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.

  • dou9m@lemmy.ca
    11·
    2 days 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.
    • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      21·
      1 day ago

      Everything you mentioned relates to the US Constitution. The US Constitution wasn’t the founding document. That was the second document drafted. The first document was the Articles of Confederation. Nothing you mentioned were in those articles, nor were they an instigating cause to form our country

      • dou9m@lemmy.ca
        2·
        22 hours ago

        Oh right, the constitution has nothing to do with the rules and law of the country it’s definitely not the most important part of our legal system lol. My question to you is: so?! They clearly wanted to be rulers and not freedom lovers.

        • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          2·
          15 hours ago

          My question to you is: so?!

          My text was in response to your erroneous affirmation that our founding was on your erroneous assertion of the concept of “We got already got ours, let’s pull up the ladder”. I replied what our founding documents actually were and the grievances that caused us to be founded. I then corrected you on your assertion of what the founding document actually was (declaration was caused by the grievances that I listed) + the Articles of Confederation.

          The ladder pulling didn’t come in until later, as I asserted.

          • dou9m@lemmy.ca
            1·
            15 hours ago

            I appreciate you actually explaining yourself very much, thank you! I’m sorry that the effort probably gets wasted on most lol.

            I will say that everything I mentioned, it was all shit from the same people who were involved w/ the articles of confederation.

            Like, in my opinion, the difference between it coming a few years later from the same exact people versus at the direct founding is negligible at this point in time, a couple hundred years later.

            Like I suppose my question is really just: what difference does it really make if they TRULY were honest in the AoC just for them to do an ideological u-turn very shortly after? Feels very POSIWID to me

            • Sunflier@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
              1·
              13 hours ago

              appreciate you actually explaining yourself very much, thank you! I’m sorry that the effort probably gets wasted on most lol.

              Being technically correct is the best kind of correct!