The assault on the first amendment (and the return of McCarthyism)

lolz, how did Republicans ever get this soft? Embarrassing.

Fascism would be police going to Kemmel with made up excuses/accusations and taking him in a jail incommunicado and that's it. That is fascism.

A gvmnt agency with oversight power over a company because of statist regulations i disagree with using that power to achieve political goals wouldn't be fascism. It would be politics as normal under normal regulatory statism.

You are completly taken by partisanship to fail to see that if the FCC existing and having the power to take away licenses is fascism, they you guys that are in favor of the FCC existing with those powers are the fascists.

What’s the libertarian model for controlling TV stations, radio waves, etc? I don’t see how having a regulatory agency for those things doesn’t make sense.

Maybe you want more state/local control or something? I just don’t get what the alternative is meant to be or why it wouldn’t lead to even less free speech.

Also I think this pretty much sums up the lefts outrage here.

If you want to argue both sides are hypocrites, I agree. People are tribal. In most cases that tribalism overrides principle

there can be a one off auctioning of property when something that had 0 value becomes valuable, and then it's absolute property rights after that obviously?

once you get a band of trasmission it's yours in perpetuity and you can transmit literally everything you want with no special regulations at all, other than laws that would apply for every other form of communication being applied there (say state secrets being illegal to communicate or anything else).

You literally don't need any specialized regulations AT ALL.

Or , given the property is yours (public) to begin with, you can auction every X years sure, still once sold (or rented) , the people paying decide everything as normal with property in libertarianism.

He is, you know.

I might well be. Who knows. But it arguably is better to be safe than sorry if you have that sort of concern.

That line is fitting here.

From race, to Gaza, and yes poltical ideology in the US, the line perfectly applies. A lot of people here had it sweet. And they still do.

When I argued in favour of hate speech laws, the key objection was about the need for the right to free speech to protect against authoratarianism/etc. I pointed out that if/when it really mattered that right wouldn't help. I was correct but I'd rather not be proved correct.

You're wrong... surprising, I know. Part of fascism, and it's literally the 101 of it, is putting a chill into your opposition and squashing dissenting opinions and views. You'd know this if you've read anything about it.

On a side note... ICE just blew open the doors of a US citizen, arrested them, and made a propaganda video about it. And the lied about what happened.

“he’s at the fourth stage of grief: construction.”

This is unfortunately, on point.

President Donald Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of government and society intensified on Wednesday with the suspension of comedian Jimmy Kimmel by ABC’s parent company Disney following threats from the Federal Communications Commission.

The suspension of Kimmel’s late-night talk show is the gravest and most clear attack on free speech rights in generations. FCC chairman Brendan Carr publicly called for Kimmel to be removed from the air over a joke he made about how the Trump administration sought to cast blame on anyone to their left for the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The pressure to fire Kimmel was backed by threats to pull broadcast licenses of ABC affiliates if the comedian wasn’t taken off the air.

This is blatantly illegal. The First Amendment explicitly protects against government censorship of speech. The government cannot threaten broadcasters to censor speech or punish speakers for their speech no matter what the person said.

“This is beyond McCarthyism,” Christopher Anders, director of the Democracy and Technology Division at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “Trump officials are repeatedly abusing their power to stop ideas they don’t like, deciding who can speak, write, and even joke. The Trump administration's actions, paired with ABC's capitulation, represent a grave threat to our First Amendment freedoms.”

It is also the latest dead canary in the coalmine of Trump’s attempt at authoritarian consolidation. By forcing the suspension of Kimmel, Trump is seizing control over the media. He is dictating what can be said and who can say it. This is an effort to strike fear in the entertainment industry and the press and destroy their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

As the Trump administration cracks down on free speech and targets the media, we need your support more than ever. Become a member now to protect the truth before it’s erased.


That this crackdown focused on a comedian is in line with the recent history of authoritarian consolidation efforts.

“Comedy doesn’t change the world, but it’s a bellwether,” Jon Stewart, the on-and-off host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, said in 2022. “When a society feels under threat, comedians are who gets sent away first.”

After winning election in 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin forced the cancellation of a comedy puppet show that mocked him during his election campaign. In Egypt, both the elected government of Mohammed Morsi and the military government of Abdel Fattah Al-Sissi, which overthrew Morsi in a coup, persecuted comedian Bassem Youseff, who criticized the Morsi government and made comments that were viewed as critical of Islam, eventually driving him off the air in 2014.

Trump is following the lead of these authoritarians. And it’s no laughing matter. If you can’t make a joke, how can you say something critical of the regime – even something vile – with a straight face.

Kimmel is only the latest victim of the administration’s speech crackdown. From the beginning, Trump cracked down on the speech of immigrant students for voicing support for Palestine by arresting them and threatening them with deportation. He issued executive orders purporting to ban speech related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, transgender rights and support for immigrants and used those orders to force censorship on universities, nonprofits, researchers and law firms. Trump has also repeatedly pressured media companies with frivolous lawsuits, most recently targeting the New York Times, in an attempt to threaten and punish them into altering coverage.

Trump has also been aided by decades of lax antitrust enforcement and decades of media mergers that has seen the entertainment industry consolidate in fewer and fewer conglomerates. The rampant condensation gives Trump both fewer targets on which to focus his attention, and immense leverage over the companies seeking favorable regulation or government approval for further mergers and acquisitions.

