Free Speech Just Going Out For Pack Of Cigarettes, Will Be Right Back, Babe
Wingnuts torn between devotion to Trump, vague sense they once opposed censorship.
These are great days to be a “free speech advocate,” as long as you’re a dead one. Charlie Kirk was such a big fan of free speech that, to honor him, Donald Trump and MAGA are demanding people be fired for saying mean things about Kirk, or even for mean things that aren’t about Kirk.
Trump has also declared opposing fascism to be a terrorist activity, and earlier this week, United States Attorney General Pam Bondi said that there’s no First Amendment protection for what she called “hate speech,” although she later walked that back a little. Let’s jump in, being very careful not to trigger a DOJ investigation or an attack by the MAGA Flying Monkey Brigade!
Pam Bondi Discovers Asterisk In First Amendment
On an episode of the “Stephen Miller’s Wife’s Podcast With Katie Miller” that aired Monday, Bondi had some very tough talk for hate speechers, explaining that “there’s free speech and then there’s hate speech,” adding that the Justice Department stands ready to crack down on bad speech:
“We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything — and that’s across the aisle.”
“You can’t have that hate speech in the world in which we live. […] There is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.”
Later on Monday, Bondi explained to Sean Hannity that free speech is all well and good, but that people need to be punished if they do besmirches to the memory of the Blessed Martyr Kirk, explaining that “you shouldn’t be employed anywhere if you’re going to say that. And employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people. You need to look at people who are saying horrible things, and they shouldn’t be working with you.” But that’s not a First Amendment thing, unless you work for the government, in which case you should still be fired for being horrible.
By Tuesday, Bondi was dialing back the stuff about actually prosecuting people for speech, because apparently someone reminded her how laws work, a thing that can easily slip the mind of any busy attorney general of the United States with a busy media schedule. In a long post to Twitter, Bondi clarified that “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.” Not that there was any wave of Democrats calling for assassinations — or even hanging Mike Pence on January 6, 2021 — in the first place.
Worst People You Know Stop A Clock
By the time she walked back her comments a little, Bondi had already pissed off some big names on the Right, like Tucker Carlson, who on his YouTube “show” Wednesday praised Kirk as a free speech hero, insisted (as did Kirk) that there’s no such thing as “hate speech,” and explained that silencing people for offensive opinions dehumanizes them:
“If you don’t acknowledge the right of other people to do that, and if you take steps to prevent them from doing that, what are you really saying? You’re really saying, ‘I don’t think you have a soul, I think you’re a meat puppet I can control, I think you’re an animal, maybe sub-animal. You’re a slave, you’re a person to whom I can dictate belief.’”
So there’s Tucker Carlson condemning dehumanization, not that he’d ever be able to recognize it as one of his own favorite rhetorical tactics when he talks about people who aren’t like Tucker Carlson. Still, valid point, baby steps, and all that.
Carlson said he hoped that a year from now, we won’t see Charlie Kirk’s murder
“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. […] Because if they can tell you what to say, they’re telling you what to think, there is nothing they can’t do to you because they don’t consider you human.”
We would say more about our thin hopes that Carlson might recognize the humanity of people who aren’t straight white rightwing men with money, but he would just insist he already sees them as people, just not people who necessarily belong in his USA.
Also this week, Karl Rove — who on any given day may or may not still be considered far enough to the right by MAGAworld, usually not — wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (gift link; archive link here) arguing that “they” didn’t murder Charlie Kirk, for whatever value of “they” the Right wants to take revenge on.
Charlie Kirk wasn’t killed by “them.” “They” didn’t pull the trigger. One person did, apparently a young man driven by impulse and a terrible hate. If there were a “they” involved, law enforcement would find “them” and the justice system would hold “them” accountable. But “he” and “him” are the correct pronouns for this horrendous act.
Unsurprisingly, Rove still managed to turn that warning against collective punishment into a snotty little slur against trans people, because wingnuts gonna wingnut.
For Trump, There Are No Quiet Parts
Still, it’s been a rough week for all that free speech Trumpers insisted they wanted, starting with Trump himself, who on Monday grumbled “I’m not so sure about that” when a reporter reminded him that people had a right to protest outside the White House.
After Trump’s FCC chair Brendan Carr threatened ABC into suspending Jimmy Kimmel for comments about rightwing attempts to exploit Kirk’s death, Trump said on Air Force One yesterday that he hoped a lot more shows would be cancelled. Not for blasphemies against Saint Charlie, but for mocking Trump himself, which we all know is the real reason Trump wants to control not just the news, but entertainment media too:
“When you have a network and you have evening shows, and all they do is hit Trump. That’s all they do. If you go back, I guess they haven’t had a conservative on in years or something, somebody said. But when you go back, take a look, all they do is hit Trump. They’re licensed. They’re not allowed to do that. They’re an arm of the Democrat Party.”
As we have to keep reminding you because Trump will never learn it, TV networks don’t have licenses, but their local affiliate stations do (and cable isn’t regulated by the FCC at all). But those licenses can’t just be pulled willy-nilly because a president doesn’t like late-night comedy shows.
Oh, and Trump apparently “joked” (didn’t joke) about how all the reporters aboard his aeroplane could die in a fiery aeroplane crash, were he not with them.
Towards the end of taking questions he joked: “Fly safely. You know why I say that? Because I'm on the flight ... otherwise I wouldn't care”, to the Air Force One press as he is headed back to the U.S. from his second state trip to the U.K.
Oh that scamp.
We’ve Got A Fash Carr
The FCC does require that broadcast TV and radio stations serve “the public interest,” but that has never — until this week — been defined as serving the political interests of a sitting president. But that seems to be what Carr wants to do as well. On CNBC yesterday, Carr explained that hell yes, more heads will roll, although he only said so in a kind of corporate/Trumpian Newspeak that framed censorship as an inevitable result of how the “media ecosystem” happens to be changing since Trump returned to power.
CARR: We’re in the midst of a massive shift in dynamics in the media ecosystem for lots of reasons, again, including the permission structure that President Trump’s election has provided, and I would simply say we’re not done yet with seeing the consequences of that shift.
DAVID FABER (CNBC cohost): What does that mean when you say you’re not done yet? Will you only be pleased when none of these comedians have a show on broadcast television?
CARR: It’s not about any particular show or any particular person. It’s just that we’re in the midst of a very disruptive moment now, and I just frankly expect that we’re gonna continue to see changes in the media ecosystem.
It’s not that Trump or Carr are ordering censorship or telling networks what’s allowed and what’s not. It’s just kind of happening out there in the ecosystem, a completely natural evolution towards fascism, and you can’t resist nature, now can you?
That’s some fucking permission structure, the end!
[NBC News / Politico / Huffpost / WSJ (gift link; archive link) / Daily Beast]
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It’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I’m driving to the Ohio Renfaire this afternoon. I’ll pour us a mai tai tonight. I plan on spending tomorrow dressed like a pirate, having a good time, and pretending I don’t live in America for a day. Hopefully it will help.
That remark that Trump made about plane safety really distills Trump's philosophy of anything at all. If something doesn't directly benefit him, he just does not care. He cannot be bothered to give a single flying fuck about anyone but himself.
Kirk's funeral this coming Sunday is going to be am epic shitshow of hatred and bad behavior from Trump and his cultists.