The Insurrectionist House of Representatives

Sun, Jan 29, 2023 11:04AM • 46:41

Thomas Zimmer 00:00

They’re not just trying to burn the system down. They have a very specific vision and they’re fully committed to and once you look beyond the “chaos” in Washington, what you see is the work, not of nihilists, but of committed ideologues, fully determined to impose their reactionary vision of what America should be on as many people as possible. They do not have majority support for that reactionary vision that they want to impose on the country. The question of whether or not a minority can hold on to power, that entirely depends on how far the minority is willing to go to stay in power.

Sam Goldman 00:54

Welcome to Episode 143 of the refuse fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and a host of the show. Refuse Fascism exposes analyzes, and stands against the very real danger and threat of fascism coming to power in the United States. In today’s episode, we welcome historian Thomas Zimmer back on the show to talk about the insurrectionist takeover of the House, whether the GOP is just a bunch of buffoons and chaos agents, whether the GOP is falling apart, moderating or just getting started. Is it all just nihilism? Why we need to look at what’s happening at the state level to understand the fascist agenda, Trump, DeSantis and more.

But first, if you appreciate the show, and want to help us reach more people who want to refuse fascism, go be a gem, write a review, and drop five stars wherever you listen to your pods. Of course, after you listen to this episode. Please tell the people out there in podcast land, why you listen and why they should too. Subscribe/follow so you never miss an episode. And of course, continue all that sharing and commenting on social media.

There’s a lot to say about the lynching in Memphis of Tyre Nichols by the police, but I’ll try to keep it to three points. Before those three points, I want to extend all our love in our heart to the family of Tyre Nichols. Enough is e-fucking-nough. The fact that this brutal murder was committed by black police officers in a city with a black police commissioner shows in my personal view, the systemic nature of this white supremacist violence. That you can’t get rid of police violence that kills over a thousand people a year without getting rid of this whole capitalist imperialist system that needs police violence.

Two: While that’s my personal view, that seems that effects is leading the fascist media down a gleeful path of blaming it all of this on [plays drumroll on table] you guessed it, black folks. Fascist Fox News is setting the tone with guests claiming that this is simply “black on black crime”, that there couldn’t possibly be a racial dimension to this, and even blaming this murder on things like “diversity training”. As always, using this murder to justify and advance their genocidal program.

Three: It is also extremely telling that the police nationwide are so much more ready to violently put down the largely unorganized, overwhelmingly nonviolent protests in random cities that have erupted in the aftermath of the release of the video of this lynching than they were to protect the Capitol building, the seat of federal power, from a well funded, highly organized and popularized armed insurrection as part of a fascist coup led by the president and former generals on January 6th, 2020.

Thomas Zimmer just published a piece about the murder of Tyre Nichols on his Substack that I highly recommend. Mondaire Jones made a pretty succinct observation that can transition us to our next topic. He tweeted: “If you think the Memphis police officers had to be white, in order to exhibit anti blackness, you need to take that AP African American studies course Ron DeSantis just banned.”

In today’s episode, we talk about the fascist laboratory that is Florida under the tutelage of Governor Ron DeSantis, but I have to just emphasize that last week on top of DeSantis banning the high school AP course on African American history, book bans have been accelerated to the point that teachers in at least two counties have had to shut down classroom libraries, making unvetted books, all, or unvetted, inaccessible to students until each book is vetted by a media specialist — that’s what they call librarians in the state of Florida — who has been trained in the fascist approved course, or risk felony prosecution.

As Jed Legum wrote on Popular Information when he broke the story last Sunday, “The new policy is part of an effort to comply with new laws and regulations championed by Governor Ron DeSantis. It is based on the premise promoted by right wing advocacy groups that teachers and librarians are using books to ‘groom’ students, or indoctrinate them with leftist ideologies.” And quote, the law that this is conforming to requires, “each book made available to students through a School District Library, media center, or included in a recommended or assigned school or grade level reading list must be selected by a school district employee who holds a valid educational media specialist certificate, regardless of whether the book is purchased, donated or otherwise made available to students.”

