The Journey 130. Wayne Madsen: DeSantis, Trump, Fascism

Publisher R. A. “Kris” Millegan speaks with Wayne Madsen about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, President Trump, fascism, and racism. Wayne is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist, author and columnist, whose work can be found at waynemadsenreport.com.

His TrineDay books are: OVERTHROW A FASCIST REGIME ON $15 a Day: The Internet Irregulars vs. The Powers That Be, and JADED TASKS: Brass Plates, Black Ops, and Big Oil, The Blood Politics of George Bush & Company. His other books are THE RISE OF THE FASCIST FOURTH REICH: The Era of Trumpism and the New Far Right, A WOKE COLORING BOOK: Re-adding Color to a Whitewashed History, and TWO MICE THAT ROARED: The Conch Republic of the Florida Keys and Anguilla.

Kris: Tell me about this coloring book.

Wayne: It has [the stories] of very famous people in civil rights history. The target audience is children, especially children in Florida, who are now being denied the actual history of African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanic Americans by [for instance] local school boards that are being taken over by, the only word for it is fascists, who are trying to do what happened in [1930s] Germany. They’re trying to re-write history.

Kris: Growing up [I often heard], “How did Hitler rise to power? How did that fascism happen? Were they all stupid?” But we’re kind of seeing how it happened today.

Wayne: I think it’s terrible that people like Ron DeSantis, who actually majored in history at Yale, is trying to make this issue about “Woke,” which is a non-issue. It’s just being educated. It’s being aware. And he’s trying to use that, trying to emulate some of the awful governors of the southern states, starting with post-Reconstruction and following all through Jim Crow to the present day.

I think in many respects that DeSantis is worse than Trump. Donald Trump is a clown. DeSantis got his undergrad degree from Yale and his law degree from Harvard. He knows better. Or should know better. I see him as more of a doctrinaire, institutional fascist. Just like Benito Mussolini. If he ever became president, he would systematically know how to take apart constitutional rule in the United States.

Kris: It’s amazing what people will do for power. [I remember the racism of the 1950s.] When they started integration under Brown vs. The Board of Education, basically overnight this huge, big private school system came about, isolating people so they couldn’t be aware of this other culture.

Wayne: In Florida, we have members of the Nazi party standing in front of Disney World and projecting swastikas on conventions centers in places like Jacksonville, and DeSantis doesn’t condemn them. They carry DeSantis flags along with the swastika flags.

Kris: The South had some good history [after the Civil War] until the 1876 election with Rutherford B. Hayes, which, actually a bunch of Skull and Bones people helped negotiate that whole thing.

The mis and disinformation now is just going over the top. I’m just getting so much spam that says, “The banks are going to all explode! And Biden signed this and Biden signed that!” Just going over the top in this campaign to put Trump back in office, which basically means fascism.