An angry mob of betrayed Trump supporters attack the White House Ballroom in the artificial intelligence-generated video “MAGA Ballroom 2028.”
Aug. 11, 2025 by David Silverberg
On July 31, President Donald Trump announced that he had ordered the building of a new $200 million ballroom onto the White House.
The official announcement stated that Trump was “solving” the problem of too little White House event space and the ballroom was “much-needed.” It would be “exquisite,” “ornately designed” and “carefully crafted,” according to the announcement.
He also stated that the ballroom would be paid for by private donations.
The proposed White House ballroom as conceived by the architect, viewed from above. The new ballroom is at the center, connected to the existing White House (on the right) by a columned patio or corridor. (Art: McCrery Architects)
The proposed White House ballroom as conceived by the architect, viewed from the southwest. The new ballroom is the square addition on the right. (Art: McCrery Architects)
The interior conception of the proposed White House ballroom.(Art: McCrery Architects)
The ballroom is hardly the first physical change Trump has made to the White House. He had the famous Rose Garden paved over to create a plantless patio.
Before and after photos of the Rose Garden.
He’s festooned the Oval Office and the rest of the building with the garish gold ornamentation for which he is known.
Gold flourishes on the walls and ceiling of the Oval Office.
President Donald Trump walks through an Oval Office door with gold decorations he had installed.
Trump’s building and gilding of the White House is reminiscent of another potentate who extravagantly built an elaborate domicile—and who had gold as his dominant decorating scheme.
The Gold House
A profile of Nero on a Roman gold coin called an “aureas.” (Photo: American Numismatic Society)
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus is better known to the world as Nero, and is one of the most infamous Roman emperors for his madness, extravagance, unpredictable and arbitrary rule and extreme and indiscriminate cruelty. He served as Rome’s leading politician and decisionmaker from the years 54 to 68 of the Common Era.
Starting in 64 Nero built a palace for himself named the Domus Aurea in Latin, or Golden House in English. It was constructed on land burned by the Great Fire of 64 that leveled enormous portions of Rome—and which many critics suspected Nero had ordered set in order to clear the space.
Nero thought he was invincible and untouchable. He murdered or forced the suicide of the most distinguished and able Roman politicians and statesmen and replaced them with his own sycophants and toadies. As the historian Suetonius put it: “Transported and puffed up with such successes, as he considered them, he boasted that no princeps had ever known what power he really had… .”
Nero wanted to surpass the Hellenistic palaces of overseas kingdoms and he had a grandiose, malignantly narcissistic sense of himself, so he built to impress. The land for the Gold House is estimated by some scholars to have covered a massive 300 acres in the heart of Rome. It had 150 large and small rooms and a footprint of 16,000 square meters (over 172,000 square feet, about the equivalent of three football fields). Some rooms had ceilings 12 feet high, all of them decorated and embellished with gold and jewels, with one, a circular dining room, that had ceiling panels that could be opened to shower flower petals and perfume on diners as they revolved around Nero in the center like the sun.
A tour guide in the remains of the Gold House displays a schematic of its plans. (Photo: Author)
An overhead visualization of the complete Gold House and grounds. (Art: JR Casals)
Not one to keep his light under a bushel, Nero commissioned a 120-foot high statue of himself to stand at the entrance (the Statue of Liberty is 305 feet high).
Visualization of the Colossus of Nero with other buildings of the time, for scale.
He also had an immense, artificial lake built surrounded by miniature cities and landscapes of fields, farmlands, vineyards and forests populated with every sort of animal.
After a mere four years, the house was completed in 68. When Nero dedicated it, he remarked, “Good! Now I can at last begin to live like a human being.”
Nero didn’t have much time to enjoy his power or his monster mansion because that same year, faced with his misrule, extreme taxation, public discontent, provincial uprisings and mutinies by discontented generals, even the otherwise subservient and bullied Senate revolted and declared him an enemy of Rome. Now the target of all Romans, after trying to escape the city he chose to die by his own hand.
The Gold House was a huge embarrassment to all subsequent Roman emperors, who did what they could to obliterate it—and did so by overbuilding it with structures that the entire Roman public could enjoy.
On the giant lake the emperor Vespasian ordered the building of the Flavian Amphitheater, or what is today called the Colosseum. Other emperors like Titus and Trajan built huge public baths.
Nero himself was subject to a “hostis iudicatio,” a posthumous trial for treason, and he was subject to the Roman practice of “damnatio memoriae,” the damnation of his memory. His name was erased from monuments and records and his statues removed or defaced. While his giant colossus remained standing, its head was replaced with a representation of the sun god Sol Invictus.
Today there’s barely any hint of the Gold House. Tourists enter it through an otherwise obscure entrance in a hillside. Tours are underground but visitors can get a sense of its vastness in the dimly lit corridors and chambers.
The modern entrance to the Gold House. (Photo: Author)
During tours visitors and guides wear hardhats in the enormous rooms. (Photo: Author)
The Golden House is an object lesson that excess and insanity may ultimately bring about a reckoning that topples both the ruler and the buildings he constructs.
The White House
“The White House by Moonlight,” a depiction of the White House circa 1905. (Art: Paul McGehee)
The American Executive Mansion—it wasn’t formally called the White House until 1901—while hardly a hovel, was a relatively modest presidential home for its time and so it has remained since it was first occupied in 1800.
When designed it was intended to reflect republican simplicity and virtue in contrast to the grandiose monarchical palaces of Europe. It was also intended to convey the dignity and stability of the American executive and inspire respect rather than awe. Its classical proportions and symmetry symbolized the rationality and enlightenment of the American government itself.
The design was selected in a 9-way competition. Thomas Jefferson entered anonymously but lost out to Irish-born immigrant architect James Hoban.
While the White House has been renovated many times—including a complete gutting and structural rebuilding between 1949 and 1951—the renovations were always made with respect for the building’s history, significance and the intentions of its founders, which included George Washington.
One of the most notable renewals was overseen by first lady Jaqueline Kennedy, who unveiled her efforts to the world in a television tour on Valentine’s Day, 1962. She’d overseen an interior redesign that reflected the building’s past and its historic meaning, enhancing its elegance and stature, brought back significant objects, invited widespread public participation and drew on the knowledge of experts and historians.
By contrast, Trump’s changes, including his announced ballroom, have been unilateral, secret and one might say, dictatorial. Given his almost total lack of historical perspective, knowledge or interest, they pay no respect to the building’s past or its meaning.
When Trump announced his ballroom, he had already selected McCrery Architects as designer, Clark Construction for the building and AECOM for the engineering. There were no public requests for proposals, design competitions, competitive bids, transparent selections or publicly accessible contracts. (Given Trump’s past record of non-payment, one hopes for the contractors’ sake that they’re getting their cash up front!)
As a result, the mockery began almost immediately.
It has also sparked resentment, as have his other changes. Nowhere was this more clearly expressed than in an AI-generated video titled “MAGA Ballroom 2028,” created by Ari Kuschnir, a digital consultant and founder of the company “m ss ng p eces.”
This 1-minute, 45-second video depicts angry, resentful MAGA supporters suffering while Trump and his Cabinet members feast in the new ballroom. The people ultimately revolt and attack the building the same way the Trump-incited rioters attacked the Capitol Building on Jan. 6, 2021.
Windows shatter inside the Trump ballroom as rioters attack it in the AI video “MAGA Ballroom 2028.”
While “MAGA Ballroom 2028” may appear extreme and emotional, it’s a good reminder that leaders, like Nero, who behave erratically, spend extravagantly and flaunt their imperiousness in the form of ostentatious, egotistical buildings, may ultimately face a very nasty comeuppance at the hands of the people they seek to dominate.
To read a detailed account of Nero and the Great Fire of Rome, click the button below.
The first detainees arrive by van at Alligator Alcatraz, July 2025. (Image: WINK News)
The first detainees arrive by bus at Dachau Concentration Camp, March 1933. (Photo: Bavarian State Archives)
July 21, 2025 by David Silverberg
“Alligator Alcatraz” is now an established fact in Southwest Florida.
The detention and deportation camp was hastily thrown up in eight days before any opposition could effectively coalesce and blessed by a visit from President Donald Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on its opening day, July 1st.
Detainees are being held. Opposition is building.
(Alligator Alcatraz has also attracted other names: Alligator Auschwitz, Gator Gulag, and Gator GITMO, for example. It could also be called the Collier County Concentration Camp. However, this article will use its official designation.)
According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, speaking at the camp’s opening, the idea for the facility came from her general counsel, James Percival, a Floridian, who called DeSantis and Attorney General James Uthmeier.
As she recounted it, Percival said: “Hey, what do you think about partnering with us on a detention facility that we could put in place that would allow us to bring individuals there?”
James Percival. (Photo: DHS)
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier at the site. (Image: AG Office)
DeSantis and Uthmeier agreed and Alligator Alcatraz was immediately launched.
In its establishment and operations, Alligator Alcatraz bears eerie similarities to the first Nazi concentration camp established in Bavaria, Germany near the town of Dachau (pronounced daa-kau, or ˈdɑːxaʊ/, /-kaʊ/ with a guttural chau in the middle).
The history of Dachau Concentration Camp (its official name) also provides a look into the course of events that Alligator Alcatraz could take.
But Alligator Alcatraz is only 20 days old as of this writing. It may still be stopped or closed.
This essay will look at the lessons of the past, the present dynamics surrounding it and possible futures.
Echoes of the past
Make no mistake: Alligator Alcatraz is a concentration camp. It concentrates people into a single location for detention and processing.
The term “concentration camp” came to be synonymous with murder and extermination after the German camps were liberated by allied forces during World War II. But it didn’t originate with the Nazis and it didn’t initially mean automatic death for those held.
In fact, the term “concentration camp” is British. In 1900, when British forces were locked in a guerrilla war with South African Boers, the British commander, Gen. Herbert Kitchener, conceived of “camps of concentration” for the Boer population. Mostly women and children were herded into these camps to keep them separate and unable to support the guerrillas in the field.
A British concentration camp during the Boer War. (Photo: UK National Archives)
While not intended as death camps per se, death was nonetheless the result, with detainees being subject to starvation, disease and abuse. A series of reports and agitation by British activists brought the abuses to light over time. Despite much opposition from politicians who dismissed the reports as what would be called “fake news” today, the population and government in Britain turned against the camps and their abuses and they were ultimately disestablished.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 they decided to follow the British model and sought new places to hold opponents, dissidents and dissenters. They settled on the town of Dachau in Bavaria for the first of their camps of concentration.
There are striking similarities between the founding, development and expansion of Alligator Alcatraz and Dachau.
Abandoned facilities:
In the words of Uthmeier, Alligator Alcatraz is on the “virtually abandoned” site of a proposed Jetport whose sole runway was designated the Dade County Training and Transition Airport (even though two-thirds of it is in Collier County).
Dachau Concentration Camp was established on the site of an abandoned munitions factory.
Intended for undesirables:
Uthmeier, when announcing the idea of Alligator Alcatraz in a June 19 X posting stated that the camp was intended for “criminal aliens.” On June 30 Noem stated: “Alligator Alcatraz, and other facilities like it, will give us the capability to lock up some of the worst scumbags who entered our country under the previous administration.” In his remarks after touring the facility on July 1, President Donald Trump said it would hold “some of the most menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.”
On March 21, 1933, the Nazi newspaper Voelkischer Beobachterannounced the opening of the Dachau Concentration Camp, stating: “All Communists and – as far as it is necessary – functionaries of the Reichsbanner [a pro-democracy paramilitary group] and the Social Democrats who endanger the security of the state will be incarcerated here. This is being done because it is impossible in the long run to accommodate these functionaries in the prisons and it constitutes a heavy burden on the state apparatus. It has been proven impossible to leave these people in liberty as they continue to incite and to cause disorder. These measures have to be used in the interest of the state security and without regard for petty considerations.” This later expanded to include Jews, Romany and prisoners, both civilian and military, from every country conquered by the Nazis.
Increasing the initial estimated number of internees:
In his initial X posting, Uthmeier estimated that Alligator Alcatraz “could house as many as a thousand criminal aliens.” That estimate was rapidly increased to 3,000 and then 5,000.
In 1933 the Voelkischer Beobachter announced that the Dachau Concentration Camp would have “a capacity of 5,000 people.” Over time, however, the numbers increased as the Nazis shipped in more people and the camp expanded. Ultimately, one estimate is that 200,000 people were sent to Dachau during its 12 years of operation.
Inspections and subject to law:
On Thursday, July 3, after the first group of detainees arrived at Alligator Alcatraz, five state Democratic lawmakers tried to visit the facility but were turned away, ostensibly on safety grounds. They filed a lawsuit to force entry, arguing that the denial violated state law.
Two days after its opening, state Sens. Shevrin Jones (D-35-Miami Gardens), Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-17-Orlando), Reps. Anna Eskamani (D-42-Orlando), Michele Rayner (D-62-St. Petersburg), and Angie Nixon (D-13-Jacksonville), attempt to gain access to Alligator Alcatraz but are turned away by state authorities. (Photo: Office of Rep. Anna Eskamani)
On Saturday, July 13, state officials allowed a carefully controlled visit by federal and state lawmakers of both parties. Press was excluded, visitors were not allowed to talk to prisoners and phones and cameras were prohibited. As might be expected, reactions were widely at variance, with Democrats like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-25-Fla.) calling it “really disturbing, vile conditions” and state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R-11-Spring Hill) saying that Democratic rhetoric “did not match the reality.” (Ingoglia was subsequently named state Chief Financial Officer by DeSantis.)
At the start of its operations, Dachau Concentration Camp too was subject to Bavarian law and outside inspection.
Initially, Dachau was not advertised as a murder camp and when reports of prisoner deaths began emerging a month after its opening, Bavarian officials investigated.
Josef Hartinger, an investigator from the Bavarian Ministry of Justice, accompanied by medical examiner Moritz Flamm, visited the camp. Hartinger discovered that three Jewish prisoners had been shot, allegedly for attempting to escape but with wounds indicating executions.
In the following months and subsequent visits—and more deaths, including the suicide of a guard—Hartinger built a case against the camp commandant and his staff. He recommended a prosecution and the murders stopped, at least temporarily.
However, when the case was sent for prosecution and trial, higher authorities declined to pursue it. Hartinger was transferred to a provincial position and survived the war, dying in 1984. Flamm, however, was fired and after two attempts on his life, died under suspicious circumstances in a mental institution in 1934.
These were not the only outside inspections of Dachau Concentration Camp. Members of the International Committee of the Red Cross were granted access in 1935 and 1938. They documented the harsh conditions but with a Nazi-sympathetic vice president, the Committee issued a statement after the second inspection that the camp “is a model of its kind in terms of the way it is built and managed.”
Analysis: Possible futures
Opponents of Alligator Alcatraz protest at the site on June 22. (Photo: Andrea Melendez/WGCU)
If Alligator Alcatraz follows the same course as Dachau Concentration Camp, in the days ahead it will expand to hold many more detainees, who will arrive in growing numbers, likely well in excess of the 5,000 projected now. Access to the facility for lawmakers, lawyers and outsiders of all sorts will be progressively limited. Conditions will steadily deteriorate for prisoners and abuses will multiply. There will certainly be deaths, whether from neglect, sickness or mistreatment, deliberate or otherwise. No doubt authorities will try to cover these up.