Chilling shit, right? It makes sense that in this fascist state, the message being sent is that books are dangerous, they must be surveilled. Anything that challenges white American male Christian supremacy must be erased. LGBTQ folks very existence must be erased. Slavery and genocide that are the foundation of this country’s history must be erased. So too, the stories of people who rose up in defiance of white supremacy, all with the force of the law and power of the state behind it, while simultaneously arguing in court, that this is not what they are trying to do that this is not what they’re doing. Now is the time for every educator and educational leader to disobey, to defy, to refuse fascism. The kids are watching. What will we show them?

I want to shout out the good folks over at foundation 451 and Awake Brevard Action Alliance, who held a street theater protest and mock book burning near Melbourne High School in Florida to protest the book bannings; they did this yesterday. Adam Tritt, founder of foundation 451 and a Brevard county teacher said at the protest: “You want to ban the books? I’m giving them away. You want me to be quiet about it? Give me a megaphone. You don’t like this book? Can I get 50 copies of it, please? And we’re gonna give them to kids with parent permission.” We need a lot more Adam Tritts. See more in the show notes, and we all of us, regardless of where we are, we got to have their backs. I recommend re-listening, or listening for the first time to Episode 122, our August 14 interview with Henry Giroux on the Nazi-fication of American education for more on this topic.

Not unrelated to this week’s interview, I wanted to address some feedback we got about something I said in a previous episode. In passing conversation with Paul Street and Anthony DiMaggio, I commented that as a society/a species, we could do better than democracy, and I received a question about that. I love this kind of feedback, so thanks. So very briefly, I wanted to address it in two parts. But first, again, this is just my personal opinion. One: In the context of that conversation, I was somewhat derisively referring in shorthand to bourgeois democracy, the whole apparatus of our current day democracy that serves capitalist imperialist empire.

But secondly, and relatedly, when we get down to its essence, democracy and dictatorship, are always bound up together, and bound up with class rule. In Plato’s Republic, both reflecting and idealizing the societies where democracy was first practiced, and espoused, you had democracy amongst the slave owners that was bound up with dictatorship over the enslaved. Today, you will have democratic institutions that are inseparable from the generalized dictatorship of capital over all of our lives. Under socialism, we’ll have democracy among the majority of people and dictatorship over the bourgeoisie in order to overcome millennia of oppressive and exploitative relations. When I say we can do better than democracy, I’m talking about getting beyond classes beyond the need for dictatorship or democracy. To be clear, again, my opinion only, and you can rara, for capitalism, for classes, for all that and join in in refusing fascism right now. With that, here’s my interview with Thomas Zimmer.

Today, we’re talking about the insurrectionist takeover of the House [of Representatives]. To do that, I am happy to welcome back to the show Professor Thomas Zimmer. He’s a historian at Georgetown University. He’s a contributing opinion writer for Guardian U.S. He’s the host of U.S. democracy pod, and has a newish Substack titled democracy Americana. If you follow him on Twitter, you are smart, and if you’re not get on it. He is one of our most frequent guest requests. So I am really excited. Welcome, Thomas. Thanks for joining us.

Thomas Zimmer 10:17

Well, thank you so much for having me back on. I very flattered that people are actually requesting me to come back. I appreciate that very much.

Sam Goldman 10:25

That interview that you did with Coco, even now it’s been a really long time since. People have been listening to it, and we want to hear more, so it’s a good thing. Well, I want to just start with a really simple little question. We have headlines about institutional anarchy. House Republicans struggling. Questions about their ability to govern. And you have a Democratic Party that thus far has treated the current House Republicans as no different than any other party may get. Some look at this and say that it signals the weakening or collapse of the Republican Party. I would say that those people who say that don’t know what the GOP exists to do. But what does this insurrectionist takeover of the house tell us about the moment that we’re all in right now? About who the GOP is, and where they want to take things?

