
There’s a term for DeSantis’s war on Disney — it’s called autocratic capture
DeSantis’s attacks on Disney in Florida mimic democratic erosion around the world
October 28, 2022
Co-Founder and Executive Director
Ian Bassin is co-founder and Executive Director of Protect Democracy. He previously served as Associate White House Counsel, where in addition to counseling the President and senior White House staff on administrative and constitutional law, his responsibilities included ensuring that White House and executive branch officials complied with the laws, rules and norms that protect the fundamentally democratic nature of our government. His writing on democracy, authoritarianism, and American law and politics has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon, The New York Review of Books and other publications. He is a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Innovation and has repeatedly been named among the 500 most influential people in Washington by Washingtonian Magazine. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.
DeSantis’s attacks on Disney in Florida mimic democratic erosion around the world
October 28, 2022
By raising their hands to indicate they would back Trump even if he’s found guilty of a crime, the six other Republicans continued the party’s yearslong pattern of normalizing and excusing behavior from Trump that threatens the underpinnings of American democracy and the rule of law, said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, a non-partisan group. “What does it do to a country and democracy when its ostensible leaders not only abdicate the role they are supposed to play as a bulwark against authoritarianism, against the dismantling of the system and undermining of institutions, but they actually validate the behavior of those that would undermine our republic?”
Defeating authoritarianism is going to take all of us. Everyone and every institution has a role to play. Together, we can protect democracy.
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