Further, it will serve as a model for similar concentration camps that other states are already considering establishing.
Most of all, Alligator Alcatraz will increasingly become a permanent facility, instead of the “temporary detention facility” Uthmeier initially promoted.
Opponents of Alligator Alcatraz mobilized against the camp immediately after its announcement. On June 22 they protested outside the entrance along Route 41 on environmental grounds, led in part by Betty Osceola, a longstanding environmental activist and member of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida, whose sacred lands are close to the camp.
Also lending his voice against the camp is Clyde Butcher, a renowned local photographer specializing in images of the Everglades.
On June 27 the organizations Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit against a variety of federal and state individuals and agencies for violating land use and environmental laws. This has now been joined by the Miccosukee Tribe. Although the lawsuit failed to prevent the opening of the camp, it is nonetheless ongoing in US District Court.
Opposition to the camp is building. No doubt one reason state officials and contractors rushed it to completion in eight days was to outrace expected opposition.
Every day new opponents appear as the magnitude, impact and intent of the facility becomes apparent.
Faith leaders are now joining the chorus of opposition.
Op-eds and similar denunciations are mounting and the rest of the world is awakening to what Alligator Alcatraz really means.
The goal of the opposition at the moment is to either shut down and/or roll back the facility. As Wasserman Schultz put it following her visit: “There are really disturbing, vile conditions and this place needs to be shut the hell down.”
What are the prospects for closure or rollback?
The environmental lawsuit
Lawsuits take time and the DeSantis administration will no doubt follow the Trump model of delaying any proceeding on any basis for as long as possible. State Attorney General Uthmeier is in charge of the state’s defense and as the face of Alligator Alcatraz he will no doubt vigorously defend it.
Moreover, given that he has already been held in contempt for defying a judge’s order, there’s no assurance that any court ruling would be obeyed or have any effect. Also, given the backing of Trump and DeSantis, a conservative, majority DeSantis-appointed Florida Supreme Court, and a US Supreme Court majority that seems to actively favor a Trump dictatorship, the prospects for judicial relief are dim.
That said, the lawsuit has merit on the facts and law. But it will take time to adjudicate. Meanwhile, detainees will be subject to camp conditions and will be deported, no doubt with questionable due process.
Forces of nature
On the day it opened a seasonal rainstorm flooded the Alligator Alcatraz reception area, as though a precursor of things to come.
Water covers the floor of the tent where officials spoke for the opening of Alligator Alcatraz. (Photos: TikTok via AnnaforFlorida)Water on the floor of the detention area of Alligator Alcatraz.
Alligator Alcatraz opened in the midst of Southwest Florida’s wet season when daily afternoon thunderstorms drench the region. More ominously, it is hurricane season, which runs until Nov. 30.
Supposedly, Alligator Alcatraz is built to withstand a Category 2 hurricane (winds of 96 to 110 miles per hour). At the very least that seems questionable. Moreover, the area is subject to much more powerful hurricanes.
There is a precedent for a severe hurricane wreaking havoc on temporary camps in Florida. On Labor Day 1935 a powerful hurricane, later estimated to be a Category 5, struck three Works Progress Administration camps in the Florida keys housing World War I veterans. Some 259 veterans were killed, part of the 400 to 500 people who lost their lives overall. (An excellent account of this is in the book Storm of the Century by Willie Dye, available at the Collier County Public Library.)
There is the very real possibility that Mother Nature herself could wipe Alligator Alcatraz off the face of the earth. It needs to be noted, though, just how awful this possibility is: it could kill the people at the facility, whether guards or prisoners. There is the horrifying prospect of prisoners handcuffed to their beds being helplessly ripped into the air and flung against debris or into the waters surrounding the camp.
Given personnel and budget cuts to the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, there is also no guarantee that Alligator Alcatraz administrators would get accurate warnings with time to prepare—or that they would even make adequate preparations if they were warned.
Cost, crime and corruption
Alligator Alcatraz is expected to cost $450 million to run in its first year, which will be reimbursed at least in part by the federal government.
It is increasingly apparent that the initial phase of Alligator Alcatraz was built using sweetheart deals and favored contractors.
As detailed by The Florida Trident investigative news organization, a primary contractor for Alligator Alcatraz is IRG Global Emergency Management, a company only formed in February. It is an offshoot of Access Restoration Services US, Inc., which has been a major campaign donor to DeSantis and won $108 million in state contracts, mostly awarded by the governor’s office.
Could the cost of Alligator Alcatraz or potential crimes associated with its building lead to its shutdown?
This is highly unlikely in Florida where the chief law enforcement officer and prosecutor is Attorney General James Uthmeier and the Chief Financial Officer is Blaise Ingoglia.
They and DeSantis are clearly focused on implementing Trump’s anti-foreigner agenda, not enforcing state contracting laws—and especially not when it comes to their pet project. Nor can any relief or resistance be expected from the state legislature, which is out of session and when in session sought to implement Trump’s program more forcefully than the governor. Nor is there likely to be relief from the US Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Floridian who appears to see her primary role as Trump’s personal attorney.
Analysis: Politics and principle
President Donald Trump speaks at the opening of Alligator Alcatraz. (Image: YouTube)
Despite the obstacles to shutting down or curbing Alligator Alcatraz by the powers that be, one principle seems to stand out:
Alligator Alcatraz will be closed when it becomes more of a political liability than a political asset.
To appreciate this, one must weigh the facility’s role in the Trump anti-migrant agenda and its political usefulness to Trump, DeSantis, Uthmeier and the rest of the regime.
Trump’s anti-migrant crusade is based on his perception, both genuinely held and vigorously propagated, that undocumented migration constitutes an invasion by immigrants who are “poisoning the blood” of America.
As he put it in his remarks at the Alligator Alcatraz unveiling:
“In the four years before I took office, Joe Biden allowed 21 million people, that’s a minimum—I think it was much higher than that—illegal aliens to invade our country. He invaded our country just like a military would invade. It’s tougher because they don’t wear uniforms. You don’t know who they are, more than the populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia combined. That’s what came into our country. From prisons, from mental institutions, from street gangs, drug dealers. It’s disgusting. This enormous country-destroying invasion has swamped communities nationwide with massive crime, crippling costs, and burdens far beyond what any nation could withstand. No nation could withstand what we did.”
(The figures cited by Trump are erroneous. Credible estimates of undocumented migrants in the United States have never exceeded 12 million. [To the degree that Trump was quoting any kind of source for his figures, he might have transposed the numbers 1 and 2.])
Trump’s rhetoric is strongly reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s attitude toward outsiders and Jews, as expressed in a Jan. 30, 1939 speech:
“For hundreds of years Germany was good enough to receive these elements, although they possessed nothing except infectious political and physical diseases. What they possess today, they have by a very large extent gained at the cost of the less astute German nation by the most reprehensible manipulations.”
So Trump, DeSantis, Uthmeier and Noem see themselves as part of a great crusade against an alien invasion and Alligator Alcatraz is a key asset in combatting it, a means of instilling fear, punishing detainees—all of whom they characterize as “the worst of the worst” —and inducing self-deportation. It is similar to the Nazis’ early efforts to make Germany “Judenfrei,” Jew-free, before they decided on a “Final Solution” to kill them.
On a partisan basis, Trump appears to be seeking to re-engineer American demographics to eliminate Hispanics both as a population and as an element of Democratic Party strength—and Alligator Alcatraz serves that purpose as well.
However, Alligator Alcatraz also serves more parochial, personal political ends for the participants—and provides them the opportunity for a bit of showmanship.
From its first unveiling, Alligator Alcatraz was characterized as political theater.
“What we saw in our inspection today was a political stunt, dangerous and wasteful,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D-9-Fla.) after touring the facility on July 13. “One can’t help but understand and conclude that this is a total cruel political stunt meant to have a spectacle of political theater and it’s wasting taxpayer dollars and putting our ICE agents, our troops and ICE detainees in jeopardy.”
For DeSantis, Alligator Alcatraz is an asset because it’s a way to show the depth of his commitment to Trump’s anti-foreigner agenda and bring himself back into the president’s good graces, which he lost when he ran for president himself in 2023. It is also in keeping with the anti-foreigner agenda that he has been promoting for the past two years of his governorship. As his rhetoric attests, DeSantis is determined to keep Florida in the front ranks of anti-foreigner, anti-migrant sentiment and activism.
Alligator Alcatraz certainly seemed to have played this role on July 1 when Trump visited for the opening.
“Well, I’d like to just thank everybody for the incredible job they’ve done,” Trump said in leading off his remarks. “I love the state. As you know, Ron and I have had a really great relationship for a long time. We had a little off period for a couple of days, but it didn’t last long. It didn’t last long and we have a lot of respect for each other.”
For at least those few minutes the Trump-DeSantis rift seemed healed. Whether the relationship remains so will be seen in the days ahead but Alligator Alcatraz played its role as a political asset for Ron DeSantis on that day.
Trump also showered praise on Uthmeier when he did his shout-outs to local politicians: “I want to thank Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. Where is James? Where is he?” Trump found Uthmeier in the crowd. “You do a very good job. I hear good things. I hear good things about you from Ron, too. No, you really do. He’s even a good-looking guy. That guy’s got a future, huh? Good job, James. I hear you did really, really fantastic. Worked hard. You’re like in the construction business for a few days, right? Huh? Congratulations, uh, for all the hard work and to make this facility possible. It’s amazing.”
So Alligator Alcatraz served as an asset for Uthmeier. It brought him to Trump’s attention and gave him a leading role in the anti-migrant movement. If the anti-migrant base remains cohesive and dominant in Florida, it will be an achievement for Uthmeier that will burnish his future prospects whether political or private. It also enhances his role in Trump’s anti-migrant movement and demonstrates his belief in it, whether his belief is genuine or is just for show.
These are powerful reasons for these people to support, sustain and expand Alligator Alcatraz. Those reasons overshadow all the citizen protests, the environmental damage, the religious condemnation, the public disapproval, the historic precedents and any ethical considerations.
Certainly these people are not moved by the suffering of those being held in the facility whom they, along with Trump, seem to regard as subhuman (or untermenschen, in German parlance). Nor do reports of detentions lacking criminal charges and inclusion of legally documented immigrants appear to make any impression on them.
As with Dachau, reports are already seeping out of abysmal conditions at Alligator Alcatraz. There are accounts of excessive heat, overcrowding, overflowing backed-up toilets, short supplies of drinking water, bug-infested inadequate or substandard food, personal uncleanliness, leaking tents, flooded floors and persistent, pervasive swarms of mosquitoes. Even guards are already quitting or being fired and speaking anonymously to the media about the conditions.
A lawsuit filed on July 16 by detainees, their lawyers, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Americans for Immigrant Justice charges that detainees have been denied access to their lawyers.
“The government has banned in-person legal visitation, any confidential phone or video communication, and confidential exchange of written documents,” according to an ACLU statement. “These restrictions violate the First and Fifth Amendment rights of people being detained, as well as the First Amendment rights of legal service organizations and law firms with clients held at the facility.”
While ostensibly for foreign, criminal migrants, US citizens appear to be imprisoned as well. A 15-year old without a criminal record was held there for three days before being released. Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-10-Fla.) said that during his tour of the facility one detainee called out: “I’m an American citizen!”
Far from responding to the allegations and complaints, DeSantis, Uthmeier and camp supporters are boasting about the camp and publicly displaying their supposed toughness and ruthlessness, in imitation of Trump’s approach. Meanwhile, vendors are gleefully exploiting the camp, selling Alligator Alcatraz merchandise.
Clearly, these people will not be moved by any appeal to humanity, principle, religion, morality or law. So it is only when they perceive that Alligator Alcatraz is harming their political ambitions more than helping them that they will take any action to either alleviate conditions or close the facility altogether.
What form political harm to them takes remains to be seen. One way might be if Alligator Alcatraz becomes a liability in the midterm elections, presuming that these are free, fair and held as scheduled. But for any kind of effective counterpressure to be applied, opponents must coalesce, unite, focus and act effectively.
Another form of pressure might be economic harm to the state of Florida—and specifically Southwest Florida—if tourists boycott its attractions and other countries impose sanctions based on violations of human rights.
Never again?
An American soldier feeds inmates following Dachau’s liberation. (Photo: US National Guard)
American troops liberated Dachau on April 29, 1945. What they found horrified and shocked them—and the world. Dachau had gone from a detention camp to a mass extermination camp. Corpses were everywhere. Typhus was rampant. Survivors were starving. One American soldier said that at that moment he knew why he was fighting.
When confronted by the Americans, residents of the city of Dachau responded “Was könnten wir tun (What could we do?)?”
It was a response that didn’t sit well with Army Col. William Quinn, who wrote the official US Army report on the camp’s liberation. However, Quinn noted: “If one is to attempt the tremendous task and accept the terrific responsibility of judging a whole town, assessing it en masse as to the collective guilt or innocence of all of its inhabitants for this most hideous of crimes, one would do well to remember the fearsome shadow that hangs over everyone in a state in which crime has been incorporated and called the government.”
It’s an observation that rings hideously true today. Anyone accepting, countenancing or promoting these kinds facilities becomes complicit in their crimes—and that fact shows why individual acts of protest and opposition are so important.
From the revelations of Dachau and the other Nazi concentration camps the world resolved that the kind of criminality and brutality practiced there should never be repeated. Until now it was a basic tenet of Americanism that there should never be concentration camps on American soil, nor were any ever before proposed.
Since the liberation of the Nazi camps and the defeat of Fascism, the civilized world’s watchwords have been: “Never Again.”
Now, with Alligator Alcatraz, Trump, Noem, DeSantis and Uthmeier are saying: “Again.”
It’s up to the people of the world, and especially the citizens of Florida, to resoundingly reply: “Never!”
Rep. Byron Donalds responds to a question at his town hall meeting in Estero on Monday. (Photo: Author)
April 24, 2025 by David Silverberg
The town hall meeting of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) held at Estero High School is now in the history books.
This was a lot different from his previous town halls. Not only did it generate a lively turnout, it attracted major media, including CNN, and it was covered extensively by local media, which often give scant coverage to politics. It was raucous and rambunctious and that’s where most of the coverage focused.
But it was a political event a cut above the run of the mill in Southwest Florida and given that Donalds is a declared candidate for governor it provided some indicators of the kind of governor he would be.
So what were the broader implications of the meeting, what deeper lessons can be derived from it, and what did it reveal about the politician, the political dynamic in the district, the state and the nation?
Reading the room
A view of the audience just prior to the start of the meeting. (Photo: Author)
After initial indications that the meeting would be highly restricted, when the event occurred it appeared that virtually anyone who wanted to get in could do so. Even with that, the hall was not filled. This author estimates the crowd at 300 to 400.
An indication of the strength of Donalds’ supporters came early when he came out on stage and they gave him a standing ovation. From this author’s vantage, those standing appeared to constitute a quarter of the audience at most.