Thomas Zimmer 11:20

I think there’s been, in general, a little too much focus on the chaos. Not saying there hasn’t been chaos. I mean, look, we all remember the 15 tries it took for them to finally elect Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House. I’m just saying it is, I guess, tempting to look at that and say: Oh, how dangerous could these people be? It’s just a bunch of chaos agents, a bunch of clowns. They’re not ever going to get their act together. It’s maybe annoying. It’s kind of shameful, maybe, in the eyes of the world, but it’s not dangerous, right? It is just a bunch of clowns and they basically just going to be infighting, and this is what we’re going to get from them.
I think what that underestimates is, first and foremost, there’s just no natural law, that democracy can’t be brought down by a bunch of clowns. That’s just not a thing. There’s no higher power saying: Oh, if they’re are a bunch of clowns, instead of a, say, a super cunning cabal of genius evil guys, whatever, then democracy is going to be fine. That’s not how it works. The chaos itself — we’re seeing it right now — that alone might be enough to sabotage the country, sabotage the world economy. That alone is bad already. Then, more importantly, I think it is true that the current Republican House caucus is very unlikely to ever gel into an effective governing machine, but that’s also not what they are trying to do. That’s not what they’re for.

There are very few people in this caucus that have a proper legislative agenda or any sort of discernible interest in public policy-making. That’s not why they’re there. In fact, they’re super happy to just paralyze government, and then turn around and say: See, we told ya, Washington is bad and government doesn’t work. Even the chaos in itself is already dangerous. Then you have to combine that — and I think that’s where the focus on the chaos is kind of misleading — you have to combine it with what else is going on in the country.

You can’t just focus on Washington, DC. You cannot just focus on the House of Representatives. You have to also look at what’s going on in the states. You have to look at what’s going on the Supreme Court. I think it’s best to think of what’s going on as the broader reactionary counter mobilization happening against the country moving closer to becoming a proper democracy. That counter mobilization has different arms. It has a political arm, and the part of the political arm that’s in the House of Representatives is just there to obstruct, basically; that’s the task, that’s what they’re there for.

But on the state level, we are seeing something very different. We’re not seeing chaos. We’re seeing a very deliberate, very systematic, very successful counter offensive, reactionary offensive, against civil rights, against the post-1960s civil rights system. And again, if you just see the chaos, and if you think: Oh, look, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz, these people are clowns, what is there to worry about? You’re missing the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is very concerning.

Sam Goldman 14:23

When you say that they’re not there to do — Did you say governance?

Thomas Zimmer 14:27

Yeah, like yeah, they have no actual proper legislative agenda. The Republican Party hasn’t had any interest in actually tackling the country’s most urgent problems via public policy. That’s not how they look at the world. They don’t look at: Here are the problems, the 10 most urgent problems that the country is facing, let’s find some proper public policy solutions and then put those into legislative form and pass them in the House and write bills. That’s not what they’re interested in doing.

To the extent that they are interested in a functioning House, in a functioning Congress, it’s just to do their completely nonsense investigations of Hunter Biden’s laptop or impeaching Joe Biden. That’s what Marjorie Taylor Greene needs a functioning Congress for, but she doesn’t need to pass proper bills. I mean, they’ve just passed bills that have no chance of becoming law. They passed this IRS bill where they’re just stripping the IRS of all the funding that was supplied in the Inflation Reduction Act from the summer and then they’re claiming they’re stopping the army of 87,000 heavily armed IRS agents. No one ever talked about any of this nonsense. That’s not proper legislation. That’s not public policymaking. That’s not trying to solve any problem. That’s just, you can call it a messaging bill or whatever.

They’re just signaling to the base: Hey, look, we’re fighting back against a leftist takeover of our institutions. It’s not serious public policy. That’s not what they are interested in. That’s not what they’re there for. It’s quite remarkable, honestly, to have one of the two major parties so completely uninterested, and also so completely unable to engage in any serious public policy discussion. It’s remarkable, and it’s a complete disaster for the country, because it’s not like America doesn’t have any serious public policy issues to tackle. But they’re not interested in that.

Sam Goldman 16:19

I would push back slightly and say that I think that there is public policy that they’re interested in, it’s not aligned with the will of the people or the interests of the people or the majority — let alone what’s popular, there’s what’s right — but they are interested in policy. They’re interested in policy that promotes the most vicious anti-women legislation, the most anti-immigrant platform, the most anti-LGBTQ platform. Not you, but there are people who are like: They have no politics, they have nothing, they just want power. They do have aims. Which is not to say that they want to engage in public policy as the typical party. They have no interest in doing that. I think that’s the point that you’re making. I just wanted to parse out what people might popularly think versus what is.

