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Washington: The White House warned us it was going to crack down on left-wing activists. The US attorney-general told us she was coming after “hate speech”, and that employers were obliged to sack people who said objectionable things.
We just didn’t know the next victim would be Jimmy Kimmel.
The American ABC has pulled Jimmy Kimmel’s show off air indefinitely after comments he made about Charlie Kirk two nights ago.Credit: Getty
The extraordinary decision of America’s ABC network to suspend Kimmel’s late-night comedy show – over genuinely milquetoast content on the assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk – should be and is a wake-up call for all proponents of free expression in the United States and around the world.
It is a perfect distillation of the way Donald Trump deploys government power to vanquish his “critics” and steamroll organisations to bend to his will, even if the US president himself did not order the decision.
First, he installed a loyal MAGA ally and sycophant, Brendan Carr, as chairman of industry regulator the Federal Communications Commission.
Then, he publicly and vocally made clear his distaste for Kimmel and other late-night hosts – including Stephen Colbert, whose show has also been cancelled – and used social media to berate network owners over their programming. We don’t know what he may have said behind closed doors to Walt Disney chief executive Bob Iger, whose company owns ABC.
But we do know that Nexstar, one of the major owners of US television stations, wants to acquire a rival, Tegna, in a $US6.2 billion ($9.3 billion) deal that requires approval from – you guessed it – the Federal Communications Commission.
And it was Nexstar which on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) first said it would stop running Kimmel’s show on its 32 ABC affiliates, citing the comedian’s “offensive and insensitive” remarks about Kirk.
Sinclair, another major ABC affiliate, has also proposed a merger with Tegna. Lo and behold, Sinclair also refused to air Kimmel’s show due to his “inappropriate and deeply insensitive” comments.
Hours before ABC’s decision, Carr was on a YouTube show hosted by hard-right commentator Benny Johnson, threatening ABC, Disney and TV stations if they did not act against Kimmel. He raised the possibility of fining broadcasters or revoking station licences.
Brendan Carr, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.Credit: Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Carr said. “These companies can find ways to change conduct, take action frankly on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead … The FCC is going to have remedies that we could look at.”
Shortly afterwards, Kimmel was yanked off the air.
There is no effort to hide the coercion. Station owners who need to curry favour with the administration are issuing statements sucking up to Trump, and Trump’s hand-picked industry regulator is making threats on a podcaster’s YouTube show.
“It’s an Occam’s razor situation,” CNN’s chief media analyst Brian Stelter said. “It’s exactly what it looks like.”
Donald Trump appears on Jimmy Kimmel live in 2015.Credit: AP
What did Kimmel say? He chided the MAGA movement for “desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
From what we are learning from police and the courts, it seems the alleged perpetrator in the Kirk case was becoming politically radicalised from the left. So yes, Kimmel implied something that wasn’t right.
He also mocked Trump – and frankly, who didn’t – for pivoting so carelessly from mourning Kirk to boasting about construction of his new White House ballroom.
But so what? This was pretty unremarkable stuff for anyone, let alone a late-night comedian whose job it is to pillory the powerful. At the end of the day, it’s something someone said on TV.
Donald Trump at Windsor Castle, in the UK, on Wednesday.Credit: Getty Images
What we are witnessing is a full-scale assault on, and consequent purge of, Trump’s perceived critics by the MAGA movement, which has weaponised so-called “cancel culture” to go after its enemies, and is using the power of high office to do it.
Johnson, the YouTuber, was open about what just happened. “It’s called soft power,” he said on X. “The Left uses it all the time. Thanks to President Trump, the Right has learned how to wield power as well.”
He has a point there. In the era of identity politics, which some argue is in recess, progressives have been only too willing to tarry, censor and de-platform those deemed to have transgressed. Even universities, supposedly the home of intellectual rigour and debate, have tried to protect students from ideas those students may find distasteful.
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The right has done this too, at times. But we are now seeing it turbocharged – led by a vengeful president with the full weight of the state behind him, and with loyal lieutenants installed in every office to make it happen.
Those behind this decision will argue it was a commercial one – and maybe it was – but such decisions aren’t made in a vacuum. They are made under duress from commercial realities created by a government that has done away with free speech and is knocking on the door of oligarchy and authoritarianism.
US Attorney-General Pam Bondi warned in recent days the administration was coming after anti-conservative “hate speech”. Her Department of Justice would prosecute businesses that refused to print a Charlie Kirk flyer, she said.
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“Employers, you have an obligation to get rid of people,” Bondi said. “You need to look at people who are saying horrible things.”
America, you’ve been warned. Trump said Kimmel would be next. After that, it might be you.
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