Opinion: Businesses Strike Back as DeSantis Criticizes Corporations
Editor's note: Ruth Ben-Ghiat (@ruthbenghiat), a frequent contributor to CNN Opinion, is professor of history and Italian studies at New York University and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.
She publishes the newsletter Lucid on threats to democracy. The views expressed here are her own. Read more opinion on CNN.(CNN) — "Florida is fighting back," Gov.
Ron DeSantis tweeted August 22. "We stand for the values of places like Destin, Dunedin and Deland — not Davos."Who is the enemy DeSantis is combating? "Woke CEOs" and any "corporate power" that aims to impose "an ideological agenda on the American people" by championing values of "diversity, inclusion, and equity" in investment considerations and workplace policies.Going after corporate America might seem a surprising move for a Yale-educated lawyer who will likely run for president in 2024 and is backed by more than 40 billionaire donors.
But having traction as a Republican candidate in many cases means posing as a defender of freedoms threatened by political correctness and the machinations of "corporate cartel elites." DeSantis apparently is fine with harming Florida's reputation as a business-friendly state, if that's what it takes to make his mark and impose his political will.Yet businesses are pushing back.
