Utah Republicans, led by GOP Sen. Mike Lee, on Thursday slammed a college professor in their state who tried to whip up an angry mob to protest Gov. Ron DeSantis by labeling him a fascist, including portraying the Florida Republican with a swastika on his head.
Utah Valley University Professor Trevor Warburton teaches “social justice and mathematics ed,” called for left-wingers to turn out in protest of DeSantis’ arrival on Saturday.
Florida’s governor is slated to speak at the Utah GOP’s state convention.
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The flyer Warburton created and circulated called DeSantis a “fascist,” depicted him with a Nazi swastika on his forehead and told liberals where to gather.
In an interview on Thursday, Lee told Fox News the flyer was “wildly inappropriate on every level” because it was first distributed on the Day of Remembrance for Holocaust.
Lee then added, “When everyone’s a fascist, no one is.”
“There is nothing about Gov. DeSantis that is a fascist. Never once has he tried to centralize government power. Never once has he tried to aggregate power at the expense of the individual, the expense of the family,” Lee argued.
“He’s all about individual rights,” Lee added.
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“We see that the use by the left of the word fascist and symbols like the swastika to depict anything they don’t like, it cheapens the meaning of the word,” said Lee.
“This is a word with real significance, and it will be more difficult to call it out when it actually exists,” the senator added.
“Meanwhile, Republicans are working against big government tyranny, big government control of everything, centralization of all social systems, civil society, and the economy and government power into one government unit,” he added.
“We’re the opposite of that.”
On Thursday, Utah GOP Chairman Carson Jorgensen told the Salt Lake Tribune, “It’s fine to protest, but calling anyone you disagree with a Nazi is absolutely in bad taste.”
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