By Foster Conner
Assignments Editor
ABC’s decision on September 17 to remove “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” from its broadcast lineup is the latest result of the Trump administration’s attempts to silence late night comedians who don’t meet the approval of the president. Silencing these voices, in this case to make a martyr of Charlie Kirk in the wake of Kimmel’s comments about Trump and his supporters, is similar to the actions fascist governments take in an attempt to silence dissidents and control the narrative. These attempts have been going on for years slowly building to a breaking point.
In 2020 “Make America Great Again” members actively worked to yell at anyone who would listen when they could not make comments calling for the harm to political party members, protecting white supremacist groups like The Proud Boys in the name of free speech, and staying silent when members of their own party enacted harm on citizens by arguing that “They don’t represent us”
Yet in the wake of the assasination of Charlie Kirk the right has done all but uplift his death as a catalyst for silencing any dissenters of Trump and his political allies. Of course nobody should be celebrating the loss of someone but what did Kirk really do that protects him more than say the people who laughed at the death of George Floyd?
Just after Jimmy Kimmel was essentially silenced, President Trump announced that he is labeling a group called ANTIFA, which literally translates to anti-fascism, as a terrorist organization. This comes after years of his party crying out that they were harming people and sowing violence in protests with zero evidence to back the claims. The problem with this action is that ANTIFA is an ideal not an organization and that ideal being that they stand firmly against fascism.
For a party that mantled the Freedom of Speech ideals and advocated for people to say what they want and how they want, they were really quick to silence anyone who dared to speak ill of Kirk. Jimmy Kimmel was not the first and certainly won’t be the last. We have already seen professors be removed from their positions at colleges, workers fired, and military members threatened with court martial for daring to say anything.
In fact, I would not be surprised if someone who is part of the more extreme side of conservatism reads this article and would advocate for getting me removed from writing because of me speaking even slightly against the actions of the party. If journalists and average citizens are not allowed to disagree with the opinion of the party that is in power, that is the definition of a fascist nation.
To cement that point we can look towards our rival nation, China. Across the nation of China there are multiple cases of speech suppression that include not being allowed to speak against the communist regime or face jail time. North Korea vilified its “great leader” to the point of making it a criminal offense to even look at his statues wrong. Now in America we have republicans and conservative leaders calling for the same actions to be done to the American citizens.
America has slowly allowed a wealthy man with a horrible orange spray tan to gain a measure of power not seen in America and reflective of dictators like Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping who hold absolute control over the narrative they want to tell. America is failing to stop a slow takeover that will ultimately destroy the nation if we do not stand up to Trump and his MAGA regime.
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