Questions were written out on cards and the questioners in the audience were named and acknowledged when the questions were asked. This author counted 18 questions being formally asked during the session. Other questions were shouted from the audience, which Donalds occasionally answered as well. Most questions received lengthy answers.
Other than welcoming the audience and thanking the people who arranged the meeting, Donalds did not make any opening statement other than to say he was not going to get into politics (in the sense of purely partisan discussion) and he was not going to address his gubernatorial bid. Instead he opted to go right to the first question. That question, his answer and the audience’s response set the tone and was a precursor of the direction the rest of the meeting would take.
The question was: “As a member of the Oversight Committee, what oversights are you imposing on Elon Musk and DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency]?”
The question brought prolonged, vigorous applause and cheers. “You like that question,” Donalds joked. He answered that Musk was a special White House employee, similar to others that had been appointed by previous administrations. He specifically mentioned President Barack Obama’s appointment of former senator John Kerry as “climate czar” in his administration to deal with climate change issues.
Because DOGE was not run with congressionally appropriated funds, Donalds said, it was outside the House Oversight Committee’s purview.
“What DOGE is doing right now is they’re going through every agency and they’re examining any contracts or any inefficiencies in spending federal dollars,” he said but was interrupted by shouts and expressions of disagreement, with people pointing out DOGE’s mass layoffs and disruption of government operations.
Donalds’ answer and the response began an uproar that never really died down and Donalds never regained full control of the proceedings.
Nonetheless, he compared DOGE’s actions to those taken by President Barack Obama to increase government efficiency. This kicked the uproar into a higher gear and intensity. “You cannot deny that President Obama famously said that he wanted to examine efficiency or lack thereof in the government. Elon Musk is doing the exact same thing,” which elicited even louder expressions of outrage.
“The Oversight Committee is doing the responsible thing, we are letting DOGE complete its work,” he said. “Most of the budget cuts that DOGE will present have to go through the appropriations process. It goes through the Appropriations Committee and most of the judgments of federal spending will occur there and then get an up or down vote in the Appropriations Committee first and then on the floor of the House” before moving to final approval. “That is the process.”
As he was saying this the calls and shouts from the crowd were mounting in volume, complaining that he wasn’t addressing the broader issues created by Musk and DOGE.
But Donalds continued his defense. “Now, it is actually clear that from the President, who is the unitary executive under our system of government…he wants [Musk] to work in the federal government. So, I find it interesting that people who are upset about Elon right now, were not upset, as I brought up earlier, when John Kerry was going around” doing work for the Obama administration as a special employee.
After trying to calm the crowd, Donalds continued. “Here is the last thing. There is a report that comes out every single year. This is the GAO [Government Accountability Office] report. The GAO report, every single year, says the government wastes more than 250 billion dollars a year. 250 billion!” which also elicited shouts of dismissal. “Over the last 20 years the federal government has wasted 3 trillion dollars. (More about GAO and its report below.)
“I believe that it is in the interests of the people of Southwest Florida and of the United States to examine all inefficiencies in the federal government,” which elicited prolonged applause from his supporters. “If there are concerns [it is] that Elon Musk and his team are going through agencies and cancelling contracts that are inefficient”—which brought an outburst of disagreement from the rest of the crowd.
“When appropriations language is ready, under federal law today, Congress has given discretion to the secretaries of the various Cabinet agencies. So what the DOGE is actually doing is that they are working with Cabinet-level secretaries, who have all been confirmed by the United States Senate, to bring their findings to that secretary and then that secretary is the one who is making the decision because the authority has been given to the Cabinet secretary by Congress. You may not like it but that’s the way the law is written.”
After some of the shouting died down from that, he continued: “As a member of Congress, I actually believe that Congress should not give discretion to the federal agencies, no matter who’s president and Congress should actually prescribe how money is spent in the federal government but the Congress has been derelict in its duty and allowed money to go through the federal branch, the executive branch, and they have given full discretion to the executive branch, which goes around Congress and goes around these issues in the United States of America.”
He continued: “This is where there’s a little bit—a little bit—of public perception. If you examine broad-based polling on government efficiencies, it is popular with the American people.”
Then, he asked a question of his own: “For those in the room upset about DOGE; are you going to be upset when DOGE gets to the Department of Defense?” There was a resounding affirmative response. Then he repeated the question and the response rose higher. “Every recommendation that DOGE makes, is approved by the Cabinet-level secretary and confirmed by the United States Senate.”
Then he stated, “At the Oversight Committee we have to actually observe DOGE do its work first and we’re in the process of doing this, number one. Number two, for true accountability if we truly believe it’s necessary true accountability for DOGE will be found in the appropriations process. At that point, any recommendations that DOGE has made, the Cabinet-level secretary will be reflected in budgetary requests and it will get an up or down vote through the appropriations process.”
Answering that question took approximately 7 minutes.
Analysis: Call and response
Elon Musk wields a chain saw at a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Committee on Feb. 20, 2025 (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons)
All the media coverage of the meeting has focused on its raucousness and the anger of the audience. A major question, though, is: why was it so raucous and why were constituents so angry?
It was not because there was any kind of advance planning or “astroturfing” (paid disruptors) to cause chaos. Rather, as was clear from the very first question and answer there was a yawning reality gulf between Donalds and his audience.
Each appeared to exist in a separate universe and there was little to no connection between them. Donalds’ answers, which uniformly defended President Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the regime, also presented a picture that, while presented as factual, was completely at odds with the reality understood and experienced by constituents.
As shown in the first answer, Donalds was putting DOGE in the context of the congressional appropriations process and addressing it as a regular budgetary process. But the audience, like the rest of the American public, is experiencing DOGE as a furious, unchecked, personally-directed purge of the federal government, with massive layoffs, severe cuts to services, disruption of orderly processes, threats to mandated benefits and intrusion into personal information.
Donalds would not acknowledge or address these concerns among his constituents. Instead, he blindly recited the Trumpist catechism and defended the regime’s actions. He did not provide even a hint of sympathy or understanding for constituent concerns. His approach was that if he explained it, or in the phrase he repeatedly used, “if we’re intellectually honest,” it would be sufficient.
He also repeated assertions that were wildly at variance with what the rest of the audience understood to be the truth, prompting amazement and outrage.
(At this point it seems appropriate to address some of the inaccuracies and misconceptions in Donalds’ first answer.
For example, there is no equivalency between previous special presidential employees and Elon Musk. John Kerry was Special Presidential Envoy for Climate of the United States from 2021 to 2024. He represented the United States in climate forums and made recommendations to other government agencies to accommodate climate issues. He did this as a highly qualified former US senator and secretary of state. There were no instant layoffs, agency closings or data intrusions at his command. Elon Musk is a private citizen and profit-driven entrepreneur with no prior government background who has physically wielded a chainsaw to demonstrate his approach to government operations.
The GAO report referenced by Donalds is the annual report on federal programs with fragmented, overlapping, or duplicative goals or actions. As part of its mandate GAO annually suggests hundreds of ways to address problems, reduce costs and boost revenue. It makes suggestions, often of a very technical or financial nature, for achieving those ends. In the 2024 report it made 112 suggestions, recommending for example that “Congress and the Internal Revenue Service should take action to improve sole proprietor tax compliance, which could increase revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars per year,” or saving money by “using predictive models to make investment decisions on deferred maintenance and repair for federal buildings and structures.” It has never recommended—much less imposed—abruptly closing down entire agencies or making mass layoffs. Even so it estimates that its recommendations have saved the US government $667 billion over the past 13 years.
Also, if DOGE and Musk were really just making recommendations to be worked through the appropriations process, all the closings and layoffs would be submitted as recommendations to Congress for consideration during the normal 2025 appropriations process. They would not be implemented until the 2026 fiscal year. They would be examined, debated and then approved by Congress, and conducted in an orderly fashion, not suddenly imposed by executive fiat and lockouts.)
Other assertions that Donalds made during the meeting were:
That the answer to gun violence lies in mental health care rather than any kind of gun restrictions or red flag laws, which he opposes. “It always goes back to the mental health of the shooter,” he said.
That DOGE/Musk access to Social Security information is equivalent to the access allowed to 53 students under President Joe Biden’s administration. (Donalds didn’t elaborate on the source of this information and it is nowhere else on the Internet that this author could discern. It’s not clear whether these alleged 53 students were interns at the Social Security Administration, when, why or where this happened or what they accessed.) As Donalds put it: “It is not intellectually honest to be upset with Elon Musk and not with the 53 students.”
That DOGE/Musk are examining Social Security files to find waste, fraud and abuse and have found 300 alleged recipients over the age of 100. (This claim was debunked by Leland Dudek, the acting commissioner, who said in February that the raw numbers did not reflect actual benefits being paid and that only 89,106 people older than 100 years were listed on Social Security rolls as of December 2024. “The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits.”)
That the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) is unconstitutional and uncontrolled by Congress. “I want to get rid of the CFPB, it is a rogue agency” and “a terrible agency,” he said.
That Trump’s tariffs are “re-setting the balance of global trade.”
That nuclear power should be the future source of energy in Florida rather than solar power, which Donalds said does not produce sufficient energy. Also, he said discarding and recycling solar equipment is ultimately dirtier and more polluting than nuclear power.
That 60 percent of phone calls to the Social Security Administration for assistance are fraudulent.
That the problem with diversity, equity and intrusion (DEI) lies in the equity portion, since life is inherently inequitable and that DEI programs and practices do not level the playing field. “Equity is an impossible standard to achieve,” he said. The only time Donalds became angry and emotional was when he was giving this answer, which he took personally.
That the US Agency for International Development (US AID) was pursuing programs that were not in the American interest and were even treasonous.
That the No Rogue Rulings Act (House Resolution (HR) 1526), which would restrict the ability of federal district judges to issue national injunctions, and passed by the US House on April 10 with Donalds’ vote, would not pass the Senate.
That illegal aliens have more rights and due process entitlements than American citizens. He charged that President Joe Biden abused the asylum process. Donalds said that he supports illegal alien deportations.
That parents and “community members” have a right to inspect school instructional materials, because they make up the bulk of the taxpaying base but that school boards have final say.
That President Donald Trump has pledged not to touch Social Security and it will not be subject to congressional budget reconciliation but that if it becomes insolvent there will be an automatic cut, so it must be reformed.
That he missed votes in Congress because he was campaigning for Trump.
That he does not vote party when in Congress but “I vote the Constitution.”
That Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth did not violate the Espionage Act when he shared classified operational intelligence in Signal chats.
The most dramatic moment in the meeting occurred when a question was asked whether Israel’s cutoff of water and food to the Palestinians of Gaza was a war crime, along with the deaths of 35,000 Gazans.
Donalds answered that the 35,000 casualty figure was from Hamas, that Israel had been careful in its strikes on Gaza, that Hamas was using both Israeli hostages and civilian Gazans as human shields and Israeli forces had warned them before striking.
He said that the United States would have reacted similarly if Mexican drug cartels had taken American hostages in the United States. “On October 7, it was not an Israeli incursion into Gaza, it was Hamas that incurred into Israel,” he said. “We should stand behind Israel 100 percent and make sure the hostages come home. My stance is to stand by our ally.”
This answer prompted an audience member to stand up and loudly protest on behalf of the Palestinians. She continued to do so until a security officer approached her to remove her and she left of her own volition.
An audience member protests on behalf of Palestinians. (Photo: Author)
Analysis: Omens and portents
First, credit must be given where credit is due: Byron Donalds did not have to hold this town hall meeting at all.
It was a risky idea from the start and no doubt there were voices in his camp arguing against it. He could have easily let it slide and been none the worse for wear. In fact, the head of the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee has recommended that all Republican members of Congress avoid town hall meetings and Donalds could have followed his guidance.
He could have made the meeting a gubernatorial campaign rally but he did not. Nor did the questions seem to be filtered to avoid challenges or controversy.
Beyond subjecting himself to angry constituents, Donalds risked damaging his gubernatorial campaign. Whether the meeting proves detrimental or provides useful publicity remains to be seen but it certainly gave him some local and national headlines.
Contrary to some of those headlines the meeting was not “chaotic” or “in chaos.” Chaos is when punches are thrown, the benches empty and the police charge in with tear gas and tasers. This was certainly rancorous and at times disorderly but it was hardly chaotic. Most people stayed in their seats except when they got up and left, which a significant contingent did early.
But, as stated earlier, what was really in evidence was the vast gulf in the realities between constituents and their congressman.
It was obvious that much of the audience reaction was driven by fear, outrage and worry. The repeated questions about Social Security and DOGE showed key points of concern.
That fear is also fueled by the man in the White House and the tone of hatred, prejudice and rage he exudes to the nation. The day before, those attitudes were on full display in an Easter greeting on the X platform.
President Donald Trump’s Easter greeting on X.
It was no wonder that constituents were fearful, angry and loud in their turn.
A more skillful or empathetic politician would have acknowledged the concerns and explained what he or she was doing to allay them or seek solutions. A more accomplished congressman might have told the audience what he or she was doing on their behalf.
But that was not the approach Donalds took. He was there to recite the Trumpist creed, not connect with the audience. For every question about the activities of Trump, Musk or DOGE he responded with Trumpist talking points and standard Make America Great Again fodder that was often at odds with the audience’s general perception of reality. Several times when challenged about Trump or Musk actions Donalds took refuge in a “whataboutism” response: what about John Kerry? What about the alleged 53 students?
In fact, Donalds’ true constituents appeared to be Donald Trump and Elon Musk. They, at least, will likely be pleased with the meeting results.
Donalds did not reveal himself to be a deep or original thinker in this regard.
After the meeting Donalds was interviewed by the media.
“How do you feel about being a congressman tonight?” asked WINK TV reporter Claire Galt.
“Great. Look, this is part of the reason I signed up for the job a couple of years ago. I do think it’s important to bring information to the electorate,” he replied.
“Did it surprise you?”
“No. I don’t get surprised by much anymore,” he smiled. “You know, you just kind of deal with it as it comes. I could tell from the first question or two what kind of night it was going to be. But that’s alright, it’s part of the business.”
It was a mature and professional answer. It’s also one Donalds should get accustomed to giving—because as long as he remains a faithful Trumpist as he pursues the governorship there are going to be many more nights like the one in Estero.
Rep. Byron Donalds interviewed after his town hall meeting. (Image: WINK TV)
The lights of London outside Parliament. (Photo: British Museum)
April 3, 2025 by David Silverberg
As dusk fell and the darkness gathered on August 3, 1914, Edward Grey, Britain’s foreign secretary, was standing at the window of his office with John Spender, editor of the Westminster Gazette. On the mall below them men with torches were lighting the gas-fueled street lamps.
Germany had just declared war on France. Austria-Hungary had already declared war on Serbia. Germany had declared war on Russia. The next day Britain would declare war on Germany.
Grey turned to his friend. “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime,” he said.
We know that conflict today as the First World War.
Today the lamps are going out in America. They’re deliberately being quenched. The resulting darkness is very strong and overwhelming.
