MSNBC's All In host Chris Hayes lamented on Thursday that when people think of authoritarians, they tend to think of people like Stalin or Mussoulini and not “Mr. Pudding Fingers” because for Hayes, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s education, abortion, Disney, and drag show policies are all hallmarks of “authoritarianism.” However, the worst bit of so-called authoritarianism to come out DeSantis’s Florida is that parents will no longer be able to give their kids “gender-affirming care.”
During his long, rambling opening monologue, Hayes proclaimed “While Ron DeSantis tours around the country promoting himself and his new memoir titled The Courage to Be Free, at home he runs a government based on the opposite of freedom.”
As Hayes tells it, “his agenda is about state authority and its punitive use and decrees from on high. In Florida he is running a kind of little MAGA kingdom in which Ron DeSantis, and the Republican Party in the state legislature with their big majorities tell you how to live your life and you do not get to choose.”
He mourned that:
I think the discussion about the threat of authoritarianism can feel sometimes a little remote or academic. That word has a certain kind of historical timbre with it. We associate with, like, stern historical figures like Stalin or Mussolini and that can make it hard to look at Mr. Pudding Fingers yucking it up on the campaign trail in Iowa and see an authoritarian.
Instead of shooting opponents in the back of the head or sending them to die in the gulag, DeSantis’s alleged authoritarianism includes policies about “what books your child can or cannot read in your school library, by threatening teachers and librarians with time in prison, if they do not comply with vague laws about instruction on race, gender, and sexuality.”
Every state has some standard for school libraries and curriculum and, of course, Hayes omitted the pornographic nature of many of these books, but not deterred by facts, Hayes moved right along, “The state will decide what women can do with their own bodies by banning abortion at six weeks.…which means that Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party of Florida control the bodies of every Floridian who can get pregnant. It is their body, not yours.”
It also includes drag shows, “the state will also decide how you can dress in public. Which costumes you can wear by enacting what is essentially a full ban on drag performances that will also likely restrict Pride events.”
Again, Hayes omitted that Florida’s new law defines "adult live performances" as that which "depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement" including "imitation genitals or breasts."
As for DeSantis’s fight with Disney, “The state would decide what kind of speech corporations can engage in, including which criticism they can make of the government by going after Disney, punitively, for speaking out against anti-LGBTQ laws.”
Disney can say whatever it wants, it can just do so without its own unique set of rules.
Finally, Hayes got to his biggest problem with Florida, “Ron DeSantis's dystopian authoritarian vision is most apparent in the legislation that he just signed yesterday. It bans all gender-affirming care for all minors in Florida. Everyone 18 and younger. That law also empowers state courts to change custody agreements of a child, if a child is receiving or at risk of receiving gender-affirming care.”
Hayes elaborated, “Telling parents how they can or cannot raise their own children is among the most authoritarian things a government can do and now that is exactly what Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party in Florida and generally the conservative movement that endorses this is doing, purely for ideological and punitive purposes.”
As opposed to Chris Hayes, who is MSNBC’s simple non-ideological man of science.
This segment was sponsored by Chase.
Here is a transcript for the May 18 show:
All in with Chris Hayes
5/18/2023
8:02 AM ET
CHRIS HAYES: While Ron DeSantis tours around the country promoting himself and his new memoir titled The Courage to Be Free, at home he runs a government based on the opposite of freedom.
His agenda is about state authority and its punitive use and decrees from on high. In Florida he is running a kind of little MAGA kingdom in which Ron DeSantis, and the Republican Party in the state legislature with their big majorities tell you how to live your life and you do not get to choose.
Now we’re hearing the word authoritarian a lot more these days. In the wake of the first ever attempt to overturn American democracy particularly we use it on the show. Donald Trump encouraged those authoritarian impulses and Ron DeSantis has stoked them. He’s put them into practice, but I think the discussion about the threat of authoritarianism can feel sometimes a little remote or academic.
That word has a certain kind of historical timbre with it. We associate with, like, stern historical figures like Stalin or Mussolini and that can make it hard to look at Mr. Pudding Fingers yucking it up on the campaign trail in Iowa and see an authoritarian.
But Ron DeSantis really is running on an authoritarian agenda. The policies he has enacted in Florida are the opposite of freedom. To me the opposite of core American values because in Ron DeSantis’s Florida, the state will decide what books your child can or cannot read in your school library, by threatening teachers and librarians with time in prison, if they do not comply with vague laws about instruction on race, gender, and sexuality.
The state will decide what women can do with their own bodies by banning abortion at six weeks. Of course that is for all intents and purposes they complete abortion ban, which means that Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party of Florida control the bodies of every Floridian who can get pregnant. It is their body, not yours, the state will also decide how you can dress in public.
Which costumes you can wear by enacting what is essentially a full ban on drag performances that will also likely restrict Pride events. The state would decide what kind of speech corporations can engage in, including which criticism they can make of the government by going after Disney, punitively, for speaking out against anti-LGBTQ laws.
That fight has become quite notorious, blew up to the point where Disney announced that it is abandoning a $1 billion planned development in Florida.
We’ll see what sort of reprisals the state wages against that company. But Ron DeSantis's dystopian authoritarian vision is most apparent in the legislation that he just signed yesterday.
It bans all gender-affirming care for all minors in Florida. Everyone 18 and younger. That law also empowers state courts to change custody agreements of a child, if a child is receiving or at risk of receiving gender-affirming care.
Meaning taking a kid away from the parent. Telling parents how they can or cannot raise their own children is among the most authoritarian things a government can do and now that is exactly what Ron DeSantis and the Republican Party in Florida and generally the conservative movement that endorses this is doing, purely for ideological and punitive purposes.
