Free Speech? Truth? Forgetaboutit!

Free Speech? Truth? Forgetaboutit!

Autocrat’s Handbook: Shut Down Your Opposition Every Way You Cam

"Since 1990, far-right extremists have committed far more ideologically motivated homicides than far-left or radical Islamist extremists, including 227 events that took more than 520 lives. In this same period, far-left extremists committed 42 ideologically motivated attacks that took 78 lives." 

National Institute of Justice report removed from the DOJ website between September 11 and 12, shortly after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.

Let’s start with a basic inconvenient (to Mr Trump) fact: “antifa” not a clearly identifiable group, never has been. It is an amorphous label that when attached to any group automatically makes them terrorists, and invariably that label only attaches to Democrats and other liberals. MAGA groups have often declared “antifa” structures operating in their midst, but that label remains just that, a label. There never is a provable, tangible “antifa” structure. But on September 16th, President Donald Trump announced on his Truth Social that he is designating “Antifa” as a “major terrorist organization” and urged investigations into its alleged financial backers.

The Department of Justice, which is now irretrievably Trump’s personal law firm, immediately began a sweeping effort to wipe out liberal protests and statements, censor them out of existence, with a clear focus to use all tools at their disposal to investigate and charge funding to such liberal groups as criminal enterprises. Despite the now expunged facts that right-wing extremists are a far greater threat than Trump designated “radical leftists” noted on the DOJ’s own website (see direct quote above), not a penny is being used to seek out pro-Trump right-wing extremists who have statistically killed more people and wreaked more havoc, by a multiple, of leftwing death and destruction over the same period.

I suspect that effort is accelerated by labeling hundreds of convicted violent felons as “patriots” and pardoning their offenses, thus erasing the consequences of their crimes, even as captured on so many videos showing clear evidence of violent incidents in the January 6, 2021, vicious attack on the Capitol. But Donald Trump, now focused on distracting and deflecting national attention of his active cover-up of the Epstein scandal, is a master of seizing on an explosive moment, blaming that and everything “bad” he can think of on his obvious opponents (and giving them a label that he can rail against: “radical leftist” and “antifa” are obvious recent examples). He takes problems, many of which he has exploited and made inexcusably worse and turns them into excuses for actions that defy some of the clearest provisions of our Constitution. Like First Amendment free speech and Fourth and Fifth Amendments on the need for probable cause to arrest or detain and due process. He has this legitimized blame, demonization and hate speech.

The press falls prey to Trump’s misuse of “emergencies,” which he has rather consistently turned into “excuses” for some of the most un-American actions in American history. The rapidly expanding world of anonymous and masked ICE agents have become his loyal police force, and federalized National Guardsmen and regular military are marching only in blue cities, unfortunately normalizing this militarization of Trump’s now “personal” soldiers to restore order (?) in those liberal enclaves in dramatic violation of the legislative ban of the Posse Comitatus Act against the use of military for domestic situations. Crying “antisemitism,” Trump has attacked some of our most important research universities, even as most Jews reject this “excuse.”

Trump’s negative image is now a global reality as China and Russia feast with joy on Trump’s missteps, proclivity to take credit for the success of others (e.g., in settling international conflicts) and to heap blame on others for his failures. Knowing that Trump’s approval rating in the UK hovers around 16%, his mid-September visit at the invitation of Britain’s King Charles III touched down in into an angry London for a moment (a visit to the US Ambassador’s residence) before moving all other meetings a safe distance from the British capital.

As central London was effectively shut down by masses of well-organized protests, his meeting with the King took place at Windsor Castle, not the traditional London’s Buckingham Palace. But even as he arrived at Windsor, an embarrassing projection of Trump and Epstein (above) greeted him. His September 18th side-by-side press conference (with UK PM Sir Keir Starmer) was rife with lies and right-wing rants, as the UK PM politely listened without comment.

All this was tinged with an anti-First Amendment power move by the Trump administration, tainted with threats from Trump’s appointed head of the FCC to pull all of ABC/Disney’s broadcast licenses for failure to comply, with the immediate removal of ABC’s late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel for some ill-chosen but hardly devastating words in connection with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, an event that illustrated a problem over political violence that has become Trump’s excuse to purge the entire liberal establishment, including sympathetic funding. American media companies got the message… again. Right-wing extremists were excused because their anti-criminal, anti-antifa, anti-immigrant and pro-Christian nationalism jibed with Trump’s vision. Echoes of Hitler’s suppression of opposing speech, is mirrored even in election-driven NATO nations today like Hungary and Turkey… and certainly in Russia, China, Iran and N Korea.

There is little doubt that, like all the recent actual and attempted recent political assassinations, the targeted execution of Charlie Kirk was very wrong on so many levels. That killing too was a threat against free speech, a value Kirk cherished. But in looking for words to express my own feelings about this debacle, I found this particularly articulate September 17th statement by former President Barack Obama that well-reflected my own feelings:

“Look, obviously, I didn’t know Charlie Kirk. I was generally aware of some of his ideas. I think those ideas were wrong; but that doesn’t negate the fact that what happened was a tragedy and that I mourn for him and his family. He’s a young man with two small children and a wife who — and a huge number of friends and supporters who cared about him — and so we have to extend grace to people during their period of mourning and shock.

“We can also, at the same time, say that I disagree with the idea that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a mistake. That’s not that’s not me politicizing the issue. It’s making an observation about who are we as a country. I can say that I disagree with the suggestion that my wife or Justice Jackson does not have adequate brain processing power. I can say that I disagree that Martin Luther King was awful. I can disagree with some of the broader suggestions that liberals and Democrats are promoting a conspiracy to displace whites and replace them by ushering in illegal immigrants.” Amen, as the hatchet of division wielded by an angry and autocratic Donald Trump descends, once again, against the potential of a unified America.

I’m Peter Dekom, but I am tired of a mostly complacent American electorate allowing a minority of extreme right-wing zealots to take over the country, so far with the enablement of a Trump-policy rubber stamp US Supreme Court.