As the nation continues to witness the deliberate strategy to dumb down and indoctrinate Florida’s students with a weird right wing ideology, one gets the feeling that Governor Ron DeSantis has a strange affinity for Benito Mussolini. One of the ways Mussolini indoctrinated his nation was through the changing of the school curriculum. As one looks at the DeSantis administration, troubling similarities begin to appear. Like Mussolini, DeSantis has made it a central aspect of his administration to change Florida’s school curriculum to reflect a sanitized version of history. During the time of Mussolini, teachers who disagreed with his curriculum were fired. Today, teachers are being fired who disagree with the DeSantis indoctrination campaign. As his administration pushes historical lies such as slavery having benefits for black people, and the more recent requirement of schools to only read excerpts of William Shakespeare because of perceived sexual reference, the sunshine state is heading towards its own form of the dark ages as it continues to ban dozens of books as well as poems by people such as Amanda Gorman.
From a political perspective, DeSantis’ cosplay of Mussolini is to position himself in his Republican presidential bid which thus far has been more like the keystone cops than a serious campaign. Nonetheless, the larger concern is that DeSantis is an actual adherent of the Mussolini indoctrination playbook. This indoctrination strategy is centered in upholding a sense of white supremacy. In the long run, DeSantis will fade into the dustpan of history. The longer term damage however, is that many of Florida’s students will grow up with a distorted history and having been indoctrinated to a view of society. They will become today’s Know Nothing Party.
One can get a sense of the mentality of Governor DeSantis by a alleged story according to a former classmate who said DeSantis “used to tell dates that he liked Thai food, but he would purposely pronounce it as thigh, that if they corrected him, he would make up any excuse to leave because he didn’t want a girlfriend who corrected him.” If that story is true, then DeSantis who has been called “Trump with a brain” is in reality a small minded, insecure man with a desire to create a Stepford Wives world. More troubling in his desire to not be corrected lies a desire not to have white heterosexual supremacy challenged. This was seen most prominently in his fight against Disney when they went against his so-called don’t say gay bill.
When you add this to what some consider anti-media tendencies with his support of a bill that would require bloggers to register with state authorities within five days if they post a blog about a public official if they have or will receive compensation, you have a man who is determined not to have his world view questioned.
Judging by his amateurish and lackluster presidential campaign, DeSantis will not be in the Oval Office as president. However, if Trump wins the primary, he cannot be ruled out as a vice presidential candidate despite the acrimonious rhetoric leveled against him by Trump. No doubt even a DeSantis Vice-presidency would result in a plan to indoctrinate an entire nation of young people.
Eventually, the people of Italy grew tired of Mussolini and the people of Florida will tire of the intellectually corruptness of DeSantis. One can only hope that they grow tired of him before their students become misled, mindless sycophants unable to compete in a world that is more inclusive and diverse than the world Governor DeSantis wishes to exist in.