Leftists like the ones at National Public Radio think it's super-kooky to compare Barack Obama or Joe Biden to communists, but apparently it's just "news" to let leftists compare Ron DeSantis to Fidel Castro. On Thursday's bizarrely named All Things Considered, there was another completely one-sided story ripping DeSantis. "Thousands" of lefties protested DeSantis education policies, and they were the only ones considered in the reporting of Miami-based education reporter Kate Payne.
Payne announced that "at least 100 students and community members protesting today, and they were calling out the state for requesting data from public universities on which students were seeking gender-affirming care on campus - treatments like hormone therapy and puberty blockers. They are also protesting Governor Ron DeSantis' pledge to defund diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across public universities and his efforts to try and restrict how race and identity and history can be talked about in the classroom."
One student, Kayly Chapelle of the "Pride Student Union," complained that DeSantis anti-DEI efforts were going to ruin a life-changing thing. "It was the first time I found community. It was the first time I felt people actually, you know, were like me - that, you know, believed in the same things, actually supported me and respected me, made me feel included." On his Instagram he said "Fascism will never win."
Then came the Castro garbage, as if any government questioning of woke ideology is authoritarianism:
ARI SHAPIRO: And what more have you heard about the politics behind these policies?
PAYNE: Well, students I talked with today say that they see this as a way for Governor DeSantis to fire up the conservative base for his expected run for president in 2024. Here is Oscar Alvarez, a computer science student at FIU.
OSCAR ALVAREZ: I think that DeSantis is aware that there is a rise in the far right. And, alongside Trump as a competitor for the presidential campaign, they're trying to one-up each other on how they can entice this base and agitate this base, who sees these culture wars as a real issue.
PAYNE: And Alvarez says his family came to the U.S. from Cuba, where they were fleeing authoritarianism, and he says that's what he's seeing now from the DeSantis administration. And the governor says, you know, he's accounting to the property tax for taxpayer money and stopping what he says is woke ideology.
National "Public" Radio feels zero need to consider the Republican side of this argument, or fact-check the notion that DeSantis is somehow comparable to a communist dictator. This is how the Left puts out misinformation about anyone trying to check leftist activism and propaganda on campus. They want colleges to sound just as one-sided as NPR does. State-run radio is statist to the core.