Thomas Zimmer 17:14

Thank you for clarifying that, because I’m very specifically not saying they don’t have any very clearly defined ideological goals that they would like to impose. They have a very clear vision for the country that they would like to impose on the entire country. If they get in a position to do that, via law, via passing laws for Congress, they will absolutely do this. I’m just saying right now they don’t, because they don’t have the Senate and they don’t have the White House, so they’re not gonna pass those laws in Washington. What they’re doing right now, that’s not going to lead to any national legislation. They’re not interested in solving gun violence or that sort of thing, but you’re absolutely right, they have a very clear vision and they are advancing that vision, and they’re rapidly, aggressively advancing that vision.

But right now, they’re not doing it in Congress. In Congress, the most important function that this current Republican House Majority serves is to obstruct any attempt to come up with any sort of national legislation that would safeguard American democracy. That’s what they’re doing. But the actions of ideological offensive happens on the state level, and that’s where you actually see what you’re describing, where Republicans, generally, are not nihilists. They’re not just trying to burn the system down. They have a very specific vision and they’re fully committed to it.

That’s why I’m saying don’t focus too much on the House level, on that “chaos” there, right, because once you look at the state level, what you see is they’re banning abortion and they want to control women by whatever reactionary measure they can come up with — even including passing dress codes, where now women lawmakers have to cover their arms for something. That’s actually passed. They passed this. It’s crazy. Criminalize LGBTQ people; install authoritarian, white nationalist education system; ban dissent; restrict voting rights; purge election commissions; criminalize protest. That’s happening wherever Republicans are in charge, and all Republican led states. These are not disparate actions, it’s one political project.

Again, they have been escalating that, definitely since the summer of 2020, and again, even just this year, it’s not been that long, but there was a less than 48 hour period on like January 13 to January 14, literally, one week after Kevin McCarthy became House Speaker, and everyone was like: How dangerous could they possibly be? It’s just chaos agents. Again, this is less than 48 hours. The Idaho Supreme Court dominated by reactionaries required doctors to force women into C sections or delivering the fetus so that they can tell the state that they did everything they could to save the fetus or whatever. Completely cruel and futile. Just no medical reason to that.

Republicans in Wisconsin voted to allow conversion therapy. In Nebraska, they introduced a bill that would criminalize trans people for just being out there in public; existing and public. In Michigan, right wing activists completely defunded a town’s library because the library refused to ban all “gender queer literature.” And then North Dakota introduced a bill that would ban all books from public libraries that include any depiction of trans or gay people. So this is just a random 48 hour period, January 13th to 14th. It’s not even a comprehensive collection. It’s literally just what came across my radar. It doesn’t even include the complete escalation of what Ron DeSantis is doing with his of anti-war campaign in Florida. But that’s precisely the point.

Once you look beyond the “chaos” in Washington, what you see is the work not of nihilists, but committed ideologues fully determined to impose their reactionary vision of what America should be on as many people as possible and to punish those who dare to deviate from that vision or dissent. That’s what’s happening. That’s why I mentioned the Supreme Court earlier. Ideally, in a better world, the Supreme Court would step in and say: No, wait a minute, you can do this, stop this. They would stop these escalating attempts to undermine democracy and rollback civil rights.

But in fact, the conservative reactionary majority on the court is doing the opposite. It’s acting as the spearhead of this reactionary counter-mobilization. You have Republican led states and communities — it’s not just the state level, it’s also the local level, Republican led states and communities — undermining democracy and entrenching white reactionary rule with or without the support of the majority of voters, and then the Supreme Court just says: Yes, keep going. That’s where the Republicans in Congress come in and where the House Majority comes in, because all they have to do in this situation is to block any attempt to counter this via national legislation, because now there’s not going to be any national legislation that would put a stop to all of this. Because they have the House, they can block most of that. That is the bigger picture I think people need to look at, instead of just focusing on Kevin McCarthy hugging Marjorie Taylor Greene, and look at these chaos agents.

