Back in 1940, Charlie Chaplin made a movie called The Great Dictator, a comedy about fascism. In it, he plays a Hitler-like character named Adenoid Hynkel, the authoritarian leader of an imaginary country called Tomainia. As parodies go, this one was relatively direct: There was a Goebbels character, a Göring character, and even a Mussolini figure named Benzino Napaloni, the “Diggaditchie of Bacteria.” The movie was nominated for five Oscars and, in 1997, it was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry because of its cultural and historic significance.
Satire has always been a potent weapon against tyranny. It’s a way of speaking truth to power that engages because it entertains. And democracies have a rich tradition of encouraging this kind of speech because it serves to hold the powerful accountable. That’s why the very first amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right to say things the powers that be don’t like without facing reprisals from the government.
Twenty-two years ago, Fox sued me over a satirical book I wrote. A federal judge called their suit “wholly without merit, both factually and legally.” It was literally laughed out of court.
That was a private corporation trying to shut me up. Now it’s the federal government itself trying to silence satirists. And it’s no laughing matter.
Under President Trump, the First Amendment has become a dead letter. Instead, he’s spent the first eight months of his second term on a campaign of shock and awe designed to silence dissent and bring the independent media to heel. And it’s no surprise that he’s coming for the comedians now.
Let’s not dance around what’s happening here. The government, in the form of the Federal Communications Commission and Trump’s handpicked chair, Brendan Carr, wants to silence satirists like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel. And while they aren’t (yet) sentencing comedians to the gulag, they’re exerting government power by threatening not to approve media mergers involving the companies who produce their shows.
First, it was Colbert: CBS’s parent company, Paramount, paid Trump $16 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit at a time when they were looking for FCC approval for a merger with Skydance Media. Colbert, correctly, called it a “big fat bribe.” Trump, corruptly, demanded that CBS cancel his show. They did. The merger went through.
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Then it was Jimmy Kimmel’s turn. After Kimmel questioned the far right’s campaign to paint Charlie Kirk’s assassin as a left-wing agitator — providing cover for President Trump’s desire to crack down on progressive organizing — Carr went on a right-wing podcast and did his best Mafia goon impersonation. “Frankly,” he said of Kimmel, possibly brandishing a pinky ring and chewing on a toothpick, “when you see stuff like this — I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way.” He then specifically called on ABC network affiliates to pre-empt Kimmel’s show. Nexstar, which owns a bunch of ABC affiliate stations and wants to purchase a rival company in a $6.2 billion merger that Carr has the power to veto, agreed to do just that, leading Disney, ABC’s parent company, to pull the show off the air altogether.
Trump’s assault on free speech won’t end with Colbert and Kimmel (Trump has said that Comcast should also take Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers off the air), and it’s not going to stop with comedy. Carr went on Sean Hannity’s show the same night and claimed, falsely, that media outlets had conspired against Trump in 2024. Worse, he invoked the FCC’s “public interest” standard to suggest that the Trump administration might yank network affiliates’ licenses based on their coverage. The President agrees: On Air Force One on Thursday, he threatened networks that give him “bad publicity or press,” saying, “I would think maybe their license should be taken away.” The decision, he said, would be left up to none other than Brendan Carr.
Good satire requires courage — the courage to speak out against someone who is more powerful than you are. And while I have no doubt that Colbert and Kimmel, two of the more courageous figures in American media, will find a way to continue speaking out despite this clear violation of their First Amendment rights, I sure would like to see some more courage on the part of the media companies who have made huge money off of their programs.
Failing that, it’s going to fall to congressional Democrats to show some backbone. Strong statements supporting satirists like Colbert and Kimmel who fall into the Trump administration’s crosshairs are a good start. But they should be ready and willing to go further. Brendan Carr, and the Trump administration more broadly, are engaged in a campaign of extortion, which is a crime. Democrats should announce now that, if they take back power in the midterm elections, they will immediately launch an investigation into whether Carr should be held criminally liable for threatening companies like Nexstar. At the very least, he should be summarily impeached.
Meanwhile, the companies that were so willing to throw their talented satirists, and the entire concept of free speech, under the bus in order to please Donald Trump should be hauled before congressional committees to explain themselves. There’s no reason these mergers should be allowed to stand if they are indeed fruits of a corrupt tree. And while I don’t imagine the likes of Disney chairman Bob Iger will be shamed into apologizing for their cowardice, they should be forced to pay a financial price for their complicity.
Charlie Chaplin was willing to mock Hitler. Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel were willing to mock an American president with his own authoritarian designs. What will the rest of us be willing to do in order to stand up to fascism? It’s not a particularly funny question. But satirists have shown us what it means to have real courage in the face of tyranny. We owe it to them to follow their example.
From Rolling Stone US
