This will probably not live long on hacker news because people here are basically distracting themselves from the constant barrage of American politics, but it’s pretty clear this regime doesn’t care about the first amendment.
This submission was flagged by HN users. Moderators didn't touch it or even see it until a couple minutes ago.
Not sure if this makes me more or less "complicit" (except insofar as such perceptions are monotonic, so can only become more, never less), but I have to agree with the flaggers here. OP is an opinion piece about a Major Ongoing Topic that is so major and so ongoing that the bar for Significant New Information is too high for most opinion pieces to clear.
If that convoluted sentence doesn't make sense, it's probably because I'm using HN moderation jargon—but there are many explanations available:
Is that the dude the knowing he was lying tried to push the narrative that Israel killed Charlie Kirk purely to try and sour the Right's opinion of Israel?
The problem with extreme polarization in a 2 party system is that each party doesn’t police itself, doesn’t rein itself in, and when the other finally gets back in power, it pushes through awful retaliatory measures. The 2 parties are happy with this state of affairs because they’re pretty much guaranteed 50% of the time to be the one in power, in control. Vote 3rd party to break this cycle
The way voting in the US works, voting 3rd party has the same real effect as not voting at all.
If you want to build a third party, you have to start at the bottom, with local races, and work your way up. You can't do it starting with national races.
I think you have to start lower than that, with the voting system itself. I've seen it argued in several places that "first past the post" leads to only two parties.
That Trump tweeted after Colbert's show was not-renewed that Kimmel would be next - and then gets Kimmel cancelled, said to reporters that licensed broadcasters aren't "allowed" to criticize him, and tweeted after Kimmel that Seth Meyers would be next - and yet still has the support of a majority of republicans, astounds me.
There is no authoritarian line he can cross that turns away his apologists. They pretend that Biden or Obama were somehow worse (which, even if true, is an illogical argument for democratic norms), pretend that these are private decisions not coerced by the state power, or cheer for "retribution" against their idealogical opponents while embracing a diminishing of democratic freedoms. They have no red lines for Trump. He can deny established science; deny access to life saving vaccines; control the media; accept billions in personal investments from foreign governments in return for US policy; kill people in international waters without oversight... that's just this month's list!
It's not a phenomena I could have truly internalized without experiencing it first hand. It has changed me even as a late-middled-aged adult. I wonder what it must be like for those younger, who are assembling the foundations of their political and social opinions.
I have been completely radicalized. I used to be a boring moderate; was a liberal when it came to social issues, but somewhat conservative fiscally. Now I find I am just an American, and it is no longer about left or right, it is about what is moral and immoral. I never would have believed so many in my country would have zero self-reflection and ignorance, but here we are. I suppose they have always been here, I just did not want to believe it.
The left and right have more in common with each other than they realise. Many of the distinctions become irrelevant when you realise it's really workers against the power of massive capital.
>Many of the distinctions become irrelevant when you realise it's really workers against the power of massive capital.
If you're talking about the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, then sure. But that's mostly because the Democrats are only nominally "leftist." Both parties are pro police, pro military industrial complex, pro Zionism, and pro capital. Both support the American white supremacist imperialist order. It isn't left and right where American power structures are concerned, it's center-right and far-right.
But the distinction on the ground, with real people, is definitional and couldn't be more distinct in that the left recognizes class struggle and sides with the workers, while the right recognizes class struggle and sides with capital. The dissonance between the left and the Democrats versus the harmony between the right and Republicans is why the Democrats keep losing elections - between the two camps only Trump and the Republicans are actually giving their constituents what they voted for.
It's truly gut wrenching what has happened to the Republican party. The people who seriously warned against Trump are either out, or have done a complete 180 and are now licking his boots.
Kimmel and Colbert both illustrate a big problem. The Trump regime didn't have to arrest Colbert or throw Kimmel in prison, or turn up with troops and dismantle their studios - some faceless executive who is about as funny as cancer made a decision to bow to Trump because it was at least temporarily in their interest and the consequences flow from there.
Satire needs independent grass roots funding. If the satirist you love costs $10M per year, well, people who love satire better be putting $10M per year on the table to pay for that, because if it's just (for example) a Disney product then to Disney $10M of satire which annoys the God Emperor is a bad deal, lets buy $10M of police procedural or whatever instead.
To be clear: It is very possible that an independently funded satirist just means in six months or six years God Emperor Trump decides he's entitled to shut that down and they do get arrested or whatever, this is not a magic solution, but I think a critical weakness in the US is that so much of this is actually funded by giant corporations and thus psychopaths. It's choosing to fight with one arm tied behind your back.