At this moment, the great question is what each of us can do to keep the light alive.
Here in Southwest Florida there is one small gesture that can serve as a start. On Saturday, April 5, Americans around the country are going to demand that the regime of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk keep their hands off those things that Americans hold dear: the Constitution, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, a wide variety of other issues and simply a decent, normal, life and society.
In Naples, this protest will take place at the Collier County Courthouse, 3315 Tamiami Trail, Naples, at 2 pm. It was organized and publicized by HandsOff.com, a coalition of pro-democracy, progressive groups.
Places where Hands Off protests are planned. The entire interactive map, which provides specific locations, can be accessed here. (Map: Axios)
The protest was organized long before Trump’s tariff announcement on Wednesday, April 2 and the stock market crash that followed. But those events and the prospect of economic catastrophe have made the Hands Off event even more urgent.
It is clear that people are alarmed, distressed and deeply concerned by what is going on, especially now that Trump’s incompetence and recklessness is reaching deep into their pocketbooks, businesses and lives.
But it also helps to take a broader, historical look at what is being threatened.
A century and its lessons
The year 1914 inaugurated a century of upheaval and slaughter that included World War I, the Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression, the rise of Fascism, the surge of Communism, World War II, and the Cold War. With it came the industrialized death of millions of people on battlefields, in gas chambers and in civil upheavals, revolutions and conflicts of all sorts. It saw the birth and use of the atomic bomb and creation of the terms “genocide” and “crimes against humanity.”
But at least when the century came to an end some lessons had been learned: hyper-nationalism was dangerous and destructive; totalitarian authoritarianism was evil; borders couldn’t be changed by brute force; ethnic hatred and scapegoating was unacceptable; rational discussion and negotiation was better than shooting and bloodshed; all people are created equal and have inalienable rights; democracy for all its flaws was the highest form of government.
There were particular lessons for the United States: isolationism didn’t work; free trade made everyone more prosperous; America was not only the beacon of human freedom, it was the leader of the free world; common concerns addressed through government action could make people safer, healthier, wealthier and benefit all.
May 8, 2025 will mark exactly 80 years since the fall of Nazi Germany.
It is hideously ironic that as we approach that anniversary, the United States is in the grip of an authoritarian president who knows absolutely nothing of the history that brought this country to this moment—and if he knows it, he’s ignoring it or worse, deliberately defiling it.
As this is written, the Dow Jones industrial average is down 1,600 points. This is happening because the previous day, April 2, Trump imposed tariffs on virtually all the other trading nations of the world, disrupting America’s business bonds with all its trading partners.
It was already apparent that Trump knew nothing of America’s past experience with tariffs. He is now deliberately ignoring—or desecrating—every lesson learned from the Great Depression.
Added to this ignorance and irresponsibility are his violations of all the other lessons of the 20th century; his threats to expand American borders by force; his ethnic hatred and racial prejudice and his mass roundups and deportations of people without due process; his tolerance of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked attempt to conquer the sovereign, independent, democratic state of Ukraine; and his bullying, domineering approach to all international relations.
On top of that is his domestic war against the federal government, his domination of the legislative branch of government, his threats against the media and private law firms, his indifference to law and due process, his attempt to control the judicial branch, and his weaponization of every coercive power of government that was previously restrained by law.
What is being attacked and in danger of being overturned is every single lesson of diplomacy, good governance and international peace and prosperity that was learned with blood and suffering over the previous century.
During the 20th century American presidents made great contributions to the peace of the world based on the American experience. Woodrow Wilson proposed the 14 points that offered some basis for negotiating a post-World War I peace and helped lead a war-weary world beyond old imperialistic empires. Instead of the old secret horse trading and backroom deals among great powers he called for “open covenants openly arrived at” and brought sunlight into international relations. Franklin Roosevelt led the fight against Fascism and built the foundation for the United Nations and a lasting peace where discussion, negotiation and mediation settled disputes. Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhour helped rebuild Europe, sent humanitarian aid around the world and kept Stalinist Communism at bay.
All of these positive, humanitarian and democratic achievements are now being attacked by Trump and Musk. Their indifference to the greater good of the United States and their ignorance of the past and its lessons is simply staggering.
In their wanton destruction they’re seeking to return America to a time of racism, isolationism and insularity, with the added disgraces of authoritarianism, lawlessness and deep corruption. They’re on a path to set back the world as a whole to an era of imperialism, conspiracy and aggression.
Gradually, people are waking up to the depth of the danger they represent. Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has just spent 25 hours and 5 minutes on the floor of the United States Senate to warn of these dangers.
Perhaps the protests scheduled for this Saturday will be a small step toward expressing dissent and resistance.
There’s no doubt that Trump and Musk and their minions are spreading a darkness that’s dangerous, diabolical, and destructive. But no matter how many lamps they darken, they should never be permitted to extinguish the greatest lamp of all because, as this platform has always maintained, while democracy dies in darkness…
Florida Gov. John Milton. (Oil painting over photograph, Claribel Jett, Fla. Dept. of State)
Oct. 10, 2024 by David Silverberg
When “Milton” came up on the National Hurricane Center’s list of hurricane names, it hardly seemed appropriate for a killer storm.
Rather, it seemed nerdy, best suited for an owlish accountant. It evoked Milton Berle, the slapstick comedian who had his heyday in the early days of television (for people who remember him).
But for those with a sense of Florida history, it was a creepy evocation of a volatile governor who was so completely tied to the Confederate cause that he could not bear its defeat. A hurricane bearing his last name aimed at Florida seemed a coincidence ripe for the hauntings of Halloween—and very ominous for those following the storm’s track.
So, who was John Milton and what happened to him and what did he mean for the state of Florida? And could there be a cosmic meaning in what was otherwise a complete coincidence of timing and names?
Origins of a reluctant Floridian
The most famous John Milton was the seventeenth century English Puritan poet who penned the epic poem Paradise Lost about the revolt of the angel Satan against God and his subsequent exile to the depths of Hell.
As it happens, Florida’s John Milton was related to that John Milton. Indeed, he was part of a family distinguished both in England and the United States. His great grandfather, also named John Milton, was a hero of the Revolutionary War and a presidential candidate in 1789, when he ran as a Federalist from Georgia and received two electoral votes. His son, Homer Virgil Milton, was a hero of the War of 1812.
The John Milton who became governor of Florida was born on April 20, 1807 near Louisville, Ga., and grew up in Georgia, “reading” law (a less formal education than a degree and one also pursued by Abraham Lincoln).
Milton practiced law in Georgia and in 1830 he married Susan Amanda Cobb, with whom he had a son and two daughters. They subsequently lived in Georgia, Alabama and New Orleans.
He married a second time (presumably on the death of his first wife) and had two sons and seven daughters by his second wife, Caroline Howze.
Florida had been acquired by the United States from Spain in 1821. While it attracted immigrants as a land of opportunity then, as it does to this day, Milton, who was described by The New York Times in his youth as “gay and dashing” went there driven by a different motivation: he killed a man in a duel over a lady and had to flee Louisiana.
Wealthy by the time he moved to Florida in 1846, he bought a 7,000-acre plantation near the town of Marianna, about 65 miles northwest of Tallahassee. Named Sylvania, it was worked by an enslaved population.
When the Third Seminole War broke out in 1855, Milton served as captain of volunteers until the conflict ended in 1858.
But Milton made his real mark in politics.
Success and secession
In the presidential election of 1848 Milton served as a presidential Elector, voting for Democrat Lewis Cass.
Florida’s Democratic Party was split between Conservatives, who favored states’ rights and Whigs who favored the union. Milton turned out to be an effective orator and a fiery Conservative. In this he followed the thinking of John Calhoun and South Carolinians who argued that states had the right to “nullify” federal laws with which they disagreed.
By 1849 the question of slavery was beginning to roil national politics. In 1852 it suddenly moved to the forefront of the national debate when Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published.
As a wealthy slave owner and states rights advocate, Milton became a defender of slavery and a proponent of secession. Elected a state senator in 1850, he obsessively pursued the idea, making emotional, intense speeches in its favor. In this he closely resembled another southerner, planter and author Edmund Ruffin of Virginia, who also fanatically advocated secession.
The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 brought the question of union, secession, state rights and slavery to a head.
In 1860, Florida had only 140,424 inhabitants. Most worked in agriculture in some way and settlement was largely in the northern part of the state with the exception of Key West, which at the time was America’s richest city, built on salving wrecked shipping. As small as the state’s population was, it had expanded exponentially in the years since the United States had acquired the territory.
Of the population, according to the 1860 census, 41,128 were white men, 36,319 were white women, 31,348 were black male slaves and 30,397 were black female slaves. There were only 454 free black men and 478 free black women.
The electorate was tiny. Only white men had the vote. When debate began over secession in 1860—in what may be surprising to modern readers—there was strong unionist sentiment in the state legislature and about half the state’s population.
Milton’s fiery oratory won him the Conservative nomination for governor. His opponent was Edward Hopkins, who led the Constitutional Unionists. The ultimate vote was small and extremely close: 6,994 for Milton and 5,248 for Hopkins, a difference of only 1,746 votes, but enough to make Milton governor.
It was the same election that made Abraham Lincoln president. Across the South secessionists prepared for war. The outgoing governor, Madison Perry, was authorized to spend $100,000 in arms and munitions for state forces.
Milton continued to push for secession and Edmund Ruffin of Virginia traveled to Tallahassee to add his support.
At Milton’s strenuous urging, on January 10, 1861 the state legislature passed an ordinance of secession by a vote of 62 to 7, becoming the third state to secede. The seven dissenters unsuccessfully tried to have the ordinance submitted to a general referendum but failed.
A minority of partisan politicians prevailed and declared Florida a “sovereign and independent nation.”
Civil War
Milton was such a secessionist that he didn’t even want Florida to join the Confederate States of America. He even resisted the Confederate Secretary of War’s call up of the state militia to serve in the Confederate army.
Nonetheless he realized, however vaguely, that the rebellion would take a common effort. Still, with Florida’s tiny white male population, people were not going to be its greatest contribution to the cause.
Instead, Florida contributed the fruits of its agriculture, especially cattle and salt, to the Confederacy and Milton was instrumental in organizing its collection and shipment to the north. It briefly made Florida, if not the breadbasket of the confederacy, certainly its meat monger.
During the war the Union took note of this supply and tried to stop or impede it.
In February 1864 Union troops marched out from Jacksonville, which they held, to disrupt the food supply. Their commander, Gen. Truman Seymour, decided to exceed orders and take Tallahassee. Confederates from Florida and South Carolina sought to stop him and they met in battle at the town of Olustee. The Confederates beat the Union troops who retreated back to Jacksonville.
A contemporary illustration of the Battle of Olustee, which has been criticized for various inaccuracies. For example, neither side fought from behind fortifications. (Art: US archives)
Battle even came to Fort Myers, which in 1865 was an actual fort, whose surrounding community was home to around 400 pro-Union Floridian refugees.
The fort, which was largely a wooden blockhouse, housed the 2nd Florida Cavalry, largely made of pro-Union Floridians, a company of New York volunteer infantry and the 2nd United States Colored Infantry. The troops raided surrounding ranches, depots and grazing lands to cut off Confederate supplies.
Fort Myers in 1865. (Art: Leslie’s Illustrated)
On February 20, 1865 about 500 Confederates approached the fort, which was manned by about 275 Union troops, and demanded their surrender. When the Union commander refused, battle commenced and after four hours of fighting the Confederates withdrew. In March the Union forces abandoned the fort on their own volition.
As the southern cause declined so did Milton’s will and determination and he was reportedly worn down by the cares of office.
In March 1865 he left Tallahassee for his plantation in Marianna but not before he sent a message to the state legislature. In it he stated that Union Army leaders “have developed a character so odious that death would be preferable to reunion with them.”
By the dawn of April the Confederacy was on its last legs and the capital, Richmond, was about to fall.
Apparently unable to face the prospect of a Union victory, Milton committed suicide at his home plantation, Sylvania, on April 1, putting a bullet in his brain.
The next day Richmond fell. Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia on April 9. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 15. And Edmund Ruffin, Milton’s fellow secessionist, also committed suicide on June 17.
To the best of this author’s ability to determine, John Milton was the only American governor ever to commit suicide in office.
Commentary: Omens or oddities?
Aside from the oddity of having a storm hit Florida that bore the name of one of its governors, the story of Gov. John Milton revives the specter of the causes he favored, which were otherwise laid to rest by the civil war and subsequent history.
There was the idea of nullification; that a state could simply “nullify” a federal law it didn’t like by calling it unconstitutional.
In 1830 this was the argument South Carolinians made over a federal tariff they opposed. John Milton supported their rejection of federal law and policy.
In 2023 Collier County, Fla., passed its own nullification ordinance, the misleadingly named “Bill of Rights Sanctuary” ordinance, giving itself the right to nullify federal law if a citizen deems a federal law unconstitutional. With the passing of Hurricane Milton, this ordinance may come back to haunt the county as it deals with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which operates, of course, under federal law.
There was the idea of secession, of pulling out of the federal compact altogether.
In 1860 this is what John Milton energetically propounded and vigorously pursued, eventually succeeding in leading Florida out of the federal union.
Today, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has pursued what has been called “soft secession,” defying federal mandates, rules, regulations and policies as he serves his own political ambitions. He has defied the federal government in matters large and small ranging from COVID mandates to extraditing Donald Trump to other states to answer for his crimes. He even made a point of snubbing President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris when they visited or called to offer or coordinate assistance with hurricanes Helene and, yes, Milton.
No doubt DeSantis will continue to pursue his version of secessionism through the November election and after, especially if its results don’t favor his opposition to abortion rights and the election of Harris.
But as John Milton—and January 6th—helped to show, secessionism and insurrection don’t end well and they’re not likely to end well this time.
The storm named Milton also throws into relief Florida’s determined denial of the reality of climate change. From then-Gov. Rick Scott informally banning the term from state government to the legislature and DeSantis officially striking it from state legal and official documents, climate change denial is embedded in the state’s leadership mentality—even when climate change-induced storms pummel the state they govern with increasing force.
Perhaps the coincidence of an extremely powerful, destructive, climate-change fueled storm called Milton and the legacy of a fanatical but destructive governor named Milton provides a kind of poetic lesson that Floridians should heed.
And that lesson is simply this: Denying climate change is…well…suicidal.
On July 4, 1776 the British colonies of North America declared their independence. By December that independence appeared to be at an end.
General George Washington had suffered a string of defeats. The revolutionary army had been driven out of New York and pushed back through New Jersey. The soldiers were discouraged and many of their enlistments were about to expire. They were cold, ill-fed and ill-equipped and the enemy seemed overwhelming. The fervor of colonists for independence was wavering. There was little prospect that the revolt would—or could—succeed.
The situation was so dire that one soldier, a writer whose pamphlet Common Sense had been instrumental in sparking the revolution, sat down and writing on a drumhead, penned an essay he titled “The Crisis.”
The cause that Thomas Paine championed, that of liberty and independence, ultimately went on to achieve victory and the United States of America was born.