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a comedian who frequently lambasts Trump and conservatives, was abruptly cancelled after the FCC approved the purchase of Paramount, the parent company of CBS, to Skydance, a media conglomerate owned by David Ellison, the son of Oracle CEO and Trump supporter Larry Ellison. That deal came with stipulations on CBS to make its coverage more conservative, including the installation of an ideological minder to increase bias for conservatives. David Ellison is also reportedly looking to purchase the conservative site The Free Press and install its editor Bari Weiss as head of CBS News.

Skydance is now in talks to purchase Warner Bros Discovery, a conglomerate that owns CNN. While cable television is not regulated by the FCC, the regulator does review media mergers. It could create another point of pressure for the FCC to force another media company to bend to conservative demands over coverage. Even without such a stipulation, Ellison could demand CNN alter its coverage to support Trump.

And on Tuesday, Larry Ellison’s Oracle was announced as one of three companies set to purchase the U.S. arm of TikTok. Marc Andreesen, the Trump-supporting head of Silicon Valley venture capital firm a16z, was also said to be one of the three buyers. That purchase also reportedly gives Trump power over the social media company, with the government receiving a board seat on the new U.S.-based company.

This is the style of regime media consolidation recently seen under the autocratic Hungarian President Viktor Orban. Trump supporters view Orban as a model to follow, feteing him at their events including the Conservative Political Action Conference and the National Conservatism conference.

But the U.S. isn’t Hungary. Or Russia. Or Egypt. None of those countries has a constitutional right to free speech and a free press like the U.S. Nor do they have a culture that supports freedom of speech, expression and the press.

Trump’s effort to destroy free speech is bound to be intensely unpopular in a society where free speech is a paramount value. The courts are likely, one would hope, to find it illegal, as well. In the meantime, this crackdown is designed to instill fear in everyone from wealthy televised comedians to the regular Joe who just posts online. Just remember, fear is the mindkiller.

by biggerboat m

Not removing my ad blocker for this, but the title says it all - 70 Oklahoma teachers under investigation for kirk comments

https://www.newson6.com/story/68cb2bac207bf29d011cf1e9/70-ok-teachers-under-investigation-after-charlie-kirk-comments

newson6

70 OK teachers under investigation after Charlie Kirk comments

And texas

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/texas-teachers-tea-investigation-suspension-license-loss-charlie-kirk/3920236/

NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Texas teachers' comments spark controversy—find out how

It's happening ever... See full post

Oklahoma has a terrifying superintendent. He also ordered all public schools statewide to hold a minute of silence for Charlie Kirk’s death. Dozens of schools sent out letters to parents giving notice that they were declining to do so. Walter’s is known to be intensely vindictive, so who knows if there will be consequences for that as well.

The assault on media and first amendment start with trump and his fake news trick.
Then he got real when 25%+ of the population believed it ….

You support Israel so please stop acting like any of this bothers you in principle.

We know.
What % of the 4 million K-12 teachers do you think will either quit or get fired over refusing to follow the teaching and curriculum guidelines MAGA is in the process of imposing as they dismantle the Department of Education?

From a quick search:
A Christian teacher in the public school can bring light and salt to the school district in powerful ways. This is obviously the best way to directly impact the students in the public school. If you are feeling called to be an “undercover missionary” in the public school and would like to be trained in one of our conservative holiness colleges, please click on the links below to find out how to go about becoming a public school certified teacher.

People who expects corporations to be the flagbearers of principled politics are in for a rude surprise. And I say that as someone who doesn't mind neither corporations nor capitalism, nor do I think corporations are necessarily motivated solely by greed or profits. However, I certainly know that even if things like morality or principle can matter in corporate decision-making, it is only one part of the equation.

Consider that this is a politics forum, a place where people by and large are far more interested in legal and political rights and principles than the populace large. However, even here it is a pretty clear trend that people don't agree that due process, free speech or the right to assembly is important. They might say they agree in principle, but they don't agree in practice - because the practice means affording those principles to people you dislike or perhaps even despise.

This is of course anecdotal, but I'd say it is probably an indicator of how unimportant those matters likely are to the populace at large, at least currently. Expecting a corporation to be a flagbearer of principled politics is one thing, expecting it to be much better than the current political leanings of the population is very optimistic.

Of course, you could argue that they should fight those for other reasons than political principle. For example they should fight it because it is in a media corporation's best interest that the US government is bound by the 1st amendment. In that regard I expect they're just reading the room: Your current government isn't bound by the 1st amendment and has no interest in adhering to it.

If it was said while Biden was president, it is against the law to say that, IIRC.

Huh. Maybe it's not illegal.

Biden definitely made some terrible appointments. Number one was Merrick Garland.

Lol everyone knows that Trump's thugs don't wear masks that can be seen through. Hiding their identity is the whole point of them. These look like safety masks. Probably Israeli security - they're not pussies like ICE.

Total BS. Trump has done more clearly illegal things than all the other presidents of my lifetime, combined.

No other administration targeted private citizens to try to make them lose their jobs. It is in no way "the same game".

10 and 11 yos also did this.

https://www.aetv.com/real-crime/mcmartin-preschool

A&E

The McMartin Preschool Case: Satanic Panic and Child Sexual Abuse Allegations

Their brains are not all there yet, and their testimony is generally not trustable.

So you believe that you are the only one in this forum who isn't fascist?

Weird, but at least you have proven that Trump and his administration are fascist, as they have not moved to shut down the FCC as they have many other agencies.