Ron DeSantis uses words similar to Churchill’s iconic 1940 speech to wage war on ‘woke’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ channelled former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill at an Iowa campaign event over the weekend, invoking Churchill’s famous World War II speech to tout his own position on “woke” ideology.

DeSantis said in his speech on Saturday: “I recognise that the woke mind virus represents a war on the truth, so we will wage a war on the woke. We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress.”

The syntax of the sentence was reminiscent of Churchill’s iconic 1940 speech, when he spoke to Britain’s parliament to boost morale after the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk.

Churchill said in his speech: “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”

The Iowa speech drew flak from DeSantis critics, who argued that the governor’s political position is a far cry from Churchill’s.

Richard Stengel, a former under secretary of state under Barack Obama’s administration, tweeted: “Churchill was fighting Nazism, an enemy bent on world domination, while DeSantis is fighting, well, empathy and compassion. Not the same.”