Every few years the propaganda outlets of the Left shake up their language, bring out new dictionaries, and rebrand their messaging, adopting new buzzwords that mean the same things.

“Authoritarianism”, the hot new lefty buzzwords, running second to “misinformation” is typically meaningless. It can be used to refer to any political opponent who gets things done.

Take this absurd headline from the Gainesville Sun… “Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida is drifting toward authoritarianism”. 

How does a state with free elections drift toward “authoritarianism” as if it were a piece of flotsam in the gulf? 

To paraphrase Tom Wolfe, the dark night of fascism is always descending on Florida and yet lands only in New York where four-year-olds and their babysitters have to show their papers.

And that’s what “authoritarianism” really means, it’s the old fascism smear with a euphemism. When lefty media tosses around  “authoritarianism”, it’s saying “fascism”, but it also recognizes that the fascism brand is worn (outside Twitter) and there needs to be an exciting new label that is all the better for being vague. Fascism, like Nazism, at least refers to a specific ideology, while  “authoritarianism” is a fact-free smear that is open-ended enough to be hurled or applied to anyone… as long as they’re conservative.

Everyone to the right of Obama is now an “authoritarian” say advocates for a totalitarian regime that would deprive most Americans of their basic civil rights.