Or it's like having one of your arms intentionally tied behind your back by a long running conspiracy to place all media in the hands of, at best, faceless corporate bean counters who are amenable at the merest hint of a threat, or worse, active regime loyalists?
Fun fact: free speech never existed in the US. In the 50s, one had the right to proclaim oneself a nazi, but bearing a communist card meant the State Dept could suspend your passport anytime.
It's one thing to get deplatformed by a private company for advocating for the genocide of a minority group or because you think r*pe is funny, but it's completely different when the government stamps out dissent.
While the government is involved in this , certainly this will be coming from private companies in the future, as more and more of them are turning to kiss the ring. It's an attempted cultural change that encompasses everything
"Cancel culture" is also free speech though. I'm not sure how it could be different. People are allowed to criticize other people's speech. How else could you have free debate?
"cancel culture" is a term used only since 2018, which is what i m refering to. Obviously censorship has existed since forever (and no, mcCarthy did not invent it)
McCarthyism, HUAC, prejudice against youth culture and anything deviating from Christian norms, the Satanic Panic, homophobia and the AIDS crisis, redlining, book banning and moral panics over "groomers," Dixie Chicks, Sinead O'Connor, Kaepernick, boycotting Nike, boycotting Starbucks, boycotting Target, boycotting NASCAR, boycotting Gillette, boycotting Keurig, boycotting Bud Light, boycotting Disney. The right was cancelling long before the term "cancel culture" even existed.
There is no "we", it's you and your opinion- own it.
> i m surprised this isn't taken as common knowledge, but yes everything about cancellation culture started from leftist causes. I struggle to remember someone being cancelled for expressing "too progressive" ideas until recently.
We get it.
Not everybody is a UNIX coder of the 70s with clear memories of the 1960s and your limited world view is based on your own personal near term recollection and, seemingly, no actual reading of US history.
You might be interested to learn about the House Un-American Activities Committee and their attitude wrt cancelling progressives.
the term "cancel culture" , which i used, refers to the most recent wave of censorship and was introduced in 2018. I assume well-informed readers can infer the context, and understand that i am not talking about the entire history of censorship.
Making berating comments doesn't really serve anything and reflects bad on the commenter.
The more interesting question is why did we go from a relatively laisez-faire attitude of the 90s, which was earned after decades of social activism, to a close-minded culture that fires people for being mildly annoying.
The left will never take responsibility for the casualties of their culture wars. They got high silencing people they didn’t like with righteous fury, all the while never taking time to think what would happen if the same behavior was turned on them. Now we are under a fascist regime where you can only speak in government approved language.
Right. Government censorship is exactly the same behavior as private citizens choosing who to listen to. That take is exactly the problem here. That's not how the first amendment works.
I can't tell if you are confused, or are intentionally trying to confuse others.
Pretty sure it was the founding fathers that that passed the first amendment, not me.
The issue is that the current president can't take criticism, and is ignorant of the Constitution. And a lot of people seem hot to excuse his unconstitutional actions.
Give it a rest, it was not just “people deciding who to listen to”.
People were being fired. People were being shamed at scale. People’s careers were being ruined. Some committed suicide. All because of some shit they said online. It just shouldn’t be that easy.
Yes. Your boss can fire you for being racist or sexist or whatever. That's between you and your boss. The government can't threaten you and get you fired. That's unconstitutional.
You perhaps aren't familiar with our first amendment? What part of the world are you from?
If your boss is pressured to fire you, whether that pressure comes from the government or a mass of people who don’t like you, the damage to our liberties is still the same.
Just because a million people hate you for something you said does not mean you should be punished as they see fit. Any punishment should be limited to social status, not employment or other societal benefits. Otherwise, why not just deny healthcare to racists, sexists, or people not aligned with the ruling party’s interests?
But the casualties of prior cancel culture were usually public figures who did racist or sexist things, not people who criticized the administration? I can’t believe you don’t understand this distinction.
You’re right, but would you also agree there is a difference between a bunch of people in social media saying, “we don’t like this racist person, you should fire them.” And a government official saying, “we don’t like what our critics say, we’re going to revoke their ability to broadcast unless they fire their employee”.
I think it is wrong for Kimmel to be silenced, as wrong as it was for the Biden administration to encourage social media platforms to silence candidate Donald Trump.
Now that we are here, we need bipartisan cool heads to establish good rules.
Just because someone is a comedian doesn't mean everything they say is a joke. If Kimmel's comment on Monday were a joke,m someone needs to explain it to me, because I didn't get it.
What I did hear was some "facts" that did not seem to line up with things I heard in the news. I just assumed he ignored his staff of "fact checkers" -- see Kimmel's comments when he had the dust up with Aaron Rogers -- and was just on another of his anti-Trump rants.
