Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made headlines recently by visiting New Hampshire for a campaign stop and talking almost entirely about Florida.
His accomplishments as governor of that state deserve attention—but mostly because they are significant steps towards transforming Florida into an autocracy similar to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary. The arc DeSantis is plotting for his state and our nation may be many things, but it is not American.
Our comparison of the two regimes stems from on-the-ground observation. One of us was an ambassador in Central Europe and has visited and written about Orbán’s Hungary. The other was the duly elected county prosecutor in Tampa, Florida, whom DeSantis unlawfully suspended.
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The scenes from Florida are by now familiar. A substitute teacher fired for posting a video of empty bookshelves in a public school library. The parents of an LGBTQ+ child wrestling with whether to leave their state because of the government’s hostility. A duly, twice-elected prosecutor suspended illegally and escorted out of the office by an armed sheriff’s deputy.
But the similarities between the Florida that DeSantis has helped create and Orbán’s Hungary deserve more attention here in America.
Like DeSantis, Orbán has used the power of the state to target the LGBTQ+ community while trumpeting traditional values to build his base. The two men have also both demonized migration and migrants. DeSantis has taken it so far that there are criminal investigations in Texas—and possibly in California—of his potential involvement in schemes to move undocumented migrants around the U.S., allegedly tricking them.
And then there is Orbán’s and DeSantis’ shared hostility to the rule of law.
DeSantis has shown remarkable disdain for the law he is sworn to uphold. He has enacted multiple laws which have been found by courts to violate the U.S. Constitution, including legislation restricting discussion of race in schools, controlling the speech of social media companies, prohibiting peaceful protest, criminalizing transgender health care, and restricting voter registration. He has unlawfully targeted businesses who speak out against legislation he supports, most notably Disney, and has allegedly flouted campaign finance laws and ethics.
Across the pond, Orbán has “overseen the steady dismantling of the country’s democratic institutions,” as Yasmeen Serhan put it in a 2020 Atlantic article. He has compromised the independence of the judiciary, attacked free press and propped up pro-government media outlets, restricted civil rights, and centralized power in the executive branch, severely undermining the checks and balances that ensure accountability and protect individual freedom.
Last year, a senior Hungarian judge boldly spoke out about Orbán’s attempts to influence the judiciary, including firing a judge who was investigating government corruption. Censorship and state interference in the media is reminding some of Hungary’s years under Communist rule.
Orbán has not hidden his intentions. In fact, he has openly called for abandoning Hungary’s liberal democracy and referred to Russia and Turkey as model countries. According to the Freedom House 2023 index, a respected benchmark for measuring and comparing countries’ civil liberties, Hungary is no longer a free country. Under Orbán, it is only “partly free,” earning the same score as Malawi and Bolivia.
Like Orbán, DeSantis has gotten away with much of his anti-democratic agenda by exploiting weaknesses in the legal system. Although courts have struck down several pieces of legislation that he’s championed, others have survived legal challenges, such as the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law.
Many expect the Florida Supreme Court, of which DeSantis appointed five of the seven members, to reverse precedent and approve a six-week abortion law. His suspension of the prosecutor (one of the co-authors) was found by a federal judge to have violated both state and federal law, but the court declined to reinstate him.
In 21st century America, how is it possible that DeSantis, who has been described as “inventing American Orbánism,” is a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination? One clue might be to look at the reaction to Orbán on the American right, where he has been hailed as a visionary. President Trump hosted him at the White House in 2019. Tucker Carlson has held flattering interviews with Orbán on Fox News. Last August, he was even a guest speaker at the influential Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference.
The Republican Party is supposed to be the conservative one in this country. Genuine conservatism prioritizes protecting individual freedom from the government. Yet the American right allowed—indeed embraced—the authoritarianism exhibited by DeSantis and his main rival for the GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump.
Like Orbán, an increasingly dominant faction within the party has come to view liberal democracy not as the beating heart of our country but as a liability. They see the separation of powers, an independent judiciary, and checks and balances as threats to our country.
None of these commentators know what it is like, however, to be on the wrong side of an Orbán or a DeSantis. The reality of being considered an enemy of the state by a mercurial authoritarian is quite far from the romantic visions offered by Carlson or Trump, but is at least as important to consider.
One of us (Warren) is all too familiar with this view.
It is difficult to convey how it feels to be an enemy of the state of Florida. To be unlawfully stripped of the job to which you were twice elected. To have the government scrutinize your record as the district attorney for the slightest hint of misconduct (where, as a court found, none exists). To have DeSantis lie about you in his stump speech for president and have his propaganda machine repeat those lies. To be denied relief from a court of law in which DeSantis appointed five of the seven judges. And to potentially have your fate in the hands of the highly partisan Florida Senate.
Others, to be sure, have had it worse from DeSantis. But it is, suffice it to say, a horrifying perversion of the way democracy is supposed to work.