Sam Goldman 22:17

I think that is super helpful, and you answered several questions that I was going to ask you. I think there is a lot to get into in what you said. Not the chaos part, but I do think that there is something to Kevin McCarthy hugging Marjorie Taylor Greene. It isn’t just a What The Fuck moment, this is insane. To me, it’s also: Let’s get real, there is nothing moderate about any part of the GOP. Anybody who’s still telling themselves that this isn’t a fully gutted party needs to wake up. What are your thoughts?

Thomas Zimmer 22:59

It was quite striking how McCarthy started his tenure as Speaker. If you think back to this, it all happened on the second anniversary of the assault on the Capitol. Around midnight or so on January 6th; maybe it was the very early hours of January 7th — it was basically right on the second anniversary of the assault on the Capitol. The first thing he did right after he was elected, he took a selfie — all smiles — with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was so happy. Then in his first speech in his new role as Speaker he railed against “the woke indoctrination in our schools.”

Then in his first encounter with reporters, he praised Donald Trump for his support and he emphasized that no one should doubt his influence; meaning Trump’s influence. He basically said in so many words, Donald, look, we finally did it; we got the House. It was so shameless, which is like so many things that are happening right now, it’s shocking, but not surprising. No one should be surprised by this, but it’s still shocking to actually see it. There was, of course, the tendency in mainstream media reporting to apply a framework of this being a conflict when McCarthy didn’t have the votes to be elected.

Oh, it’s a conflict between a few “radicals”, and then a vast majority of more “moderate” or “reasonable” or whatever Republicans. If there was ever a constellation that should have gotten people to resist such empty labeling radicals v. moderates, it’s the way that mainstream media reporting drew the lines actually put Marjorie Taylor Greene in the moderate camp because she was in the McCarthy camp; she was supporting McCarthy. That just can’t be right. At that point, you should look at yourself and say: Wait a minute, that can’t be right. If the way I’m drawing the lines here puts Marjorie Taylor Greene in the moderate camp, by absolutely have no definition of the term can that be right. You’re right.

I think this is mostly a reminder of — it’s indicative of — how far the Republican Party has moved to the right. That’s not a new development, it’s been on this trajectory for a long time, but this process has also accelerated recently; specifically in the Obama era, of course, but then once again it accelerated after the mobilization of mass protests in the wake of the George Floyd murder in the summer of 2020. This is what we should take away from this. Donald Trump is still a massive problem and Kevin McCarthy very explicitly reminded everyone: Hey, this guy’s still here.

But the main problem is not Trump. The main problem is the party that elevated him in the first place, the party that embraces and elevates far right extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and like Matt Gaetz. There is not going to be a return to “normalcy” now that all this speaker spectacle is over, because there is no normal. Let me put it this way: this is the normal, right. The new normal in the Republican Party is a mixture of fake populism, white reactionary grievance politics with a heavy dose of right wing conspiratorial stuff in there, and it’s all in service of a political project of hierarchy, maintenance; of maintaining traditional hierarchies of wealth, race, gender, religion.

Kevin McCarthy is not a moderate. He is Republican establishment, but establishment doesn’t mean moderate in that party. It means that the GOP establishment is fully embracing the extremism as the party has moved so far to the right that yesterday’s radical fringe is now firmly in the center of conservative politics. That is the takeaway here. The takeaway is not: Oh, in the end, the establishment won over the radicals. No. The establishment is embracing the extremism, and those who were radical fringe just yesterday have moved to the center of conservative politics. That’s extremely concerning.

Sam Goldman 26:43

I both share your concern and think that the way you just broke that down was really helpful in clarifying. There are some people who look at the mainstreaming of what, I would say, is a fascist movement — I think you would use different words, and for this purpose, it doesn’t matter — they look at that and they say: That is a signal that this is a party on its last breath. What do you say to the people who say that? Are they done?

Thomas Zimmer 27:14

I think two things. One is it is important to always emphasize the fact they do not have majority support for what they’re trying to do. They do not have majority support for that reactionary vision that they want to impose on the country. That is important. To make it very clear, if democracy falls in this country, it’s not going to be because over 50% of the electorate are voting in a fascist dictator; that’s not happening. But here’s the problem: The people who say: Oh, okay, so then we don’t have to worry, because we have the numbers. Or: Every year, the electorate is moving away from the Republicans — which is true, by the way, to the extent that the electorate gets younger, more diverse, it is moving away from a party that is so entirely focused on the interests and sensibilities of conservative white people.

