last year, he said Democrats don’t want unity with the GOP “fascists,” as he accused Republicans of seeking to create a society in which black people “have no rights the white man is bound to respect.”

The senior politics writer also claimed the GOP has morphed from an “evil insect” into a full-blown “terrorist organization,” while accusing Republicans and Trump supporters of seeking a war against American democracy, encouraging widescale violence against the left and minorities, and using “stochastic terrorism” to achieve their aims.

Previously, a shockingly anti-white and anti-Christian Salon piece by DeVega referred to “the Republican fascist movement” as “objectively evil,” hoping that “people of color” die out in the battle against “multiracial democracy,” while accusing “white Christians” of embracing lies, terrorism, white supremacy, and fascism.

In another essay penned by DeVega, the left-wing writer accused Republicans of resembling “good Germans” of the Nazi era — wishing to believe they are decent people while hiding behind “fictions of plausible deniability for the evils committed by their leader,” as he described today’s conservatism as seeking “friendly fascism” masked in an appeal to return to “traditional values.”