But it was by no means certain that it would succeed. At every point during a grueling, eight year war, all could have been lost. It was only extraordinary dedication and commitment to the cause that allowed it to succeed.
Today, on the 248th anniversary of that Declaration of Independence, the cause that Thomas Paine and George Washington served is again in crisis.
In 1776 the threat was a monarch across the seas, backed by the resources of a vast empire. Today, the threat is a domestic demagogue, backed by a foreign dictator with extensive resources, aiming to re-establish an empire lost through its own failures.
In 1776 the threat was “establishment of an absolute Tyranny” by a foreign king. Today, the threat is of establishment of an absolute tyranny by a domestic demagogue who seeks the power of a king.
In 1776 the threat was that the people of the colonies had suffered “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object” that “evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.” Today a long train of crimes, abuses and usurpations is again designing to reduce them under absolute despotism.
In 1776 the threat was that the people would be prevented from pursuing their “inalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Today the threat is that a would-be dictator will take away all the rights, liberties and freedoms won over the past 248 years and utterly crush those who seek them.
In 1776 the signers of the Declaration of Independence rejected the idea that a monarch held unlimited, absolute power and declared that “all men are created equal.” Today, a majority of justices on the Supreme Court of the United States have held that there is no equal justice under law and that one person, who holds the title President, is far more equal than all others and immune from punishment, checks or balances.
There are, of course, differences. A big one is that in 1776 the colonists weren’t sure what form of government would follow independence. Today, after 248 years of struggle and labor, America is a democracy.
The heart of hope
Democracy means many things but perhaps its greatest value is that it provides hope; hope that things can change, improve and adapt and that people can shape their government to meet their circumstances and needs.
But democracy doesn’t just provide hope in everyday lives.
The American system of unbroken elections held faithfully under its Constitution has also provided hope to those who seek political power through legitimate, constitutional means.
Throughout American history people pursuing elected office have been rejected by voters. But because they had the confidence that there would be new elections at regularly scheduled intervals and they had the internal fortitude to keep going, they dusted themselves off, learned from their mistakes, and made new efforts to win office. Democracy, the Constitution and elections gave them the confidence to try again.
It’s worth remembering that George Washington lost his first election for the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1755. Abraham Lincoln lost five elections before winning the presidency in 1860. In 1920 Franklin Roosevelt lost his bid for the vice presidency. Richard Nixon lost campaigns for president and senator. Closer in time George HW Bush lost two Senate bids. When starting out, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all lost their first bids for seats in the US House of Representatives.
In every case they trusted that the constitutional, democratic system of government gave them a chance to try again. It provided them with hope.
Only one candidate for high office in American history, Donald Trump, has ever responded to an electoral loss with denial, delusion, fraud, falsehoods, criminality, whining, interference, subversion, violent insurrection and ultimately, and arguably, treason.
Now he is seeking office again to replace the democracy of hope with a dictatorship of hopelessness.
That is certainly not the spirit of 1776.
The new crisis
As in 1776 when Paine sat down to write on his drumhead, patriotic lovers of democracy—of all parties—are in crisis.
Their confidence in their standard-bearer has been severely shaken. The courts are proving unable or unwilling to hold a criminal to account for his crimes. A blindly ideological Supreme Court has overturned America’s founding principle. The forces of despotism are energized, funded and seem overwhelming. Vast swaths of Americans seem susceptible to the hypnosis of cultic hallucinations. A would-be tyrant spews hatred, prejudice and rage while promising retribution, retaliation and revenge. The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of a passionate intensity. And the consequences of an electoral loss are apocalyptic and horrifying.
This would all be familiar to Thomas Paine.
But in their time, Paine and Washington refused to panic, desert or surrender. They soldiered on, marching into the face of uncertainty, committed to their ideals regardless of the odds.
This is what true patriots committed to democracy and the Constitution must do again.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter who carries the standard for democracy. That decision is up to the candidate himself and the professionals, elected officials and the party faithful around him. There’s a vigorous debate under way.
But beyond the tactical considerations, the polls, the day-to-day campaign concerns and even the ultimate nominee, the question before the American people is very simple: One choice is democracy. The other is dictatorship. Regardless of the names, one outcome will protect, preserve and defend the Constitution. The other will crush, consume and eradicate democracy and all the rights so painfully won.
One candidate is hope. The other is despair.
Thomas Paine and George Washington made their choice. They stuck with it. It took a long time but in the end they won.
Today America doesn’t really have a choice. If the American democratic, constitutional public is to survive, if humanity’s last, best hope on earth is to live on, then we need to shoulder whatever serves as our musket and face forward to the enemy.
As Thomas Paine put it best:
“THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
The African-American neighborhood of Fort Myers in an undated photo.
May 24, 2024 by David Silverberg
This is a revised and updated version of an article first posted on May 22, 2019.
This Saturday, May 25th, marks 100 years since two African-American teenagers were seized by a white mob and lynched in Fort Myers, Fla.
The anniversary comes amidst a rise in hatred and racism in the United States and serves as a stark reminder of where bigotry ultimately leads. It’s also a demonstration of what happens when the rule of law breaks down.
It can happen here—and it has.
It’s also worth remembering; history does not have to repeat.
What happened
This account draws from two sources: One is an article in The Fort Myers News-Press on the event’s 90th anniversary. That article, “Lynching history spurs call for closure, 90 years later” by reporter Janine Zeitlin, was published on May 21, 2014. The account drew on people’s recollections and the work of Nina Denson-Rogers, historian of the Lee County Black History Society, who pieced together fragmentary information on the incident.
The other is the original, unbylined article that appeared in the Fort Myers Press on May 26, 1924, headlined, “Negroes pay penalty for horrible crime committed yesterday.” (Referred in this article as the “1924 account.” The article is posted in full below.)
According to Zeitlin, on Sunday, May 25, 1924 two black teenagers, R.J. Johnson, 14, and Milton Wilson, 15, (his name also given as “Bubbers” Wilson and the other victim is named as Milton Williams in the 1924 account) were spotted by a passerby swimming with two white girls on the outskirts of Fort Myers, then a segregated city of about 3,600 people. Lee County was home to about 15,000 people.
“The lynchings happened after R.J. and Milton went swimming at a pond with two white girls on the outskirts of town,” according to the Zeitlin article. “They were said to friends with the girls, maybe more. Perhaps they were skinny-dipping. There were rumors of rape, though one girl and her brother denied it.
“The two boys and girls lived near each other, were long familiar and played with each other as children, states Zeitlin. The swimming was reported by someone as a rape. The 1924 account simply states that the boys “attacked two young Fort Myers school girls.”
The black community first learned that something was amiss when evening church services were canceled. Just before sunset the rape report resulted in white residents on foot, horseback and in cars gathering at a white girl’s residence. From there they began invading black homes and yards in a search for the two boys. During the evening, chaos spread through the city as the search continued. At one point a gas truck was driven into the black community with the intention of burning it down if the boys weren’t found.
Lee County Sheriff J. “Ed” Albritton in an undated photo. (LCSO)
At some point R.J. Johnson was found. According to the 1924 account, he was arrested by Sheriff J.E. Albritton and put in the county jail.
“Hearing of this the armed citizens went to the jail and demanded the prisoner. The request being lawfully refused by the sheriff, he was overpowered, the jail unlocked and the negro led out,” states the 1924 article.
According to that article, once seized, Johnson was “taken before one of the girls” where he was identified and confessed. According to Zeitlin, however, one of the girls and her brother denied that there had been any rape.
In the Zeitlin account, Johnson was taken to a tree along Edison Avenue, hanged and shot. According to the 1924 account “his body was riddled with bullets and dragged through the streets to the Safety Hill section.
“The search then continued for Wilson, who was found at 4:46 am the next morning by a railroad foreman, hiding in a railroad box car on a northbound train. He was taken from the box car, hanged, castrated and shot multiple times. His body was then dragged down Cranford Avenue by a Model T.”
“It was like a parade, some evil parade in Hell,” according to Mary Ware, a resident who was quoted in a 1976 article in the News-Press. The crowd broke up when the sheriff and a judge appeared.
The headline in the Fort Myers Press.
On Monday the afternoon edition of the Fort Myers Press was headlined “Negroes Pay Penalty for Horrible Crime Committed Yesterday.”
On the same day a jury convened and absolved the sheriff, attributing the lynchings to “parties unknown.”
“That the rape had taken place, the black community definitely felt never occurred, that it was prefabricated by this white man who came across them swimming,” said resident Jacob Johnson in a late 1990s interview with the Lee County Black History Society, quoted by Zeitlin. “Everyone felt … these boys had just been killed for no reason, other than they were there with these white girls.”
In the United States, however, it evokes a particular idea: a racially-based, mob-conducted, illegal, unpunished hanging driven by hatred, prejudice and rage, usually based on unfounded accusations.
The era of American lynching is considered to have lasted from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, often known as the Jim Crow era. If one wishes to put specific dates on it, it arguably lasted from the Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896 that enshrined segregation of the races as “separate but equal” to 1954’s Brown vs. Board of Education when the Supreme Court ended segregation in education.
But these are debatable dates. There were lynchings before these dates and after. They didn’t all involve hanging.
What’s more, not all lynchings were racially motivated. In the western United States, cattle rustlers and other accused criminals were strung up by posses on the spot regardless of their race.
Whatever the dates or history, it’s clear that lynching is where racism, blind fury and bigotry lead, the Fort Myers lynching no less than any other.
But the Fort Myers lynching is also a lesson on the rule of law. In 1924 the two accused teenagers had no rights, no protections, and no defense. They were never able to assert or prove their innocence. They were presumed guilty from the outset, never tried and were punished according to the whims of the mob.
As the rule of law is eroded in this country, every American loses the protections that law provides. The result can be something like a lynching—and can lead to the deaths of innocent people.
A century may seem like a long time ago, in a different age and this kind of behavior may seem ancient and unthinkable today. But the fury and hatred that led to lynchings is still very much with us.
Very recently, in our own time, on Jan. 6, 2021 an incited horde of insurrectionists invaded the United States Capitol. Outside was a crude gallows. Inside those imposing halls the screaming rioters demanded to hang the Vice President of the United States.
That was a lynch mob just as surely as the one that demanded the deaths of Bubbers Wilson and RJ Johnson.
In 1924, the mob succeeded. In 2021 it failed.
Even now, the only thing standing between mob mayhem and civilization is the rule of law and the willingness to apply, assert and enforce that law. It’s a precious gift that’s under enormous threat.
And if there’s any lesson that the Fort Myers lynching can teach, it’s that the rule of law needs to be defended as much today as it did then, 100 years ago—and it is just as threatened.
The gallows erected outside the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Tyler Merbler)
The full front page of the Fort Myers Press on May 26, 1924.
Below is the full text, with original capitalization and usage, of the article on the Fort Myers lynchings as published on the front page of The Fort Myers Press, on May 26, 1924:
NEGROES PAY PENALTY FOR HORRIBLE CRIME COMMITTED YESTERDAY
Two negro youths, “Bubbers” Wilson and Milton Williams, met death at the hands of “unknown persons” early this morning following their positive identification as the two negroes who yesterday afternoon had attacked two young Fort Myers school girls.
Within a few hours after word of the happening had reached town a systematic search was started independent of the efforts of Sheriff J.E. Albritton who with his force was on the job immediately upon hearing of the crime.
A general round up of suspicious characters by the sheriff’s office netted Wilson, who was lodged in the county jail.
Hearing of this the armed citizens went to the jail and demanded the prisoner. The request being lawfully refused by the sheriff, he was overpowered, the jail unlocked and the negro led out.
Taken before one of the girls he was identified by her and then taken away where he confessed to his captors, following which his body was riddled with bullets and dragged through the streets to the Safety Hill section.
The search for his accomplice was then carried out with increased vigor, all outlets from the city being carefully guarded. The hunted man was located about 4:46 a.m., on a north-bound train pulling out of the railroad yards. Following his positive identification, he met the same fate as the first negro.
The following jurors were sworn in by County Judge N.G. Stout, coroner ex-officio, this morning: C. J. Stubbs, C.C. Pursley, Vernon Wilderquist, Alvin Gorton, W.W. White and Thomas J. Evans.
Charged with ascertaining by what means the two negroes met their deaths, the jurors reported as follows: “the said “Bubbers” Wilson and Wilton Williams came to their death in the following manner, to-wit:
By the hands of parties unknown, and we herewith wish to commend the Sheriff and his entire force for the earnest efforts made by them, in their attempt to carry out the duties of their office.”
Then-candidate Donald Trump (center) takes the stage in what was then Germain Arena in Fort Myers, Fla., on Sept. 19, 2016. (Photo: Author)
Nov. 22, 2023 by David Silverberg
“How did we get here? Ten years ago Collier County wasn’t like this.”
That was one of the questions posed to Rev. Paul Raushenbush and a panel of community leaders on Nov. 9 at an event titled “Christian Nationalism 101: What is it? And Why Does it Matter?”
In a testament to the degree of alarm over current trends, a crowd of over 275 people packed the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Naples to hear Raushenbush and other speakers try to address those questions.
Though one of just three questions asked by the audience, the question of how Collier County arrived at its current situation was the most pertinent and perceptive of the evening.
It was especially poignant given that 2023 marks Collier County’s centennial year.
How, in ten years, did Collier County, Florida, go from an open, welcoming, relaxed place chiefly known for beautiful beaches, warm winters and a charming downtown, to a Petri dish of political and cultural extremism and intolerance?
Rev. Paul Raushenbush speaking at the Naples Unitarian Congregation (Image: Interfaith Alliance)
Raushenbush is an ordained Baptist minister and president and chief executive of the Interfaith Alliance, a national non-profit advocacy group committed to American religious freedom. While he was concerned with the rise of the political ideology of Christian nationalism nationally, a panel of local community leaders testified to their own local experiences of intolerance before the packed audience.
Rabbi Adam Miller of Temple Shalom in Naples recounted being berated for his views and Jewishness following a Collier County School Board meeting and expressed alarm at the rise of local anti-Semitism.
Rev. Barrion Staples, pastor of Service And Love Together Ministries in neighboring Lee County, saw a return to a time when history was twisted to serve Christian nationalist ends. He recounted past racial discrimination and compared current attempts to rewrite history to the “Slave Bible” of the pre-Civil War era, which excised all references to freedom or exodus from slavery.
Cori Craciun, executive director of Naples Pride, described how the town’s annual Pride festival was initially welcomed in Naples’ public spaces but after the COVID pandemic was increasingly restricted by local officials.
Kathy Curatolo, a former member of the Collier County Public Schools Board of Education, recounted that, “What has emerged to the dismay of many is the emergence of a one-sided ideology that is being infused into public education,” in Collier County.
Given all this and the question asked at the gathering, the time has come to take a look back at the causes for Collier County’s radical turn, answer the question of how this came about and to discern the direction ahead.
Looking over the past 10 years, six factors stand out as leading causes for Collier County’s extreme devolution.
1. The Trump factor
Any history of Collier County’s radical rightward movement has to begin with Donald Trump. His influence has been intense and pervasive and felt down to the very grassroots of this community.