Yes, the demographics are moving away from the Republican Party, but here’s the problem: If America were a functioning democratic system, in which, if you get the majority of votes, you also get to hold political power, then the problem would be a lot less concerning, but that’s not what America is. The American political system has all these anti democratic distortions that consistently award a lot of power to a party that doesn’t get and doesn’t need 50% of the vote.

So that’s the first problem. It’s just not the case that they need a majority of the electorate behind them because of the many anti democratic distortions in the system, they don’t. The second thing is: If you make the argument: They are pursuing a minority terian project — which is true — and that can’t work, because at some point, don’t just have to accept that a growing majority is against them. Why do they have to accept that?

The question of whether or not a minority can hold on to power, that entirely depends on how far the minority is willing to go to stay in power. It’s true, if the minority says: Oh, look, if we’re losing elections, we have to go. But that’s already not the position. The Republican Party is already saying: Losing elections, not a thing. We’re not losing elections. If we lose elections, then that’s because, well, there was fraud, or too many of the wrong people have the right to vote and we have to rectify that by taking that away or making it harder for them to vote. So that’s already a problem.

And then, again, if you are willing to use a lot of oppressive measures, if you’re willing to just not let the people who are not voting for you vote, or make it harder for them to vote, or if push comes to shove, if you’re willing to even endorse political violence, embrace political violence, then a minority can stay in power. Look at South African apartheid. Yes, at some point, it crumbled in the late 80s, early 1990s, but that was after decades of a relatively small minority clinging to power by just oppression.

Basically, the people who are saying: Oh, the Republicans, they can’t do this, we have the numbers and the demographics are so bad for them, basically, what you’re saying then, is: I don’t think the Republican Party would go so far as to use oppressive measures to stay in power; anti democratic, oppressive measures. And then I would tell you: Where is the evidence that they wouldn’t do that? Because I’ve seen a lot of evidence that they’re absolutely willing to do that. So again, this whole they will not go that far, that’s the most dangerous idea out there. All the evidence we’ve had is that they’re absolutely going that far. That’s how we should think about this stuff and not rely on ideas of they will not go that far, because they absolutely will.

Sam Goldman 27:27

They will, they have, they are. All of those. I want to return to something that you had started talking about, where — I don’t know if it was first on a Twitter thread that you wrote, or on your podcast, But you were talking about — that it’s not just power for power’s sake, but without any ideological coherence. You were directing people’s attention, in fact, just in our conversation, to look to wherever and whenever they have power, and what they do with that. That they are brutally enforcing and advancing a very clearly dangerous — I would say, fascistic — theocratic ideology. Y

ou alluded to him already in this conversation, but one of the people that I think exemplifies that is Ron DeSantis, and what he is doing in his little fascist laboratory that is Florida. He is continuing to be a rising star in the GOP and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you see going on with Ron DeSantis and his continued rise.

Thomas Zimmer 32:07

Since the midterms, specifically, we’ve had so much talk about Ron DeSantis, being the new guy on the right for the Republican Party. Which, by the way, I will say I find all this Donald Trump is done [SG: So wrong.]. Yes, that is very wrong. As of right now — again, we’re talking January 23rd — Donald Trump is still the favorite. [SG: He’s still the front runner, yup.] He’s clearly. I mean, he’s clearly the favorite. If you look at where his support comes from, how strong his numbers still are with non college educated Republican voters. People seem to think that in 2015/16, he had like 100% support from Republicans or whatever.

No, his support always came from non-college educated voters and that was enough to get him through these primaries where you don’t need 50% of the vote, you just need more than any other one contender. He has been weakened, that is true, he’s not at his apex, but he’s still the favorite. But DeSantis has emerged as the one sort of challenger I guess, and that has then led specifically sort of “moderate” never-Trump conservative commentators to say: Oh, DeSantis is… that would be good. That would be so much better than Trump. He is a “normal” conservative or “normal” Republican politician, and lefties, liberals should just stop with the hysteria.

