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Yes, Donald Trump was perfectly free to speak his mind in that interview with Fox's Maria Bartiromo on October 13th, and here's what he said in response to the idea that, on Election Day 2024, things might not be "peaceful," that there might be demonstrations against him: "I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they're the -- and it should be very easily handled by -- if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can't let that happen."
Consider that a hint in a mere 55 words of what might be coming in the Trump era from inauguration day on, given the likelihood of protest demonstrations (as in 2016), not to speak of "the people within." During the election campaign, he didn't hesitate to talk about bringing American troops back from abroad, not just to help eject millions of undocumented immigrants from this country or even to "weed out" military officers who opposed his policies, but to weed out anyone opposing his policies in a potentially violent manner.
In short, as the Boy Scouts used to say (or was that Tom Lehrer?), be prepared. Say the wrong words in the coming second era of Donald Trump and it's distinctly possible that you'll find yourself in deep doo-doo. And given The Donald, you have to wonder whether the 45 words that make up the first amendment of the Constitution will matter in the slightest to him or his crew in his unfathomable next round in the White House. Under the circumstances, before you read TomDispatch regular Nan Levinson's latest crucial piece on the importance of that amendment in our anything-but-all-American world of 2024, it might be worth checking out those 45 classic words yourself and then consider with her just what their deepest importance might be in this perilous moment of ours. So here they are: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." Tom
A Democracy of Voices (If We Can Keep It)
Threats to Free Expression in the Trump Era
By Nan Levinson
I thought I was done with free speech. For nearly two decades, I reported on it for the international magazine Index on Censorship. I wrote a book, Outspoken: Free Speech Stories, about controversies over it. I even sang "I Like to Be in America" at the top of my lungs at an around-the-clock banned-book event organized by the Boston Coalition for Freedom of Expression after the musical "West Side Story" was canceled at a local high school because of its demeaning stereotypes of Puerto Ricans. I was ready to move on. I was done.
As it happened, though, free speech -- or, more accurately, attacks on it -- wasn't done with me, or with most Americans, as a matter of fact. On the contrary, efforts to stifle expression of all sorts keep popping up like Whac-A-Mole on steroids. Daily, we hear about another book pulled from a school; another protest closed down on a college campus; another university president bowing to alumni pressure; another journalist suspended over a post on social media; another politically outspoken artist denied a spot in an exhibition; another young adult novel canceled for cultural insensitivity; another drag-queen story hour attacked at a library; another parent demanding control over how pronouns are used at school; another panic over the dangers lurking in AI; another op-ed fretting that even a passing acquaintance with the wrong word, picture, implication, or idea will puncture the fragile mental health of young people.
The list ranges from the ditzy to the draconian and it's very long. Even conduct can get ensnared in censorship battles, as abortion has over what information healthcare providers are allowed to offer or what information crisis pregnancy centers (whose purpose is to dissuade women from seeking abortions) can be required to offer. Looming over it all, we just had an election brimming with repellent utterances financed by gobs of corporate money, which, the Supreme Court ruled in its 2010 Citizens United decision, is a form of speech protected by the First Amendment.
I suspect that if you live long enough, everything begins to seem like a rerun (as much of this has for me). The actors may change -- new groups of concerned moms replace old groups who called themselves concerned mothers; antiracists police academic speech, when once it was anti-porn feminists who did it; AI becomes the new Wild West overtaking that lawless territory of yore, the World Wide Web -- but the script is still the same.
It's hard not to respond to the outrage du jour and I'm finding perspective elusive in the aftermath of the latest disastrous election, but I do know this: the urge to censor will continue in old and new forms, regardless of who controls the White House. I don't mean to be setting up a false equivalence here. The Trump presidency already looks primed to indulge his authoritarian proclivities and unleash mobs of freelance vigilantes, and that should frighten the hell out of all of us. I do mean to point out that the instinct to cover other people's mouths, eyes, and ears is ancient and persistent and not necessarily restricted to those we disagree with. But now, of all times, given what's heading our way, we need a capacious view and robust defense of the First Amendment from all quarters -- as we always have.
Make No Law
In a succinct 45 words, the First Amendment protects citizens from governmental restrictions on religious practices, speech, the press, and public airings of grievances in that order. It sounds pretty good, doesn't it? But if a devil is ever in the details, it's here, and the courts have been trying to sort those out over the last century or more. Working against such protections are the many often insidious ways to stifle expression, disagreement, and protest -- in other words, censorship. Long ago, American abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass said, "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong that will be imposed upon them." It was a warning that the ensuing 167 years haven't proven wrong.
Censorship is used against vulnerable people by those who have the power to do so. The role such power plays became apparent in the last days of the recent election campaign when the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, at the insistence of their owners, declined to endorse anyone for president. Commentary by those who still care what the news media does ranged from a twist of the knife into the Post's Orwellian slogan, "Democracy Dies in Darkness" to assessments of the purpose or value of endorsements in the first place. These weren't the only papers not to endorse a presidential candidate, but it's hard not to read the motivation of their billionaire owners, Jeff Bezos and Patrick Soon-Shiong, as cowardice and self-interest rather than the principles they claimed they were supporting.
Newspapers, print or digital, have always been gatekeepers of who and what gets covered, even as their influence has declined in the age of social media. Usually, political endorsements are crafted by editorial boards but are ultimately the prerogative of publishers. The obvious conflict of interest in each of those cases, however, speaks volumes about the drawback of news media being in the hands of ultra-rich individuals with competing business concerns.
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