‘We live in a second Red Scare’: what can we learn from a chilling book about Florida’s past?

A harrowing new book looks back at a dark period of US history as the Johns committee targeted Black and queer Americans, drawing parallels to what’s happening now

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ith his second book, Robert W Fieseler casts new light on a dark episode: the years in the 1950s and 60s when the Florida legislative investigation committee, commonly known as the Johns committee, persecuted Black and queer Americans in the name of anti-communist red scare politics.

“The state of Florida has a very poisonous political system,” Fieseler said, promoting a book published as Ron DeSantis sits in the governor’s mansion, whose virulently anti-LGBTQ+ policies had fueled, if briefly, his presidential ambitions.

“Tallahassee politics are nasty. Always have been. There was a small gap, maybe in the 70s and 80s, where decorum and maturity existed, but most of the rules of it are quite toxic.”