While his show isn't all that bad, his monologues are political and have gotten old. Stick to jokes.
> What I did hear was some "facts" that did not seem to line up with things I heard in the news.
Perhaps this should encourage you to look inward and acknowledge the “news” you listen to is interested in something other than facts.
Everything Kimmel said was factually true.
If you would like to quote the part you are struggling with, and include an explanation about why you feel his statement lacks truth, I can point you to supporting sources.
This will probably not live long on hacker news because people here are basically distracting themselves from the constant barrage of American politics, but it’s pretty clear this regime doesn’t care about the first amendment.
YC and HN are complicit in the crimes of this administration. So it wouldn't surprise me either if this discussion disappears.
This submission was flagged by HN users. Moderators didn't touch it or even see it until a couple minutes ago.
Not sure if this makes me more or less "complicit" (except insofar as such perceptions are monotonic, so can only become more, never less), but I have to agree with the flaggers here. OP is an opinion piece about a Major Ongoing Topic that is so major and so ongoing that the bar for Significant New Information is too high for most opinion pieces to clear.
If that convoluted sentence doesn't make sense, it's probably because I'm using HN moderation jargon—but there are many explanations available:
major ongoing topics: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
significant new information: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
how we handle stories with political overlap: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
See the documentary film "Tickling Giants" about Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef.
Is that the dude the knowing he was lying tried to push the narrative that Israel killed Charlie Kirk purely to try and sour the Right's opinion of Israel?
The problem with extreme polarization in a 2 party system is that each party doesn’t police itself, doesn’t rein itself in, and when the other finally gets back in power, it pushes through awful retaliatory measures. The 2 parties are happy with this state of affairs because they’re pretty much guaranteed 50% of the time to be the one in power, in control. Vote 3rd party to break this cycle
The way voting in the US works, voting 3rd party has the same real effect as not voting at all.
If you want to build a third party, you have to start at the bottom, with local races, and work your way up. You can't do it starting with national races.
I think you have to start lower than that, with the voting system itself. I've seen it argued in several places that "first past the post" leads to only two parties.
Yes, I mean in all elections not just for president.
Votes do matter. What if Kamala had gotten no votes at all, would that be the same real effect? Yes and no
Hard to break the cycle with the broken first-past-the-post voting system.
> Vote 3rd party to break this cycle
Will that break the cycle? Power corrupts, and attracts the corrupt. After a 3rd party attains power, it will become as corrupt as the other two.
The reason that 3rd parties look better right now is precisely because they have no power or money.
I’m not saying many parties would fix human nature I’m saying it would break this specific cycle
That Trump tweeted after Colbert's show was not-renewed that Kimmel would be next - and then gets Kimmel cancelled, said to reporters that licensed broadcasters aren't "allowed" to criticize him, and tweeted after Kimmel that Seth Meyers would be next - and yet still has the support of a majority of republicans, astounds me.
There is no authoritarian line he can cross that turns away his apologists. They pretend that Biden or Obama were somehow worse (which, even if true, is an illogical argument for democratic norms), pretend that these are private decisions not coerced by the state power, or cheer for "retribution" against their idealogical opponents while embracing a diminishing of democratic freedoms. They have no red lines for Trump. He can deny established science; deny access to life saving vaccines; control the media; accept billions in personal investments from foreign governments in return for US policy; kill people in international waters without oversight... that's just this month's list!
It's not a phenomena I could have truly internalized without experiencing it first hand. It has changed me even as a late-middled-aged adult. I wonder what it must be like for those younger, who are assembling the foundations of their political and social opinions.
I have been completely radicalized. I used to be a boring moderate; was a liberal when it came to social issues, but somewhat conservative fiscally. Now I find I am just an American, and it is no longer about left or right, it is about what is moral and immoral. I never would have believed so many in my country would have zero self-reflection and ignorance, but here we are. I suppose they have always been here, I just did not want to believe it.
The left and right have more in common with each other than they realise. Many of the distinctions become irrelevant when you realise it's really workers against the power of massive capital.
>Many of the distinctions become irrelevant when you realise it's really workers against the power of massive capital.
If you're talking about the two parties, Democrats and Republicans, then sure. But that's mostly because the Democrats are only nominally "leftist." Both parties are pro police, pro military industrial complex, pro Zionism, and pro capital. Both support the American white supremacist imperialist order. It isn't left and right where American power structures are concerned, it's center-right and far-right.