Here’s the thing about DeSantis: He has an actual track record. We don’t have to speculate in a vacuum about what kind of guy Ron DeSantis is, just look at what’s been going on in Florida. The fact is that under his leadership, Florida has been at the forefront of the reactionary attempts to roll back the post 1960s rights revolution, and mobilize the state against all kinds of dissent from a white nationalist understanding of America. He is actually escalating his assault on public education, and on academic freedom.

Specifically, there’s been some really good reporting in January already about this. He keeps pushing his “Stop Woke Act”, which he signed in the spring. It was actually declared illegal and unconstitutional by a federal court in November, and DeSantis just doesn’t care. They just keep pushing this. They’re targeting the remaining more liberal institutions. They’re just installing these right wing reactionaries as trustees and board members and whatever in these remaining liberal institutions. I think DeSantis’ position on speech is actually really, really extreme. The government of Florida is explicitly saying there is no such thing as academic freedom or freedom of speech. Speech is only permitted as long as it does not contradict the edicts of the ruling party. That is their official position in Florida.

It’s really, really extreme. It’s entirely consistent with what all authoritarian leaders think of education and free speech and academic freedom, which is that it doesn’t exist. Whatever is considered “woke” in Florida is being purged, is being censored, is being banned. I want to just implore people, just pay attention. Day after day after day, the news coming out of Florida — every day, there’s something about books being banned here. Now they’ve just decided that African American Studies is too woke, so that’s not going to fly at Florida and public education institutions anymore. It’s crazy. That stuff is crazy. It’s really not like rocket science.

There’s nothing cunning going on. There’s nothing secret going on. It’s so out in the open. It’s so aggressive. I know people want to discuss this whole: Oh, is he worse than Trump? I think it’s just the wrong question. Just look at this guy on the merits. It’s really, really, really bad, what’s happening there. If Republicans want to tell you: Oh, but he’s just a normal Republican, then that doesn’t tell you anything about Ron DeSantis being normal or not dangerous, it just tells you how radical the normal is in this Republican Party. If that is normal — if they want to tell us: You liberals and leftists, you got to relax a little bit, he’s just a normal Republican politician — what I’m seeing is a full on assault on anything that dares to deviate and dissent from a white nationalist understanding of America’s past or present — well, then you’re telling me who you are, right? That’s what’s happening here.

Sam Goldman 36:21

In living color. It’s so sinister, the way that DeSantis’ Department of Ed went about banning the AP course, saying that it was — I forget the exact phrasing but — went against the Florida law and lacked educational value. [TZ: No education value, yes.] What an obscene, dehumanizing, contemptuous stand against black folk. It’s disgusting. In one breath, he talks about how the “Stop Woke Act” is against state sanctioned racism. Meanwhile, it’s a mechanism to enforce white supremacy. If it was only ass-backwards, that would be enough, but it goes so deeper and farther than that.

Thomas Zimmer 37:12

Let’s not discuss DeSantis in a vacuum. He has an established track record and his track record is deeply illiberal and anti-democratic. It is deeply illiberal and anti-democratic on speech issues; on free speech. It is deeply anti-democratic and illiberal on civil liberties, where he has been on the forefront of the attacks on LGBTQ groups — this whole “Don’t Say Bay Bill” stuff. He’s also been on the forefront of the assault on voting rights.

It is true that he has not actively participated in Trump’s coup attempt in 2020, but he has absolutely no problem just trying to take away voting rights from groups he doesn’t like, or make it much harder for people to vote. That’s just a deep disrespect for the most basic political right that all democracies depend on. Trump is still there, he’s still a major problem, and whatever you want to say about DeSantis, it cannot get to the point where someone says something like: Oh, I’d rather have Trump. No, no, no. Trump back in the White House is the end of democracy, democratic self government, all that.

But the point is, we need to make the case against Trump without making the case for DeSantis. There are people on the center-right, moderate conservatives, who want to tell us: Oh well, look, your only choice is: it’s either going to be Trump or DeSantis, so you have to make a choice. And if you don’t want Trump then you have to be pro DeSantis. I just reject those as the parameters of the debate. It might get to the point where Republican leaning voters, conservative voters, if they insist on voting Republican, they will have to make that choice in electoral terms, but from where we’re speaking now, analytically, and in terms of diagnosing the problem, it’s just not helpful to pretend: Oh, we have to like either be pro Trump or pro DeSantis.

