Did you hear the one about the political movement that spent the last decade screaming about free speech and railing against cancel culture? Here’s the punchline: Now that they’re in power, they want you to shut the fuck up, and if you don’t, they’ll cancel your ass.

Pretty funny huh?

I’m referring to the most recent Trump / MAGA attack on Jimmy Kimmel, of course. (For a good timeline of these attacks, see this CNN post). But I’m also talking about a wider attack against the rights of people who aren’t famous. While guest hosting on Charlie Kirk’s podcast, executive branch employee number two, aka Vice President JD Vance, encouraged Americans to cancel anyone who celebrated Kirk’s murder. (Note: celebrating someone’s death is protected speech in this country; if that wasn’t the case, everyone who cheered the day SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden would be in trouble). Regardless, the MAGA campaign against freedom has scored some victories. A brief, incomplete list of companies that have fired, disciplined, or investigated people for saying the wrong thing about Charlie Kirk after his death:

The Washington Post

Delta Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines

The Carolina Panthers

Microsoft

Public schools in South Carolina, New York, Massachusetts, Georgia, and Missouri

Perkins Coie

Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers

Office Depot

DC Comics

MSNBC

It’s understandable to be angry with these companies. I’m angry, and I suspect you are too. But looking to a private company to stand up for your rights is like looking for a ray of sunshine to escape a blackhole. A company protects its bottom line, not your rights. So let’s focus our anger at the root of the problem: a government controlled by people who are working to the silence speech of anyone who disagrees with them. Don’t take my word for it on that point, take the word of the President’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, told Vance on Kirk’s podcast:

With God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, homeland security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.

For those keeping score at home, Trump followed his successful attack on Kimmel by threatening Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers, saying “Do it NBC!” For those who are living under rocks, gaslit, or acting in bad faith, it refers to firing them. Because, you know, what makes America great is a President with the power of a network programming director.

Government-led attacks on speech aren’t without precedent in American history. The Alien and Sedition Acts, passed in 1798, were intended to suppress criticism of the Federalist-controlled government. Lincoln clamped down on speech during the Civil War. During the first Red Scare, Congress passed the Espionage Act as well as another Sedition Act, which prohibited “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the U.S. government, the Constitution, the military, or the flag. The Supreme upheld convictions under those laws, so if you’re waiting for the courts to “save us,” please remember that historically American courts have been in the business of fucking us over. The second Red Scare added a new term to the American political lexicon: McCarthyism. In turn, McCarthyism gave Hollywood the “black list” and unleashed purges in the public and private sectors. With extraordinary prescience in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Hunter S. Thompson wrote: “[it’s] as if Military Censorship has already been imposed on the media. It is ominous. The only news on TV comes from weeping victims and ignorant speculators. The lid is on. Loose Lips Sink Ships. Don't say anything that might give aid to The Enemy.”

I could go on, but you get the point. If America is the land of the free, then we need a Texas-sized asterisk next to “free.” Throughout our history, the mantra has often been freedom for me, not for thee. Historian Heather Cox Richardson calls this the American paradox. On the one hand, we can point with pride to our founding principles of liberty, equality, democracy, and rule of law. On the other hand, American history is rich with examples where those principles didn’t apply — at least not without a fight — to large segments of American society.

The current crackdown on free speech is dangerous insofar as American history isn’t a guarantee of freedom from tyranny, but a cautionary tale about how tyrants often win, at least for a time. But the crackdown is also normal insofar as it’s of a piece with other crackdowns throughout American history. Put another way, we’re facing the same fight Americans have always faced; same shit, different day. The question is: Are we up to the task?

Honestly, I don’t know. As I told you last week, people are really bad at predicting the future. So let’s stick to the present, which is where the fight is.

Already, many of our society’s most powerful people, companies, and institutions have decided that capitulation is the correct course. At the same time, some of the least powerful people in America have stood up and pushed back, often at great personal risk. So on the one hand we have people with “fuck you money” and seemingly unlimited power running scared and people with little money or power pushing back. Some advice: If you’re looking for leadership, don’t look up; look around you at your friends and neighbors, then look in the mirror. Sooner or later, every American will have to make a choice: Bend the knee to tyranny, or raise the middle finger in defiance and face the consequences.

Which brings me back to Jimmy Kimmel. With apologies to historian Timothy Snyder, who literally wrote the book on fighting tyranny, this sad episode tells you everything you really need to know. Tyrants derive their power from fear; jokes rob fear of (some of) its punch. In the Soviet Union, people often joked, “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.” After the first few times you hear it, the joke isn’t haha-funny. But no matter how many times you hear it, the joke never lets you forget that an authoritarian’s power is (primarily) in your head. That’s why authoritarians like Trump attack comedians like Kimmel. Every joke is a threat to a fear-based regime.

So, here’s a joke:

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Heard any good jokes lately, or has humor been canceled?

Are you joking, or did you bend the knee?

Can you take a joke?

If they can’t take a joke, do you have to actually fuck ‘em, or is that just an idiom?

What’s so funny?

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