Ron DeSantis’ new tag line is “Florida is the state where woke goes to die.” His intent is to use the power of the state to crush an ideology, however ill-defined. What does history tell us about his ability to accomplish his objective? Could it work in the nation as a whole?
If you’re the leader of a totalitarian state, the job is easy to define, if somewhat difficult to accomplish in practice: you identify the woke people and either shoot them or put them in prison. If you’re the head of state of a liberal democracy, it requires vast amounts of persistence, energy, and patience, probably over a decade or more. If you’re running an illiberal democracy, you will rely on measures that fall between these two poles: censorship; regulatory harassment; the loss of government benefits; and forced unemployment.
DeSantis, as you would expect, is choosing Option 3. Even he would probably shrink from Option 1, and he doesn’t have the time and patience for Option 2. Can it work, particularly in blue states? Probably only well enough to keep the right in power, which would be the actual ultimate objective. Just ask Viktor Orban.