There are so many things to say about Wednesday’s headline that rattled a nation that had almost thought it was losing its capacity for shock: ABC’s indefinite ouster of its late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel. The network capitulated to the regime’s demands — first from Donald Trump and then his Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr — that were enflamed by Kimmel’s actually anodyne remarks about last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk.
But the one thing I’m not supposed to say — according to my two U.S. senators, Democrat-in-name-only John Fetterman and GOPer Dave McCormick — is that the Trump regime’s shredding of our First Amendment rights is an act of fascism, no matter what the best political-science experts might say.
Fetterman and his across-the-aisle new best buddy McCormick chose the isn’t-it-ironic venue of the Fox News Channel on Tuesday night to urge their interpretation of civility in the wake of Kirk’s murder, and to call out Democrats or anyone else (but mainly Democrats) who use the term “fascism” to describe what’s happening in America. Even when what’s happening is a fascistic war on free speech.
Added Fetterman: ““Do not ever, ever, ever compare anyone to Hitler. You will incite somebody to say, ‘Well, now I feel like I have to stop that, to get them out.’”
Look, I abhor any type of political violence. The vast majority of Americans do as well. Charlie Kirk should be still alive and with his wife and two kids and enjoying the liberty to make his noxious political commentary on our college campuses.
But when a president of the United States uses the vast regulatory power of the government to decide what comedians, journalists or everyday citizens can or cannot say, or arbitrarily murders civilians on boats, or deploys troops in cities run by the opposing party, or opens concentration camps, or more, maybe someone should yell, “Stop!”
Maybe a senator from that opposition party, for example?
I guess it would be wildly politically incorrect to point out here that in 1935 the Naz… — I’m sorry, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, because I don’t want to put $1 into Fetterman’s Nazi Swear Jar — shut down the cabaret act of popular comedian Werner Finck and sent him to a concentration camp for jokes making fun of…you know, that guy with the weird moustache. It would be inappropriate, apparently, to mention the Trump regime is treating Kimmel in a very identical fashion.
And am I bad American if I call attention to the rank hypocrisy of McCormick, who as a powerful U.S. senator votes on hundreds of millions of dollars in research aid to the University of Pennsylvania and who demanded this weekend that Penn take “decisive action” to sanction its top climate scientist, Michael E, Mann (a friend of mine), for reposting some online commentary about Kirk? That feels like a textbook case of fa…oops, pushing the boundaries of democratic norms.
I’m disgusted both by the phony-baloney sanctimony of so many politicians like McCormick and Fetterman who are using the murder of an American who (also hypocritically) advocated for free speech, by taking that right to its extreme outer limits, as an excuse to tell the rest of us what we are allowed to say, or even think.
I’m even more revulsed by the cowardice of our elites — the senators, media moguls, Supreme Court justices, and their ilk — who don’t care about watching the U.S. Constitution get flushed down the toilet on the 238th anniversary of its adoption, as long as we’re civil to each other while seeing it circle down the drain.
But this cravenness is only the second-worst thing that’s happening right now. The worst is the actual, um, strongman authoritarianism itself, which hit a dangerous new low Wednesday with the government anti-free-speech assault on Kimmel and his employers.
It’s clear that Kimmel’s monologue that touched on Kirk’s assassination and the Trump regime’s initial response to it was merely the pretext for following through on the president’s threat from earlier this summer, after fellow late-night comic and mocker-of-Trump Stephen Colbert was canceled by CBS, when he posted that “Kimmel is next.”
This is Kimmel’s comment that sparked this week’s brouhaha: “We had some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.” The comedian’s debatable implication that Kirk’s alleged assassin might be a Trump-voting conservative — he seems not to be — could easily be clarified along with a simple “sorry about that.” But Kimmel’s main idea that Team Trump is exploiting a tragedy is spot on and confirmed by what happened next.
» READ MORE: Colbert, CBS, and media’s final surrender | Will Bunch Newsletter
There wasn’t much if any viewer action to what Kimmel said, except in the offices of Nexstar, which is the largest owner of TV stations in America, including multiple ABC affiliates, and which is currently needing approval from the Trump-led federal government for a $6.2 billion merger deal. As Nexstar announced it was pulling Kimmel’s show from its outlets, FCC chair Carr piled on.
“This is a very, very serious issue right now for Disney,” ABC’s parent corporation, Carr told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson. Sounding more like a mob boss than a federal regulator, he added: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.”
ABC did take action, and it was clear why. Rolling Stone reported Wednesday night that “multiple [ABC] execs felt that Kimmel had not actually said anything over the line, the two sources say, but the threat of Trump administration retaliation loomed.”
Nothing is more foundational to American democracy than the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech and a free media. True, its meaning is often misunderstood, as it applies only to government and not to private employers who can actually fire you for what you say. But laws, prosecutions and regulatory actions to restrict our language have long been, if it’s OK to use the German term, verboten.
And the move against Kimmel is the tip of the iceberg in a MAGA strategy aiming to sink the role of a free press as a check against dictatorship. The outrage over the comedian’s suspension came as the family of a Trump ally who’s currently the world’s richest person, Oracle software founder Larry Ellison, is seeking to forge a media empire that would include CBS News, CNN, and the most popular social-media site, TikTok.
The scheme is to control much of the media and intimidate the rest — just like a strongman I think I’m still allowed to compare Trump to, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán — has so successfully done. And it’s working beyond our wildest nightmares.
Here’s what I would have loved to hear my Democratic U.S. senator say about this dictatorial power grab. “You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of his murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country. And trust me, if it is, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever…Because if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think.”
But those words did not come from John Fetterman. They were uttered, incredibly, by the right-wing longtime Trump ally Tucker Carlson. It’s naive to think that too many other MAGA partisans will join Carlson in calling out their rank hypocrisy around free speech — not yet, anyway. But the attacks on Kimmel — who has over the years forged a bond with his fans that transcends politics — can and should be a tipping point for everyday folks to see that Trump really is seeking to become a dictator, and that in some ways he’s already there.
And we won’t reverse this unless we call out Trump’s MAGA movement for what it actually is: fascism. And if we don’t talk about the many similarities to the rise of Adolf Hitler — such as the demonization of marginalized groups like immigrants or the transgender community, the clampdown on the media and universities, the construction of concentration camps — then America will be condemned to repeat the horrific and deadly mistakes of the not-too-distant past. This is America’s own five-alarm Reichstag fire, and we are at great peril if we ignore the flames
It’s appalling that they can silence Jimmy Kimmel, but they don’t have the ability to shut up all of us — not if we take to the streets, say what we really think on social media, or convince our neighbors that none of this is normal. There is a great opportunity to exercise your First Amendment rights at the large No Kings Day II protest planned for Oct. 18, but events seem to be moving even faster than that.
I’m sorry, Senator Fetterman, ol’ chum, but I’m going to have to imagine what the cabaret star Werner Finck might have sung before the Nazis busted him in 1935: What good is sitting alone in your room?