Fascism 101: Florida considers state registration of political bloggers

If there is a race to see which US state will be the first to achieve fascism, State Sen. Jason T. Brodeur is doing his bit to ensure Florida wins the gold. This DeSantis lap dog has introduced a bill requiring bloggers mentioning Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody, other members of the Florida executive cabinet, or elected officials to register with the state or face fines.

It is yet another example of a Republican embracing Orwellian doublethink - in this case, allowing them simultaneously to be both an advocate of small government and a proponent of government overreach.

WFLA News Channel 8 reports:

“In the bill, Brodeur wrote that those who write “an article, a story, or a series of stories,” about “the Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, a Cabinet officer, or any member of the Legislature,” and receives or will receive payment for doing so, must register with state offices within five days after the publication of an article that mentions an elected state official.”

There is no point in passing a law unless there is punishment for breaking that law. Brodeur does not disappoint.

“Failure to file these disclosures or register with state officials, if the bill passes, would lead to daily fines for the bloggers, with a maximum amount per report, not per writer, of $2,500. The per-day fine is $25 per report for each day it’s late.”

There are not many bloggers buying yachts and private islands. Writing is rarely lucrative. Who the hell is going to risk that kind of financial hit?

What purpose does Brodeur’s bill serve? Whose cause does it advance? The answer is patent. If enforceable, it would chill dissent. And if not enforceable — or constitutional (it is hard to imagine how it could be) — it is a hand job from a wannabe important person to the current tin-pot dictator and his team of sycophants.

The hypocrisy is palpable. Billionaires can shower anonymous millions to promote candidates and their policies through tax-exempt organizations. But the blogger with a modest following must reveal all.

I do not know how this law would work. How much taxpayer money will the state spend enforcing this chill on free speech? Would DeSantis add a blogger flying squad to his election fraud gazpacho police? Would Florida’s goons be apolitical in their search for disobedient citizen journalists? (You can stop laughing now.)

What about out-of-state bloggers? What if a blogger from a liberal paradise is vacationing in Florida and writes a piece? What if a Florida blogger posts from Georgia? And VPNs would presumably have some impact. A silver lining is that some political bloggers would develop allegorical skills — and how do you punish a writer who never uses DeSantis’ name but instead refers to him with allusions such as “Wonder Bread” or “Caligula” (literally: Little Boots)?

The regular citizen would like to think that this ham-handed, first amendment throat slitting would die on the vine. However, who knows what constitutional abuse today’s Supreme Court might endorse.

Conservatism ends, and fascism begins when the right-winger, already a believer in state interference in the citizen’s private life, decides that authoritarianism is a fine tool to crack down on criticism of their elected officials. And before they know it, they wake up in Iran. Berlin is burning around them. And the KGB is knocking on their door.

This bill will go nowhere. But others have succeeded. DeSantis punished Disney for speaking its corporate mind. Florida schools are being reimagined as propaganda factories. And the governor appointed a group of hard-line conservative loyalists into leadership positions at the liberal New College of Florida as a warm-up for his attempt to remake the Florida public university system.

Totalitarianism — at least in the Western world — has arisen in countries with histories of democracy and culture. It comes about after a sustained assault on the media and academia — anywhere there is lively debate and a reverence for truth. Not only can “it happen here”. It has already started.