The free speech hating Trump administration is contemplating an expansion of the latest oppression wave. Wikipedia was also targeted.
The Trump administrations latest crackdown on free speech in America is continuing. The most famous element of this latest wave of oppression was, of course, the silencing of Jimmy Kimmel, making it clear that comedy is no longer really legal in America. Less well known at the time was the push to label the pride flag as a symbol for domestic terror and, of course, the idiotic $15 billion defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. At least with that third effort, that lawsuit was quickly laughed out of the courts as a judge dismissed the lawsuit for being so ridiculously badly written.
The wave of oppression, naturally, continued after 15 Democrats were arrested in New York for thought crimes like holding up pieces of card board opposing the random arrests of anyone seen as being a “foreigner”. This while multiple online services were summoned by right wing lawmakers over false allegations that they “radicalize” left wing people to commit violent acts.
Of course, the Trump regime isn’t slowing down on its full blown assault on free speech, either. For the regime, the question at this point is who they intend on silencing next in their bid to squash dissent in America. Reports indicate that they are looking at other talk show hosts like Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, and even the show “The View” on top of it all. From Ars Technica:
After pressuring ABC to suspend Jimmy Kimmel, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is setting his regulatory sights on ABC’s The View and NBC late-night hosts Seth Meyers and Jimmy Fallon.
Carr appeared yesterday on the radio show hosted by Scott Jennings, who describes himself as “the last man standing athwart the liberal mob.” Jennings asked Carr whether The View and other ABC programs violate FCC rules, and made a reference to President Trump calling on NBC to cancel Fallon and Meyers.
“A lot of people think there are other shows on ABC that maybe run afoul of this more often than Jimmy Kimmel,” Jennings said. “I’m thinking specifically of The View, and President Trump himself has mentioned Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers at NBC. Do you have comments on those shows, and are they doing what Kimmel did Monday night, and is it even worse on those programs in your opinion?”
In response, Carr discussed the FCC’s Equal Opportunities Rule, also known as the Equal Time Rule, and said the FCC could determine that those shows don’t qualify for an exemption to the rule.
“When you look at these other TV shows, what’s interesting is the FCC does have a rule called the Equal Opportunity Rule, which means, for instance, if you’re in the run-up to an election and you have one partisan elected official on, you have to give equal time, equal opportunity, to the opposing partisan politician,” Carr said.
At another point in the interview, Carr said broadcasters that object to FCC enforcement “can turn your license in to the FCC, we’ll find something else to do with it.”
So, the effort to threaten to revoke broadcast licenses of anyone daring to air comments seen as criticizing the king is clearly continuing. Naturally, these aren’t the only targets. In followup comments, fascist dictator, Donald Trump, said that any news organization that it should be illegal for anyone publishing news that can be seen as contrary to the talking points of his orangeliness. From the New York Times:
A day after asserting that broadcasters should potentially lose their licenses over negative news coverage of him, Mr. Trump escalated his condemnations of the press, suggesting such reporters were lawbreakers.
“They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. “See, I think that’s really illegal.”
He added: “Personally, you can’t take, you can’t have a free airwave if you’re getting free airwaves from the United States government.”
Mr. Trump did not cite a specific law he said he believed had been violated. It remained unclear Friday why Mr. Trump believed negative news coverage, which every president has faced and is protected by the Constitution, would be “really illegal.”
While this was going on, right wing extremists are, once again, targeting Wikipedia for the crime of publishing thought crimes. These attacks on Wikipedia aren’t necessarily anything new. Back in February, the Heritage Foundation was working on efforts to doxx Wikipedians for daring to insert facts that contradict the organizations personal beliefs. Last month, Republicans pushed forward with this plot in an effort to intimidate anyone who doesn’t abide by far right orthodoxy. Still, efforts to attack the free information site is continuing. From Slate:
Since then, right-wing commentators have begun to hammer familiar targets: universities supposedly corrupting the youth with liberal indoctrination, campus administrators who failed to protect free speech, and leftist online communities and a transgender individual allegedly connected to the accused shooter.
Those are predictable villains in MAGA’s long-running culture war. Less obvious is the latest addition to the roster of enemies: Wikipedia. Utah Sen. Mike Lee went so far as to post on X on Friday that “when it comes to Charlie Kirk, they’ve gone out of their way to put the ‘wicked’ in Wikipedia.”
Over the past week, right-wing media outlets have turned up their fury toward the free encyclopedia to a degree rarely seen in its 24-year history. Fox News published a piece by Ashley Rindsberg alleging that “Leftist Wikipedia Editors Twist Facts in a Shameless Move to Smear Charlie Kirk.” Another Fox story framed a routine editorial debate as an effort to “erase” Kirk’s widow via her Wikipedia page. The message from Fox is that Wikipedia’s thousands of unpaid volunteers are a cabal of ideologues working around the clock to tarnish Kirk’s memory and memory-hole his grieving family.
There’s something deeper at work than merely creating pieces for hate clicks. These attacks aren’t legitimate efforts to describe how Charlie and Erika Kirk are portrayed on Wikipedia. The point of the right-wing stories is to delegitimize Wikipedia itself, undermining the project’s effort to archive facts using reliable sources. Because the endgame for Wikipedia’s bad-faith attackers is post-truth. The political subordination of reality.
So, the assault on free speech is certainly continuing. This in an effort to further consolidate power of far right extremists trying to further the efforts of turning American into a fascist dictatorship. As things stand now, the current wave of cracking down on free speech certainly isn’t slowing down.
Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.
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