A state that was specifically targeting any teaching that emphasized the central role of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust to modern German history and banned the use of scholarship that looked into continuities of anti-Semitism in Germany since the end of World War II? 2/

A German state that tried to suppress all inquiry into structural, systemic anti-Semitic discrimination in Germany today, and tried to purge all traces of such critical thinking from the libraries, the classrooms, the syllabi, the school curriculum? 3/

A German state that specifically banned books by the most prominent Jewish intellectuals and scholars by declaring all of them dangerous radicals and “woke” activists who were trying to indoctrinate children, hoping to undermine the nation and subvert German national unity? 4/

And what if I also told you that similar initiatives were being pushed in about half the country where these efforts to suppress, ostracize, and purge were viewed as a blueprint and were already being emulated, as evidenced by hundreds of bills outlawing critical thinking around anti-Semitism and systemic discrimination? 5/

What would you say? Because while this is not a perfect analogy (analogies never are), it comes really close to capturing what is happening in Florida, and in red states around the country. And I believe that if something like this were happening in Germany, the reaction would be - and certainly should be - different. 6/

Is the political and institutional response to what is happening here commensurate with the threat to academic freedom, free speech, and the pillars of democratic culture? Is the mainstream media coverage conveying how radical, how drastic, how dangerous this is? 7/

What would you say if the nation’s leading newspaper focused on how the illiberal leader of this hypothetical German state who was banning Jewish voices and was ruthlessly pursuing his authoritarian agenda was, in fact, taking on the “establishment” and successfully building “his brand”? 8/

We dove deep into the situation in Florida in today’s “Is This Democracy” episode and dissected the authoritarian takeover of education, the escalating reactionary campaign to stifle, censor, and ban any dissent from the white nationalist woldview. This is a proper emergency. It needs to be treated as such. /end https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/13-the-murder-of-tyre-nichols-the/id1652741954?i=1000597862704

Several people have rightfully pointed out that if this were to happen in Germany today, much of the American Right could be expected to cheer such authoritarian initiatives - we only have to look at their enthusiastic embrace of Viktor Orbán as a defender of white Christian patriarchy.

I have zero illusions about Republicans suddenly seeing the light or returning to “normalcy” - they know exactly what they are doing and are committed to imposing their fundamentally anti-pluralistic vision on the country by whatever means. But what about everyone else?

My question is directed at those who are nominally in the pro-democracy camp, who claim to be standing against the forces of authoritarianism - specifically, it is directed at the institutions tasked with upholding and defending democratic culture.

The New York Times, for instance, had no problem describing Orbán’s crusade against “liberal” education as part of an authoritarian, nationalistic project. They’re definitely treating Florida Orbán differently, approaching him through a deliberately normalizing lens.