No. I’m very much anti both of them, and we can make the case against Trump without making a pro DeSantis camp. Because the DeSantism is very much Trumpism without Trump. There is a debate to be had about is that more or less dangerous than Trumpism with Trump? There is this argument that the less dangerous people will say there are certain things about Trump’s personality that are specifically dangerous — and by the way, that is true, guy is crazy, like a lunatic, right? [SG Yeah], so that is not great. You don’t want that guy in charge.

The other argument, the argument that says but actually there’s something more dangerous about DeSantis would say: Yes, but a Trumpism that is slightly more competent — because it has someone in charge was not a complete lunatic, and actually knows how to mobilize the coercive power of the state, which Trump he doesn’t care about figuring out any of that stuff, but DeSantis is demonstrating in Florida, that he is very much willing, and he knows how to mobilize the coercive power of the state — so there might be something more effective in that sense.

Okay, fine, have that debate, but again, at the end of the day, you cannot come out in like making the case against Trump, by making a pro DeSantis camp, or making the case against the centers by making a pro Trump camp. It’s bad. The takeaway needs to be that this is really bad, and if this is the new normal in the Republican Party, then maybe that’s a big problem with this party.

Sam Goldman 40:31

Exactly. I wanted to close out our discussion by asking, what is the question people need to be asking more of? And why do they need to be asking it? As people look at the shit show that is politics right now, both at the state level, and within the halls of power in the national government, with the fascists not falling back, what do people of conscience need to be asking themselves and thinking about in this moment that too many people aren’t asking right now?

Thomas Zimmer 41:06

One thing that I still see too much of is this sort of clinging to the idea that there’s something intrinsically stable about American democracy — because it’s, I don’t know, old and consolidated or whatever. If there’s one myth about the history of American democracy, it’s this idea that America is this old, stable, consolidated, 250 year democracy, whatever we’re facing right now will not bring democracy down. That’s just nonsense.

There’s nothing old or stable or consolidated about the kind of democracy that America has only been since maybe the 1960s, which is a multiracial, pluralistic democracy; not just a white man’s democracy. The kind of democracy that existed in this country since the founding in the late 18th century was a white man’s democracy. America has only had a claim to be anything but a white man’s democracy, meaning a proper set of multiracial, somewhat egalitarian, multiracial, pluralistic democracy, since maybe the 1960s, and it’s never really gotten there. It’s taken a major step forward in the 1960s, with the civil rights revolution that unfolded from the 1960s onwards, but there’s never been anything stable about this.

There was never a consensus around this. The country has literally been shaped and dominated since the 1960s by whether or not that attempt to make this democracy into an egalitarian, multiracial, pluralistic democracy — whether that should be allowed to continue, or whether that is something that needs to be turned back. Again, that’s the political conflict right now. Just get away from this nonsense about stable democracy and these exceptionalist ideas about America having a sort of gloriously stable democratic past, which somehow inoculates the country and immunizes the country against some authoritarian onslaught. That’s just not a thing. Forget it.

Sam Goldman 43:06

I want to thank you, Thomas, for coming and sharing your expertise, your perspective, your insight and your time with us. I want to double check what’s in the show notes, so we’re gonna put a link to your pod, your Substack, your Twitter [TZ: That’s it], is there anything else you want people to go to?

Thomas Zimmer 43:30

No, that’s fine. I’m still begrudgingly on Twitter [laughs]. But yeah, I do [SG: That’s the state a lot of us are in.] I know, I know, but I still think if there’s any value in the kind of perspective analysis commentary that people like me can offer, then unfortunately, as of right now, Twitter is still how you reach people where people find you, so begrudgingly still on Twitter, but I started a Substack newsletter, got the podcast, so if people want to keep up with what I have to say, those are the ways to do that.

Sam Goldman 44:02

Thanks so much.

Thomas Zimmer 44:03

Thank you so much for having me.

Sam Goldman 44:06

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