Before Trump’s 2016 candidacy, life in Southwest Florida was relatively “normal.” Politics, was a peripheral and distant concern for most people. But this single individual unleashed a wave of what he himself once characterized as “hatred, prejudice and rage.”
As a candidate in 2016, as president and after his presidency, Trump made overt expressions of hatred, prejudice and rage acceptable in public discourse. He encouraged those sentiments in his followers. His personal example of rule-breaking, disdain, insults and violent rhetoric infected the crowds that heard him. His division of the world into absolutely loyal, unthinking cultists and “radical” opponents destroyed any middle ground for civil discourse or compromise between differing parties. Though a physical coward himself, he encouraged violence in his followers.
That this impacted Southwest Florida was very clear from the time of his candidacy.
Trump made two visits to Southwest Florida during his 2016 campaign. The region had been largely overlooked during previous presidential campaigns given its low population and its established Republican majorities. In a break with past practice for presidential candidates, Trump held two rallies in the area, one on Sept. 19, 2016 in what was then Germain Arena and then on Oct. 23 at the Collier County Fairgrounds.
The Southwest Floridians who stood four hours in the heat and threatening weather to get into Germain Arena that September were everyday friends and neighbors, some already Trump believers, some curious, some offended by Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark. As they stood in line they were largely quiet, patient, peaceful, and very respectful of the sheriff’s deputies and security officers. A single black man in the crowd was amicably welcomed. A lone protester was left alone and largely ignored. It was a crowd of the kind of people who would come to a neighbor’s aid, who volunteered for food drives and did good works for their churches and communities.
Southwest Floridians wait on line to enter Germain Arena to hear Donald Trump on Sept. 19, 2016. (Photo: Author)
That day Trump brought a message that was by then familiar to national audiences: distrust of immigrants, whom he compared to snakes; attacks on his opponent, Hillary Clinton; resentment toward perceived liberal elites and hatred of the federal government. He was rapturously received by his audience.
When the crowd left after a roughly hour-long harangue, his attitude, behavior and approach had inflamed his listeners. He had given them permission to express hatred, prejudice and rage toward “others,” and stoked feelings of anger, resentment and grievance against the world, with an implication that violence in expressing those feelings was acceptable.
Those feelings and attitudes intensified over the four years of the Trump presidency and culminated in the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.
These kinds of attitudes and behaviors continue to this day and found particularly fertile soil in Collier County.
2. The federal factor
Southwest Florida and Collier County are about as far south from the seat of federal government as it is possible to get on the American mainland.
The federal government has very little presence in Southwest Florida. There are some national parks and preserves in the region, there’s the US Coast Guard protecting boaters but otherwise, there’s very little consciousness of the federal government’s existence. Social Security is a federal program that tens of thousands of Southwest Floridians rely upon but they seem to have little awareness of it as a federal presence.
This distance makes the federal government seem like a remote and alien presence. There is a strong belief among a minority of Collier Countians that the federal government is intrusive, tyrannical and invalid, an oppressive “commanding hand” as an ordinance put it, encroaching on citizen rights and privileges. They would like to get federal benefits (Social Security), aid (disaster assistance) and protection (law enforcement, Coast Guard) but without strings, obligations or responsibilities.
There was also fury among local Make America Great Again (MAGA) followers that Trump lost the 2020 federal election. Like him, they clung to his lie that the election had somehow been rigged or stolen and they regarded—and still regard—the presidency of Joe Biden as head of the national, federal government as illegitimate.
This sense of alienation and estrangement increased because of the third factor that led Collier County to its current situation.
3. The pandemic factor
From 2020 to 2022 the federal presence in Collier County suddenly became immediate and pressing as the United States—along with the rest of the world—attempted to cope with the outbreak of COVID-19. The extreme right minority of Southwest Floridians and in particular Collier Countians took umbrage at federal efforts to protect American citizens from a global scourge.
In this they were following the example of Donald Trump. When COVID struck, Trump did not react well. Initially, he dismissed it, said it would “disappear,” called it a “hoax” and minimized its dangers. When it couldn’t be wished away he advocated bogus treatments like hydroxychloroquine and injecting bleach. He discouraged mask-wearing and the recommended precautions from public health experts like Dr. Anthony Fauci.
While a minority of Southwest Floridians aped Trump’s responses, they made up in noise what they lacked in numbers. There was ferocious opposition to mask-wearing and to vaccinations when vaccines became available. The kind of rule-breaking and defiance that Trump encouraged also encouraged resistance to public health measures.
Local politicians jumped on this bandwagon, encouraging further rejection of public health protections and defiance of local and federal law.
These factors ingrained a strain of alienation and disaffection in this population and led to a persistent perception that COVID was a sinister, globalist hoax.
Once the pandemic was largely over, their resentment took the form of trying to pass an ordinance that would prohibit future public health mandates of any kind, whether public or private.
A draft resolution for the county laid out the accusations: “federal and state health agencies have demonstrated a clear inability to be truthful, transparent and consistent in protecting the citizens of Collier County,” they “violated” county citizens’ rights “through discrimination based on vaccine status” and subjected county citizens “to death and injury with little recourse” and stopped doctors from speaking freely or treating patients as preferred (i.e., with hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin or other unproven and discredited remedies).
The experience of the COVID pandemic in Collier County further incentivized MAGA radicals to continue and accelerate their campaign against the federal government, against constitutional law and embrace the extreme fringes of political logic and practice.
4. MAGA mania
For the past 10 years—and long before that—Collier County’s population was predominantly Republican. Party registrations remained largely stable at 65 percent Republican and 35 percent Democratic.
The Republican coalition consisted primarily of residents whose roots went back to the beginning of settlement of the county around 1920 and relative newcomers, mostly from upper Midwestern states where Interstate Highway 75 originated at the Canadian border. Naples is the southernmost town before the highway turns east to Miami. It’s easy to drive down from Chicago or Detroit and just stop. While easterners settled Florida’s east coast, Midwesterners, many retirees, settled its west coast.
For the most part these people were mainstream Republicans from states like Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. They believed in limited government, restrained spending and a strong national defense. However, they never challenged or attacked the Constitution or the rule of law.
That changed with the onset of Trump in 2016 and his total domination of the Republican Party in the years that followed. In Collier County, as in the rest of the country, non-Trumpers were denigrated as Republicans In Name Only (RINOs) and kicked to the margins. Trumpers took over the county Party apparatus, pushing out or defeating longstanding Republican activists. The entire Party radicalized.
There was some resistance—sometimes lapsing into screaming matches and personal attacks during Party conclaves—but while non-Trumpers complained, they never organized or fought back as effectively as Trumpers. Ultimately, the county Republican Party really became the Trump Party. Personal loyalty to Trump became the yardstick of Republicanism rather than conservative ideas or positions.
This Trumpism has led the Party to keep pursuing extremes in its pronouncements and activities. Infused with Trump’s “hatred, prejudice and rage,” its most fanatical members have descended into anti-Semitism and promoted intolerance in all forms.
Before the overturning of Roe v. Wade, much of the MAGA energy was directed against abortion. After the Dobbs decision last year, that energy turned into a Christian nationalist religious crusade, with county MAGA officials on the Board of Commissioners and the School Board trying to impose religious dogma and stating overtly that there is no separation between church and state.
This kind of Christian nationalism leads to only one destination: the imposition of a state religion, which the Constitution’s founders explicitly sought to avoid. It will also lead to doctrinal conflict as different faiths try to impose their dogmas on public schools and the whole population. This is what happened for 200 years in Europe before the Enlightenment. In the New World, the American experiment began trying to leave that bloody legacy behind.
However, Collier County’s MAGAs appear determined to head down this Christian nationalist path, one that has the potential to pit Catholics against Protestants and different Protestant sects against each other. It has already manifested itself in the seemingly endless and inordinately time-consuming debate over whether to hold a religious invocation prior to the start of county School Board meetings.
At least the only thing being wasted in that controversy is time. History has shown that books and bodies come next.
5. The media factor
Collier County has an extremely weak media establishment when it comes to covering serious issues of governance, representation and elections and provides little to no counterweight to anti-democratic extremism.
The role of the press in a democracy is to provide a check on officialdom, examine official actions, point out wrongdoing or imbalances and provide the public with the information it needs to make rational, enlightened decisions. This was recognized by the Founders at the very beginning of American government. As the Virginia Declaration of Rights put it:“…the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.” A free press was enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
In Collier County there is little to no fulfilment of that role by existing media outlets. Only one television station, NBC2, has a dedicated political reporter with that title. In fact, local news directors seem to go out of their way to avoid reporting on anything even remotely political. Otherwise, television coverage focuses on car collisions, canal crashes and potholes, mostly in neighboring Lee County where the stations are based.
But the media fails most spectacularly in Collier County’s own Naples Daily News (or the Naples Delayed News or the Typo Times, as this author prefers to characterize it).
The Naples Daily News is suffering from the same malaise infecting local newspapers across the country. Its revenue base is down as advertisers seek new and more effective media outlets. It has been sold several times and every sale diminished its capabilities and coverage. Its staff has repeatedly been reduced, its deadlines shortened and functions like graphic design and printing assigned to remote locations.
In the past, like most local newspapers, the Naples Daily News published original editorials every day, hosted op-eds from outside authors and featured letters to the editor. It pursued a scrupulously fair and non-partisan editorial policy. However, on June 1, 2022 the newspaper’s management announced that it was dropping the daily editorials, op-eds and letters in the print edition. Instead, it created a tombstone letters page buried in the back of the book that appeared on weekends and then, begrudgingly, on Wednesdays. Cancelation of daily editorials and letters deprived the community of a common forum outside of stovepiped social media platforms.
As a result of this and the general failure of the regional media, important political developments, especially at the margins, go uncovered, allowing extremists to operate in darkness. Also, voters remain uninformed about the actions of the officials governing them and those representing them to higher bodies like the state legislature and the US Congress.
An important source of information for voters is missing in Collier County. The county’s lurch toward unchallenged extremism is the result.
6. The activist factor
A history and analysis of Collier County’s political trends can’t overlook the role of key individuals in shaping its development.
Alfie Oakes at Patriot Fest, March 19, 2022 (Photo: Author)
Oakes is Collier County’s very own Trump, whom he strikingly resembles in a number of ways and whom he adores.
“I love our president and his family with every bit of my being! I love all that he has given for our country and all that he stands for!” Oakes posted on Facebook on Dec. 22, 2020 after speaking on the phone with Trump, who was fighting the results of the election. “May God bless our great President Donald Trump, his family, his team and all of the 75 million patriots that support him!”
Like Trump, Oakes is a businessman accustomed to risk-taking—and arguably more successful in his own realm than Trump. Also like Trump, he is known for his blunt outspokenness and broad-brush denigration of critics and opponents. He shares Trump’s affinity for extreme politics, insults and absolutism.
In the same way that Trump initially dismissed COVID as a hoax, so did Oakes who vehemently fought all forms of COVID precautions in his store, Seed to Table, and battled county officials who tried to protect public health through masking and distancing.
In an infamous June 2020 posting on Facebook, Oakes denounced the murdered George Floyd as a “disgraceful career criminal, thief, drug addict, drug dealer and ex-con who served 5 yrs in prison for armed robbery on a pregnant woman, and spent his last days passing around fake 20’s to store owners in Minnesota.” The post sparked outrage and protests throughout Southwest Florida.
During the run up to the Jan. 6 insurrection, Oakes sponsored two busloads of Trumpers to attend the “Stop the Steal” rally on the National Mall and flew up himself the day of the protest. Despite a video purporting to show him inciting rioters to attack the Capitol, Oakes vehemently denies that it was him and says he peacefully protested elsewhere. He blamed the riot on “the obvious six or eight paid actors (used in other events such as [Black Lives Matter] riots, hard to believe they would be that blatant and sloppy) … followed by a small group of aggressive Trump supporters caught up in the moment, these paid actors lead the charge.”
Just as Trump dominates the national Republican Party, so Oakes dominates the Collier County Republican Party where he was elected a state committeeman in 2020. Through his Citizens Awake Now Political Action Committee (CANPAC), he funded local MAGA candidates for county Board of Commissioners and the school board. They won and are now driving the county’s rightward direction. Although he has tempered his public pronouncements recently he still influences enough of a MAGA audience to determine the outcome of party primary elections, which are usually the deciding ones.
But also, like Trump, Oakes can be mercurial, inconstant, bullying and sometimes illogical. In September 2021 he was demanding a hand recount of the 2020 election in Florida, an election that all parties agreed Republicans had won. The effort got nowhere. He can also turn on former allies: when Kelly Lichter, chair of the Collier County School Board, whom Oakes had backed, had the temerity to vote for a school superintendent Oakes opposed, he called her a “traitor” and sued the school board.
In another similarity to Trump, Oakes has also endorsed clearly unqualified candidates for public office based just on their ideological purity and personal loyalty. “I don’t want to hear about what IQ someone has or what level of education someone has,” he said at PatriotFest, a gathering and rally that he sponsored in Naples on March 19, 2022. “I graduated from North Fort Myers High School—a bunch of rednecks. Common sense and some back is all we need right now.”
Given Oakes’ urging and the backing of CANPAC, these candidates won races for county Commission and School Board.
Oakes has been a significant figure driving Collier County in its current direction.
Keith Flaugh speaking before the Collier County Board of Commissioners in 2021. (Image: CCBC)
Another MAGA activist is Keith Flaugh, head of the Florida Citizens Alliance, a non-profit conservative organization founded in 2008 primarily to influence education. The organization argued that the liberal political trend of young voters was the result of indoctrination in their schools (which presumed that young voters couldn’t draw their own conclusions but had to have been somehow brainwashed).
Flaugh, 77, is originally from Montana where he received his Master of Business Administration degree from the state university, according to his LinkedIn page. After service in the US Army and a career in finance at IBM Corp., he retired to Marco Island.
According to his Facebook profile, (as posted) Flaugh “considers himself US Constitutionalist and is fed up with how our political system has been hijacked by both monopoly parties and the ubiquitous Federal Government. They have bankrupt us morally and financially to the brink of collapse. He is an organizer for Southwest Florida Citizens Alliance and the Florida Citizens Alliance, an Oath Keeper and an active supporter of SWFL 912, the Naples Tea Party, Save America Foundation, Fair Tax, Foundation for Economic Education, KrisAnne Hall’s Constitutional Ministry and Sheriff Mack’s County Sheriff Project.”
Flaugh is an active lobbyist for the causes he supports, frequently speaking at county Commission and School Board meetings. During the 2021 debate over Collier County’s anti-federal ordinance he demanded that commissioners pass the ordinance or resign. Flaugh and the Florida Citizens Alliance have also been active in opposing COVID vaccinations and in denying climate change, opposing measures to manage or prepare for its effects.
Oakes and Flaugh could not have shifted the county in the direction it has gone without the aid of numerous active supporters and followers.
However, their example illustrates the power of individuals and solo efforts in moving a community.
And that’s power that works both ways.
