Florida’s DeSantis Warns of “Trendy Ideologies” in Inauguration Speech

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis offered a hint of what’s to come in his condemnation of what he calls trendy ideologies, as he sets his sights on national politics and a likely presidential run.

by Evan Urquhart

Florida’s Ron DeSantis was sworn in today for his second term as governor of the state. He used the occasion of his inauguration to tout his accomplishments in Florida and speak about what he views as failures of the US national government and poor policy choices in other states. The national focus of the speech once again signals that DeSantis hopes to be chosen as the Republican candidate for president in 2024.

In his speech DeSantis covered a wide range of topics, from local Florida issues such as hurricane relief to broader issues applicable anywhere in the US. These broader themes included lowering taxes, greater involvement of parents in education, and rejecting “wokeness” in favor of normalcy and common sense. When he spoke of specific achievements, DeSantis’ choices of what to highlight were fairly non-controversial, such as rebuilding bridges in the wake of natural disasters and funding water restoration in the Everglades. However, the speech’s vaguer themes contained a lot of menace particularly for transgender people, immigrants, and for Black Americans, whose term for becoming aware of social injustice, woke, has become an epithet of hatred for DeSantis and others on the right.

As has become standard for conservative politicians, DeSantis relied heavily on dog-whistles to refer to more controversial subjects within the speech without giving specifics. He never used the word “transgender” but he called Florida a “promised land of sanity” contrasting it with other states whose governing decisions were influenced by “faddish ideologies.” “Trendy ideologies” was the phrasing he used in his remarks about education, and he made his meaning a little more clear when promised to “defend children against those who seek to rob them of their innocence.” The audience gave him a standing ovation for this line.

“Gender ideology” has long been used to refer to trans people obliquely, shifting the focus from trans individuals as human beings to a nebulous and undefined “ideology” that can be railed against without directly acknowledging that it is people who are being discussed. Transphobes also believe, without evidence, that greater numbers of young people are coming out as transgender due to a fad. One of the largest websites pushing for the elimination of trans people using this rhetoric of trans existence being a newfangled fad is the UK based Transgender Trend. The use of faddish and trendy with ideology makes DeSantis’ target, trans people, clear.

The insidious, stigmatizing claim that the LGBTQ+ community’s goal is to harm children has also become a staple of the conspiracy-minded far right, leading armed facist gangs to try and shut down events for children in ominous displays of force. Put together, DeSantis’ language about faddish and trendy ideologies and his committment to defend children from them is a reference to his opposition to trans people’s ability to live openly, as well as to the harshly transphobic policies he’s pursued.

What were those policies again? A recent article about DeSantis in Vanity Fair summed them up well:

DeSantis has made his opposition to the LGBTQ+ community living and working openly, and to allowing evidence based medical care for transgender Americans, some of his signature issues. If he runs for president, as everyone assumes he will, attacks on the transgender community are almost certain to take a central place in his campaign. If he became president, DeSantis would constitute a disaster for the trans community of an almost unimaginable scale.

Video of DeSantis’ full speech on 1/3/2022 can be found here.