Ken Burns Compares DeSantis Bills to ‘Soviet System’ on CNN: ‘The Way the Nazis Would Build a Potemkin Village’

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns joined CNN on Tuesday and accused Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) of creating a Soviet-like system through his bills targeting materials available in public schools.

DeSantis has been focused on introducing legislation specifically aimed at explicit and “woke” materials in schools. His efforts have earned major pushback as critics argue new strict guidelines can be used to target LGBTQ and Black history-related content.

House Bill 999 would give more power to a university board of trustees over curriculum being taught and essentially ban controversial curriculum like Critical Race Theory.

“By trying to dictate what teachers can and cannot teach, Florida House Bill 999 is an assault on the very liberties articulated by the Founders,” Burns recently tweeted.

On CNN This Morning, Burns compared the efforts by DeSantis to actual Nazis building Potemkin villages, or cities that look far more flourishing and successful than they actually are.

“All of these bills that DeSantis and others are doing limit our ability to understand who we are and they are not inclusive, they are exclusive. They are narrowing the focus of what is and isn’t American history. It’s terrifying. It feels like a Soviet system or the way the Nazis would build a Potemkin village,” Burns said. “Tucker Carlson’s doing the same thing with the footage from 1/6. It’s just a kind of rewriting of history at the most dangerous level. It’s a huge threat to our Republican.”

Burns is currently working on a documentary about the American Revolution and he claimed the Founding Fathers would be “rolling in their graves” over DeSantis.

“We were founded on the idea that all men are created equal. The man who wrote that owned hundreds of human beings and didn’t see the hypocrisy,” Burns said. “Our whole story is based in a discussion on race along with the meaning of freedom.”

Watch above via CNN.