Commentary: Collier County, America and the next hundred years
No political turmoil or conflict is obvious to the visitors who come to Collier County and Naples during the winter season. The shopping malls light their Christmas trees and the season’s celebrations have begun. The stores are open, the beaches are warm and life is to be enjoyed.
However, for those who have chosen to live permanently in Collier County, who think about local affairs and especially for families with children in public school, the stakes are high.
Will Collier County’s next one hundred years be ones of hatred, prejudice and rage? Or will the next century be one of progress, promise and possibilities?
Collier County is not immune from the currents and storms afflicting the country as a whole. In large part these questions will be determined by the 2024 election.
The next year will without a doubt be one of the most significant in American history. The real, true bedrock issue that will be settled if the election comes off as planned is whether the United States will remain a democracy or become a dictatorship under Donald Trump.
There is no subterfuge about this. Trump’s plans are out in the open. If elected, he has stated that his regime will be one of revenge and retribution. He and his co-conspirators intend to destroy all checks and balances and impose an unlimited, unrestricted tyranny on the American people. All the abuses of one-man rule that the nation’s founders resisted and tried to prevent will come cascading forth.
If there’s a Trump tyranny in Washington there will be a similar tyranny in Collier County. Its enablers are already waiting in the wings.
What they don’t seem to realize is just what a dictatorship will mean; they show no appreciation or understanding of history’s lessons. A dictatorship imposes tyranny on everyone.
Last year American women learned what it means to lose a right when the Supreme Court took away their right to choose.
Under the dictatorship being contemplated by Trump, all Americans will lose all the rights they cherish: freedom of speech, thought, worship, assembly, petition, press, property—everything embodied in the Bill of Rights.
For example, under a dictatorship, if Donald Trump decided he wanted to seize and gift Seed to Table to Ivanka or Jared or Barron he’d simply be able to do it and no protest, process or court proceeding could stop him. In a dictatorship there’s no appeal, no reprieve, no redress. That’s what Russia’s oligarchs discovered when Russian President Vladimir Putin gave them similar ultimatums and then demanded half their wealth.
In a dictatorship, especially one based on a personality as sick and twisted as Trump’s, past loyalty is no guarantee of future favor. No matter how strenuous, how complete and how total a person’s subservience to the leader was in the past, any perceived slight or current whim of the dictator can mean punishment in the future.
A microcosmic example of the fragility of past loyalty came in Collier County this year when Oakes turned on Lichter for defying him on the appointment of Leslie Ricciardelli as school superintendent. Oakes had supported Lichter for election to the school board. But when she showed the slightest independence in basing her vote on what she regarded as the most qualified candidate rather than the one he demanded, he branded her a “traitor.” A traitor to what? What did she betray? Certainly not the students, teachers and parents of Collier County to whom she owed her real loyalty.
In a dictatorship any show of independent thought or commitment to a good greater than the dictator is cause for punishment.
That’s the way Trump governed as president—and it will be orders of magnitude worse if he’s re-elected.
Ironically, it’s the example of local MAGA activists that should inspire defenders of democracy to greater action.
Collier County’s MAGAs have shown that individual actions matter; that no act is too small or insignificant to make a difference. For those on the side of democracy, every envelope, or phone call made, or donation can help defend democracy in Collier County and the nation. Activism is the answer and that activism is needed like never before. The most impactful acts of all, of course, are voting, helping others to vote as well and protecting free, fair and accurately counted elections.
Like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings causing a hurricane, every action by every friend of freedom can generate a blue wave that can grow into a tsunami.
Right now Christian nationalism, MAGAism, Trumpism, racism, anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia and a host of other biases and bigotries and the willingness to act on them, potentially violently, are inspiring the kind of fear and concern expressed at the Interfaith Alliance gathering.
But while hatred, prejudice and rage can’t be banished, they can be contained and ultimately defeated. It takes everyone’s courage, commitment and consistency to do it but it’s worth the effort—in Collier County, in America and in the world.
And the willingness of people to take action is a reason to truly be thankful, in this season—and always.
“Freedom from want.” (Painting: Norman Rockwell, 1943)
The Roman Senate is addressed by Cicero as it debates the expulsion of one of its members, Cataline, for plotting to overthrow the republic. (Painting: Cesare Maccari, 1889)
Nov. 5, 2023 by David Silverberg
This coming Wednesday, Nov. 8, if all goes as scheduled, Republican presidential candidates will gather in Miami, Florida at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami-Dade County for their third, nationally televised debate.
This one will be hosted by the NBC network and moderated by anchors Lester Holt, Kristen Welker and Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio talk show host. It will have the legitimacy of a traditional, mainstream media event, so no matter how anti-media the candidates have been, they cannot escape its credibility and real impact.
It’s not clear as of this writing which candidates will qualify to be on stage. But what is almost 100 percent certain is that the leading Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, will deliberately be absent.
“I’m up 56 Points, so the Debates would seem to be a complete waste of time,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sept. 28. “The Debates should be ENDED, BAD for the Republican Party!”
As usual, Trump completely misunderstands the nature and value of debate. He prefers to have people unquestioningly obey his own dictatorial dictums. He’s most comfortable delivering his rambling, stream-of-consciousness harangues to an utterly accepting audience of believers.
However, his dismissal of debate is also revealing of how trivial and superficial political debate in America has become. This is a pity because debate is the very essence of democracy, indeed, of non-violent discussion and change.
So with a major, if crippled, debate coming to Florida’s shores, it’s perhaps a good time to examine the nature of debate, its value and its elemental place in the democratic process.
The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines debate as “a contention by words or arguments” and “a regulated discussion of a proposition between two matched sides.”
As a verb, to debate is “to argue about” and “to engage (an opponent) in debate” or “to turn over in one’s mind: to think about (something, such as different options) in order to decide.”
There are many kinds of debate in many fields. But when it comes to candidate debates, at its core, a debate’s real purpose is to give voters the opportunity to examine and weigh candidates, their records and proposals in an absolutely equal, apples-to-apples setting. Voters should emerge from a debate informed, enlightened and ready to make a reasoned, intelligent choice at the ballot box.
It’s not the screaming or the insults or the horserace or even the resulting poll numbers that make a debate worthwhile. It is the education of the public.
Of course, that’s not how it has always played out and certainly not recently.
The cornerstone
Free, open and unfettered debate pervades all democratic governance, whether in legislative lawmaking, executive rulemaking or in citizen selection of governing officials, i.e, elections.
From the very beginning of democracy in Athens, Greece, through the Roman Republic to our own time, debate is essential to government decisionmaking.
This was embodied in the very first official document of what would become the United States of America, the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Reaching that “consent of the governed” can only be achieved through debate.
There can be debates over different courses of action in autocracies but those debates are usually limited to a few councilors around the autocrat, who makes a decision in his own mind and then imposes it on everyone else.
Throughout American history there were debates of enormous consequence: the Constitution itself was forged through debate; the country was held together through compromises in 1820 and 1850 after debates over nullification of federal law and the expansion of slavery.
Perhaps the greatest example and archetype of all American political debates were those held between Republican challenger Abraham Lincoln and Democratic Sen. Stephen Douglas in 1858. Held in each of Illinois’ nine congressional districts, the debates largely covered the question of slavery’s expansion and received saturation coverage from the nation’s newspapers, elevating Lincoln to national status.
As an incumbent, Douglas was initially reluctant to debate. But he was branded a coward by his opponents and the newspapers, forcing his hand. There was a penalty to be paid for dodging debate.
Douglas defeated Lincoln for the US Senate seat for Illinois, which was decided by the state legislature. Lincoln went on to win the presidency in 1860. But importantly, their debates set the archetype for candidate campaigning and proper conduct in American elections until our own time.
Television and trivialization
Debates have been a cornerstone of American election ritual at all levels of government. So routine and fundamental were they that singers Simon and Garfunkel mocked them in the song “Mrs. Robinson” when they listed ordinary, banal activities: “Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon, Going to the candidates debate.”
What has happened over time, though, is the gradual trivialization of what should be serious discussions and an ever-growing media obsession with the horse race aspects. As soon as the screen fades to black after a debate there’s an obsession by pundits and politicians with who “won” the debate. Politicians gather in “spin rooms” off the debate stage to influence media coverage. There’s little to no real analysis of policies, positions or records. After all, that stuff is boring.
The trivialization seems to have begun with the introduction of television. The first televised presidential debates came in 1960 between Democratic Sen. John Kennedy and Republican Vice President Richard Nixon. While the debate covered policy substance (and people listening on radio thought that Nixon won on points) Nixon’s perspiration and five o’clock shadow were thought to have lost him favor with the audience.
Clever comebacks and bon mots have always been an element of debate and they certainly have an impact on voters. When in 1984 Republican President Ronald Reagan debated Democratic former Vice President Walter Mondale, he torpedoed the issue of his age (73) with the line: “I want you to know I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” Mondale was no stranger to his own deft thrusts. Earlier that year he skewered the lack of policy substance in his primary opponent during a debate with Sen. Gary Hart by asking him, “Where’s the beef?”
Debates may have become increasingly trivialized but there’s no doubt that their quality plunged in 2016 with the arrival of Donald Trump. His campaign was full of lies and insults and crudeness that spilled onto the debate stage both at the primary and general election levels. He dragged political discourse into a gutter from which it has not arisen to date. The screaming matches of the previous two Republican primary debates are evidence of this.
There’s also no denying that Trump’s performances worked for him with Republican primary voters and won him the nomination. However, given that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2 million votes, it’s debatable whether those same tactics scored in the general election.
But if reasonable debate has been damaged, it’s being damaged further by attacks on the very institution of candidate debate itself.
Southwest Florida and the decline of debate
In 2018 in Southwest Florida’s 19th Congressional District, the coastal area from Cape Coral to Marco Island, incumbent Republican Rep. Francis Rooney was running against Democratic challenger David Holden.
In September of that year the Collier County League of Women Voters set a date for a debate and invited both candidates to attend. Holden accepted immediately. Rooney responded that he had “no availability” on that date—and “no future availability.” What was more, he stated he had no need to debate because “everyone knows my positions.”
In days gone past, a debate would have been held anyway with an empty chair representing the absent candidate—or, as in the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the non-debater would have been branded a coward. In any event, refusing a debate would have come with a price paid in public opprobrium and at the voting booth.
That didn’t happen in Southwest Florida. All the institutions that should defend democracy, the civic organizations, the media and other politicians, remained silent and cowed. There was no debate, there was no penalty for Rooney and voters remained uninformed. Rooney never had to defend his record or the policies he was pursuing and voters never saw him face to face with his opponent.
Rooney wasn’t alone. Other Republican candidates that year dodged debates altogether rather than be forced to defend Trump and his policies—and got away with it.
At least in 2020 Trump was forced to debate his Democratic opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, in person, on stage. Trump performed abysmally, coming across as crude, rude, impatient and ignorant.
Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who praised Trump at the time, has now revised his assessment of that debate.
“This is something you have to earn. Nobody is entitled to this,” DeSantis said in a Fox News interview on Sept. 28. “You know, I remember back in 2020, I had a big party in Tallahassee for that first debate that Trump did with Biden. And the reality is Biden beat Trump in that debate—Biden—and I don’t know how you can lose to Biden in a debate, but that happened.”
Now Trump is dismissing debates altogether and calling for their end. His opponents are understandably infuriated. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has branded Trump “Donald Duck” for ducking previous debates.
DeSantis is saying that Trump is hiding behind a keyboard by issuing social media insults rather than coming out to debate. DeSantis has suddenly become a great advocate of debating.
“You know, it’s one thing to do it behind a keyboard; step up on stage and do it to my face,” he told Fox anchor Bill Hemmer. “I’m ready for it. You used to say I was a great governor. Now all of a sudden you’re saying the opposite. Let’s have that discussion. And I’ll do it, we could do it one-on-one. Let’s do that. And let’s give the American people the choice that they deserve.”
For once, DeSantis is right. Voters deserve the right to see candidates for election—for any office—together, in person, debating the issues, their records and their proposals.
Quite clearly Trump doesn’t want to debate. He’s a terrible performer in a real debate and he just wants to continue his digressive rants to an adoring and unthinking mob. He wants election without having to defend his past or reveal his future. His Trumplike minions running for office down the ballot want similar validation without facing scrutiny.
But more, Trump doesn’t want debate of any kind in any sphere. He tried to overthrow the legislative branch of government where laws are debated. He wants to just dictate his version of reality.
That’s not democracy. That’s dictatorship.
It’s long past time to bring back serious, substantial political debates at all levels. American democracy depends on it.
Trump—and any candidate for any office—should pay a steep price for dodging this basic rite of democracy. Civic organizations like the League of Women Voters need to step up and do their part. They need to make candidates who ignore or avoid debates pay a price. Such candidates should be publicly shamed and debates should proceed without them, using an empty chair. Their opponents should benefit from their absence and cowardice.
It would also be worthwhile if the media tried to bring at least a little more seriousness into their commentary and analysis. It would be beneficial if at least one member of a panel of pundits actually examined what the candidates say in a debate and evaluated the substance of their policy proposals—if they have any.
But most of all, it’s long past time that debates were returned to their fundamental purpose: educating voters and giving them the opportunity to make a rational, informed choice when they consent to be governed. After all, as the saying goes, “elections have consequences” and the results of those elections fundamentally affect every person’s life. People should know what they’re getting.
That kind of education is not to be expected in Miami on Wednesday night. But that doesn’t in any way invalidate the ideal and value of a rational, orderly, substantive debate.
Debate may be an imperfect means of assessing candidates and making decisions. But to paraphrase what Winston Churchill once said of democracy itself, it’s the worst possible means— except for all the others that have been tried from time to time.
The visage of Benito Mussolini glowers down from Fascist Party headquarters in Rome in 1934 against a backdrop urging a ‘si’ or yes vote in a referendum. (Photo: Scientific American)
April 17, 2023 by David Silverberg
“Fascism” is a term thrown around a lot these days, especially in Florida.
However, are the kinds of repressive, extreme and anti-democratic measures being proposed and imposed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the Florida legislature actual Fascism, as their critics charge? Is the rise of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) right in America actually fascism as the ideology and movement have historically been defined?
To answer those questions, one has to reach back into history to Fascism’s origins and evolution.
In America, Nazi Germany has always defined the image of fascism in the popular imagination. However, it was in Italy immediately after World War I that the name “fascism” was used for the first time, Fascism first developed as a political movement, and fascists seized government power.
Fortunately, there’s a recently published book on exactly that subject: Blood and Power: The Rise and Fall of Italian Fascism.
(A note on style: This article follows both the Associated Press and the Chicago Manual of Style, which hold that nouns and adjectives designating political and economic systems of thought are lowercased, like fascism and socialism, as opposed to the names of political parties like the National Fascist Party, or formally titled movements like Nazi or Fascist.)
Published in September 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing in London, Blood and Power is by English historian John Foot, a professor of modern Italian history at the University of Bristol. Foot has written extensively on topics of Italian history and knows this subject thoroughly.
Violence from the start
“Italy invented fascism,” Foot writes in his prologue, and from its beginning at two little-noticed meetings in Milan in March 1919, fascism was violent.
