Marshall Rawson won a state House seat after reporting exposed his white nationalist ties and posts cheering possible death sentences for gay men in Uganda.

A right-wing extremist who once cheered the prospect of executing gay people just won a seat in the Florida Legislature.

Republican Marshall Rawson won 68.15 percent of the vote in Florida House District 10, easily beating Democrat Merrillee Malwitz Jipson in deep red North Florida. His victory was widely expected in the heavily Republican district. But in August, Rawson won the GOP primary for the open seat in a surprise victory over Chase Brannan, the son of retiring Florida Rep. Chuck Brannan.

Some of his extremist rhetoric had been reported in local outlets like Clay News & Views, which in January spotlighted a 2023 post on Twitter, now X, in which Rawson shared a report on Uganda charging men with “aggravated homosexuality.” Responding to the prospect of the men facing the death penalty, Rawson wrote, “This is how you would run the pervs and miscreants out of Florida.”

Florida Politics reported on Rawson’s lengthy involvement with the League of the South, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2000. He also criticized the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and posted that “taking old dead communist heroes of the past and dressing them up as Christian Conservatives isn’t conservatism, it’s defeatism.”

Seems there’s a new George Wallace in the south.

  • SunflierOPEnglish
    11·
    5 hours ago

    The rot that took root in Florida is much older than 26.

      • dou9m@lemmy.ca
        6·
        5 hours ago

        Goes back before the civil war to our idiotic founding fathers who didn’t understand what freedom and liberty were because of their own bigotry and desire to own humans

          • dou9m@lemmy.ca
            5·
            3 hours ago

            Agreed to certain extents but even the best were blinded by the standards of their time, which is fair enough… but ultimately, IMO, they effectively all founded the country on the foundational ideals of: “We got already got ours, let’s pull up the ladder”

            • SunflierOPEnglish
              6·
              3 hours ago

              ultimately, IMO, they effectively all founded the country on the foundational ideals of: “We got already got ours, let’s pull up the ladder”

              Nope! It was taxation without representation. The ladder stuff did come in quickly, but the founding was based on the colonies not being able to get be heard om their grievances that arose because of Britain trying to economically recover from the French and Indian war.

              The ladder thing came in from a combination of factors like the French Revolution combined with the fear as related to slavery.

              • dou9m@lemmy.ca
                1·
                2 hours ago
                1. Voting Rights Tied to Property Ownership
                • Figures like John Adams explicitly argued that men without property lacked the “independency” needed to vote responsibly, claiming they would be easily manipulated or would vote to redistribute wealth.
                1. Institutional Barriers to Direct Democracy
                • Electoral College: Placed a buffer between the popular vote and the presidency.
                • Unelected Senate: Senators were originally chosen by state legislatures rather than citizens (until the 17th Amendment in 1913).
                • Life-Appointed Judiciary: Ensured elite legal interpretation remained insulated from public pressure.
                1. Preserving Slavery and the Native Land Ladder
                • The Three-Fifths Compromise: Boosted the political power of Southern slave-holding states without granting any rights to enslaved people.
                • Fugitive Slave Clause: Protected human property rights across state lines.
                • Land Speculation: Key figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were active land speculators who used state power and military force to dispossess Native American nations, securing prime real estate for wealthy investors.
                1. Economic Policies Favoring Capital Creditors
                • Under Alexander Hamilton’s financial system, the Federal government assumed state revolutionary war debts and established the First Bank of the United States.
                • The Debt Buyout: Poor revolutionary soldiers who had been paid in government IOUs often sold them for pennies on the dollar to wealthy speculators out of desperation. Hamilton’s plan paid out those bonds at full face value to the speculators, cementing a wealthy financial class tied directly to the federal government.
                • Suppressing Populist Rebellions: When small farmers protested taxes that favored coastal merchants (such as during Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion), the federal government deployed military force to enforce compliance.
                1. Naturalization and Citizenship Laws
                • The Naturalization Act of 1790 set the baseline for who could climb the legal and civic ladder in the new nation.
                • Explicit Exclusion: It restricted citizenship by naturalization strictly to “free white person[s]… of good character,” excluding enslaved Africans, free Black people, Native Americans, and later Asian immigrants from accessing land ownership and legal protections.