“Fascists embraced violence, both in their language and on the streets. At first, they were overshadowed by a socialist uprising where revolution seemed inevitable during the ‘two red years’—biennio rosso—of 1919-20. But soon, groups of fascists, known as squads, dressed in black, were on the march in the countryside and cities of Italy, destroying a powerful union movement, crushing democracy and spreading fear through the country; 1921-22 were the ‘two black years’—the biennio nero.”
In 1922 the fascist squadristi marched on Rome. Their leader, former socialist Benito Mussolini, was named prime minister when the king of Italy and the government caved in to their demands.
“Having taken power through murderous violence, Italian fascism held onto it through further bloodshed and occupation of the state. In power, fascism eliminated all vestiges of free speech,” Foot writes. Further, fascism “eliminated its opponents with gusto or reduced them to a state of fear. It also rewrote its own history, painting the fascist movement as a glorious defender of the fatherland as a revolutionary and modernizing force, but also as a return to order. Fascism was built on a mound of dead bodies, cracked heads, traumatized victims of violence, burnt books and smashed up cooperatives and union headquarters. Most of those who ended up governing Italy had committed crimes for which they were rarely investigated, let alone tried.”
Foot acknowledges that “There has been considerable historical debate about the meaning of Italian fascism.” He asks: was it forward-looking or backward-looking? (Or put in a modern American context, did it aim to “make Italy great again?”)
Foot’s answer: “Italian fascism looked forwards and backwards.” It built both radically modernist structures and neo-classical throwbacks, both daring art and unimaginative tributes to Il Duce, Mussolini’s title. “It understood the power of the media and advertising, but it also glanced back longingly to a rural Italy that was fast disappearing. It was at times radical, but also radically reactionary, and often simply pragmatic. It claimed to be anti-system and anti-political, but most of its leading proponents were corrupt, and enriched themselves. These contradictions were also its strengths.”
In this history Foot emphasizes the ground-level violence that fascists employed against their opponents and competitors—and against democracy and its mechanisms. American histories of the era often overlook the street brawls, maulings and fights that accompanied fascism’s rise. They’re summarized in a word or paragraph, whether they took place in Italy or Germany.
Foot, however, is at pains to show that violence was integral to fascism. “Without violence, both before and during the regime, fascism would never have come close to power. It was fundamental, visceral, epochal and life-changing: both for those who experienced it, and those who practiced it.”
The same reliance on street-level violence in the onset of German fascism has been referenced in numerous accounts of the rise of Nazism.
What Foot documents very well was the relentless, violent hammering at all the institutions and aspects of democracy by Italian fascists. Whether in town or provincial councils or the national parliament, fascists attacked the mechanics of parliamentary process and procedure, as well as those who were trying to maintain it. Time after time they stopped government at all levels from functioning, whether by disrupting parliamentary proceedings or beating or killing those who administered it.
This reliance on violence was partially driven by the fact that Fascists were in the electoral minority. Socialism was very popular in Italy after the First World War and socialists were often democratically voted into office. Fascists had to smash democracy to impose their will on the population.
In Bologna in 1920 fascists succeeded in forcing the dissolution of an elected city government through terrorism in the streets and an assassination in the city council chamber. To this day it’s unclear whether they deliberately killed one of their own councilors. Regardless, they used Bologna as a model and went on to destroy local democratic governments throughout Italy, culminating in their march on Rome two years later and takeover of the nation.
There was strong, often equally violent resistance to this effort. But the decisive change came when the instruments of the state, the police, the Carabinieri and Royal Guards either stood by or joined the fascists. Fascists gradually grew confident that they wouldn’t be prosecuted or jailed for their crimes or else they could intimidate or dominate the forces of law enforcement and the judicial system.
With both the cudgels and daggers of the squadristi and the authorities of the state arrayed against it, democracy was gradually ground into dust. It simply couldn’t function in such an atmosphere and those who believed in it failed or were unable to take the kind of action necessary to preserve it.
John Foot (Photo: University of Bristol)
Recognizing fascism
It would be much easier to oppose fascism if there was a single, definitive expression of its meaning and beliefs, the way there is with the Communist Manifesto.
Mussolini had been a journalist and an editor but perhaps because he didn’t serve a jail term as fascist leader he never collected and organized his beliefs into a single document. Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was so peculiar to Germany that it couldn’t really serve as a template elsewhere, although it succeeded in conveying his racism and anti-Semitism to the world and layed out a blueprint for German conquest.
As a result, today in America it’s difficult to recognize Fascism as a formal movement. Its adherents don’t march waving little black books the way Chinese communists waved red-colored copies of Mao Zedong’s sayings. Even the neo-Nazis and racists who demonstrated and rioted in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 did not formally call themselves Fascists.
Nonetheless, Americans will clearly recognize themes, beliefs and practices that hearken back to the classic fascism of Mussolini and Hitler.
Foot is well aware of these patterns and points them out in his epilogue.
“More recently, Donald Trump has often been compared to Mussolini,” he writes. “His speaking style…his policies (nationalism, racism, autarchy, a corporate state, a distaste for democracy itself)—have led to associations with Il Duce.”
He continues: “Democracy does not last forever. Indeed, it is often extremely fragile. Italian fascism showed how democracy, and its institutions, can quickly crumble in the face of violence, disaffection and rage. Some of this was seen in the USA after 2016, and not just in the armed attack on the Capitol in January 2021. When the ‘forces of law and order’ are also on board, things can quickly disintegrate. Collusion between parts of the state and the fascists was a key factor in Mussolini’s victory.”
Lastly, he warns: “Fascism’s historic attempt to ‘deliberately…transform its lies into reality’ certainly chimes with much of what is happening today on the far right, and more widely on social media. Fascism will not return in the same form yet may still make a comeback in some way. It could be argued that this might have already happened in different times and various places.”
Fascism and Florida
Today Florida is the laboratory for an American anti-democratic experiment. A former president in residence, a radical right governor and an extremist legislature are following unmistakable paths that were plowed almost exactly a century ago in tumultuous Italy.
In the legislature, state Sen. Blaize Ingoglia (R-11-Citrus, Hernando and Sumter counties) is attempting to outlaw the Democratic Party in Florida through “The Ultimate Cancel Act” (SB 1248). This is clearly an effort to create a one-party state of the kind that Mussolini and Hitler established in Italy and Germany.
Ingoglia may want Florida to be a one-party state but in fact his own party is facing its own two distinct anti-democratic movements built around their leaders.
Trumpism, which centers on former President Donald Trump, is not only threatening for its fascistic tendencies, but more closely resembles classic fascism in its propensity for violence. After all, Trump encouraged violence throughout his 2016 presidential campaign, during his term in office and then incited the insurrection and assault on the US Capitol and Congress on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump directly attempted to overthrow the duly elected national government and negate a free and fair election. It was a leaf not only out of the fascist playbook, it mirrored what Mussolini and the fascists did in Italy.
What might be called DeSantism (or Florida+Fascism=”Flascism”?) has not expressed itself in violence—yet. Nonetheless, DeSantis’ war on what he calls “woke” clearly follows classic fascist strategies. As mentioned above, these include: reducing local autonomy, muzzling or intimidating the press, restricting the vote, and assaulting freedom of speech and thought. Add to this mix his anti-competitive gerrymandering of election districts, his dominance of a wide variety of boards and panels and his bullying of private enterprises like the Disney Corp., for their ideological dissent.
It’s worth remembering that both Italian and German fascist movements represented themselves as revolutionary resistance efforts against what they saw as looming threats. They focused on specific causes for their countries’ plights and they targeted scapegoats on which all blame could be heaped. In the early 1920s in Italy the threat was Bolshevism, the plight was Italy’s “mutilated peace” and the scapegoats were Socialists. In Germany, the threat was Communism, the plight was the Versailles Treaty, and the scapegoats were Jews.
For Donald Trump the threat is “radical, leftist Democrats,” the plight is a supposedly stolen election and among his many scapegoats is billionaire George Soros. For DeSantis the threat is a “woke mob,” the plight is liberal “woke” ideology and the scapegoat is the media—and also, George Soros.
The specifics may be different but the patterns are the same. Only a century separates them.
But it would be remiss not to note the differences.
American carnage
When Fascism arose in Europe it was at the end of a world war. Both Italians and Germans felt defeated, dissatisfied and humiliated. Russia had fallen to Bolshevism and a militant communist movement appeared ready to dominate the world through revolutionary violence. Both countries had millions of demobilized men with military training, accustomed to military regimentation and were looking for causes transcending themselves. Fascism provided an outlet for their energies and experience and a focus for their rage.
America in 2016 presented a very different picture. It was wealthy and confident. It was the dominant power in the world. Its culture and the rules it had established with its allies ever since World War II governed global trade and diplomacy. Its chief opponents, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, were gone and their successors sought Western acceptance. Communism was dead as an active force. American forces had captured and killed Osama bin Laden and largely destroyed the terrorist jihadist threat from abroad. America was stable politically, economically and socially. Its population was largely united on the fundamentals of its Constitution, laws and believed in its mission in the world. And it was the world’s oldest, continuously functioning democracy, the value of which was unchallenged.
Running against this reality, Donald Trump had no chance of winning the presidency. To pose as America’s savior, he had to create American carnage first. He had to create a situation of dissatisfaction and disorder and so he conjured up phantom dangers, conspiracies, plights, grievances and scapegoats. He exaggerated the threat from his political opponents, painting them as treasonous, dangerous and monstrous. He worked to destroy a moderate, middle political ground, dividing Americans into absolute loyalists or absolute enemies. He and his allies, who included Russian President Vladimir Putin and Fox News, spun an unreality that was the polar opposite of the true state of affairs and then tried to impose it on an otherwise moderate populace.
In 2016 the majority of Americans rejected Trump and Trumpism, delivering 48 percent of their votes to Hillary Clinton compared to Trump’s 46 percent, a difference of 2.9 million ballots. However, with razor-thin margins in key Electoral College states and Russian help, Trump gained the presidency and America has been crippled ever since.
For DeSantis, the chosen path to power was to conjure a “woke” threat that made simple open-mindedness, free thought, an obscure academic theory and social tolerance into an apocalyptic phantasmal “woke” peril of grooming, racism and coercion.
Now this battle is continuing in Florida as Trump and DeSantis compete for the Republican Party presidential nomination, the White House and ultimately, control of the nation. The state of Florida has the misfortune to be their initial battleground. Trump is using his national platform to spread Trumpism throughout Florida and beyond; DeSantis is promoting DeSantism and imposing its precepts on the state through his power as governor, while openly hoping to propagate it nationwide.
Analysis: The verdict
So is Florida a fascist state?
Perhaps at this point it might be most accurate to label it as “fascistic” rather than overtly Fascist.
Florida cannot simply be labeled Fascist because it does not have a registered Fascist Party by that name. It is not seeing the kind of pervasive political violence that accompanied the rise of European fascism. While Trump is still advocating violence (warning of “potential death & destruction” if he was arrested), DeSantis is not, nor is political violence evident in everyday life. There are still multiple legal political parties, although this is threatened in the legislature. Laws still govern, although their authority is becoming shaky as is the application of national laws and the Constitution. (e.g., “DeSantis: Florida won’t cooperate with Trump extradition.”).
That said, there are strong currents propelling the state in a fascistic direction, as detailed above.
But the triumph of fascism in Florida is no more assured than it was at its outset in Italy or Germany.
The strongest defense against fascism is simply the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, which when actively applied prevents the kind of oppression imposed by fascism.
One potential countervailing force is an active and vigorous effort to preserve democracy at the grassroots. This means protecting parliamentary democracy at the city and county level and even in local school boards. Key to this is defending the voting franchise for all eligible citizens and encouraging active participation. It is especially important that the public preserve its right to petition government for a redress of grievances and to freely express opinions to lawmakers, a right already threatened in Florida at the state and local levels. (“Just 30 seconds? Despite complex bills, Floridians are limited on public testimony in Legislature,” Florida Phoenix, March 14, 2023.)
Simply ensuring that elections are free, fair and their results counted accurately and without impediment or interference by impartial, non-partisan, professional election supervisors, is another defense. This is threatened by DeSantis’ special “election police” who have the potential to negate election results he doesn’t like and by MAGA attempts to dominate election of supervisors at the local level.
Another defense is ensuring that candidates commit in advance of their elections to accepting the tabulated results and a willingness to concede if they lose. At every debate and in every press conference, candidates should be pressed to state that they will accept the official results. Trump’s fantasies of a stolen election and his refusal to accept defeat has been incredibly damaging to the United States and it spawned imitators like Arizona’s Kari Lake. Candidates need to be clear and unambiguous that they will accept election results without qualifications or caveats, otherwise they should be condemned and disqualified.
But asking firm questions and holding candidates to the results requires a free and independent press. That is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. The danger of an independent and inquiring press to fascism was fully recognized by Mussolini and Hitler and they did all they could to suppress it. Russian President Vladimir Putin also recognizes the threat that truth and real information pose—as does Trump and DeSantis and extremist Florida legislators as they hammer away at press freedoms.
But perhaps the single most important defense of democracy against fascist encroachment lies in a neutral, impartial police and the equal and vigorous application of law to all citizens regardless of status or stature.
As Foot shows in Blood and Power, once the state authorities entrusted with the tools of coercion and force stood by or joined the fascists, the game was over. This was also true in Germany. When the forces of the state stood firm against Hitler and his Nazis in 1923 when they attempted a putsch, the Nazis were stopped in their tracks and law prevailed. When the Nazis took state power in 1933 and directed Germany’s civil authorities to enforce Nazi doctrine with criminal penalties, Germany became a completely tyrannical state.
This is why exceptions cannot be made in charging a political figure like Trump for any criminal acts he may have committed, whether in office or not. He cannot be granted immunity just because he wants it and those who argue that he deserves it are aiding and abetting fascism, whether they know it or not. There is a large contingent in Florida making exactly that case—but would these people have argued that Mussolini shouldn’t have been held accountable for his crimes? Or Hitler? The case is the same.
But apolitical law enforcement is also essential at the local level, perhaps even more so. When Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida tells potential Floridians: “So we only want to share one thing as you move in hundreds a day. Welcome to Florida. But don’t register to vote and vote the stupid way you did up north, or you’ll get what they got,” that is a fascistic threat. When Sheriff Kevin Rambosk of Collier County endorses a “Bill of Rights Sanctuary” ordinance that seeks to nullify federal law in his jurisdiction, that erodes democracy at the grassroots.
There is no doubt that fascism had its attractions a century ago and still has them today. But America, like no other country, committed to democracy at its founding and defended it repeatedly over the past two centuries.
As Foot notes in Blood and Power, “Democracy does not last forever. Indeed, it is often extremely fragile. Italian fascism showed how democracy, and its institutions, can quickly crumble in the face of violence, disaffection and rage.”
But one might also respond that democracy and its institutions can stand firm, strong and resilient when its defenders are aware, united and determined.
And in Florida, even if its government is trending fascistic today, that does not mean it has to be Fascist tomorrow.
The Paradise Progressive 