But the distinction on the ground, with real people, is definitional and couldn't be more distinct in that the left recognizes class struggle and sides with the workers, while the right recognizes class struggle and sides with capital. The dissonance between the left and the Democrats versus the harmony between the right and Republicans is why the Democrats keep losing elections - between the two camps only Trump and the Republicans are actually giving their constituents what they voted for.
It's truly gut wrenching what has happened to the Republican party. The people who seriously warned against Trump are either out, or have done a complete 180 and are now licking his boots.
There's a popular aphorism (awkwardly translated French -> German -> English) that I hate:
"Laughter is a power that even the world's most powerful figures must bow down to"
...is that so, after all?!
Kimmel and Colbert both illustrate a big problem. The Trump regime didn't have to arrest Colbert or throw Kimmel in prison, or turn up with troops and dismantle their studios - some faceless executive who is about as funny as cancer made a decision to bow to Trump because it was at least temporarily in their interest and the consequences flow from there.
Satire needs independent grass roots funding. If the satirist you love costs $10M per year, well, people who love satire better be putting $10M per year on the table to pay for that, because if it's just (for example) a Disney product then to Disney $10M of satire which annoys the God Emperor is a bad deal, lets buy $10M of police procedural or whatever instead.
To be clear: It is very possible that an independently funded satirist just means in six months or six years God Emperor Trump decides he's entitled to shut that down and they do get arrested or whatever, this is not a magic solution, but I think a critical weakness in the US is that so much of this is actually funded by giant corporations and thus psychopaths. It's choosing to fight with one arm tied behind your back.
Or it's like having one of your arms intentionally tied behind your back by a long running conspiracy to place all media in the hands of, at best, faceless corporate bean counters who are amenable at the merest hint of a threat, or worse, active regime loyalists?
Fun fact: free speech never existed in the US. In the 50s, one had the right to proclaim oneself a nazi, but bearing a communist card meant the State Dept could suspend your passport anytime.
[flagged]
Wait... It's the left's fault that the right is turning authoritarian?
Trying to remember which Democratic president threatened broadcast licenses if someone wasn't fired... I can't place it.
Neither the left or right ever truly cared about free speech, they just wanted speech they approved.
Yeah remember that time Obama threatened to take Fox News pundits off the air by using government coercion?
It's one thing to get deplatformed by a private company for advocating for the genocide of a minority group or because you think r*pe is funny, but it's completely different when the government stamps out dissent.
While the government is involved in this , certainly this will be coming from private companies in the future, as more and more of them are turning to kiss the ring. It's an attempted cultural change that encompasses everything
They are not equally bad, but they are both bad. Cancel culture was a very bad idea.
"Cancel culture" is also free speech though. I'm not sure how it could be different. People are allowed to criticize other people's speech. How else could you have free debate?
Getting fired for expressing an opinion outside of work and which does not affect work , is not 'criticism'
Right. Blame the spineless boss who fired them! Not the people who called out their racism or whatever.
McCarthy was a leftist?
Seriously now, I'm not USAian and even I know cancel culture goes back a long way in US history.
"cancel culture" is a term used only since 2018, which is what i m refering to. Obviously censorship has existed since forever (and no, mcCarthy did not invent it)
How can there be decades of cancel culture, when you're referring to the term used since 2018?
Ah yes, the left is to blame for the right's actions.
As is tradition. The right is always blameless and right.
"Look at what you made me do!"
"stop hitting yourself! stop hitting yourself!"
"the left" didn't create "cancellation culture."
McCarthyism, HUAC, prejudice against youth culture and anything deviating from Christian norms, the Satanic Panic, homophobia and the AIDS crisis, redlining, book banning and moral panics over "groomers," Dixie Chicks, Sinead O'Connor, Kaepernick, boycotting Nike, boycotting Starbucks, boycotting Target, boycotting NASCAR, boycotting Gillette, boycotting Keurig, boycotting Bud Light, boycotting Disney. The right was cancelling long before the term "cancel culture" even existed.
We are talking about the recent wave which peaked in the 2010s.
Most of us remember the libertarian approach to speech in the 90s, the inappropriate jokes and all. And how it all got overturned
You're cherry picking. I understand you have an agenda and a narrative to push but it's still just cherry picking.
Censorship is a roman word, ergo your irrelevant -and distracting from the issue - historic tangent was not wide enough.
Ah I see, "it's only cancel culture if it comes from the leftist regions of Twitter, otherwise it's merely sparkling censorship," classic.
> We
There is no "we", it's you and your opinion- own it.
> i m surprised this isn't taken as common knowledge, but yes everything about cancellation culture started from leftist causes. I struggle to remember someone being cancelled for expressing "too progressive" ideas until recently.
We get it.
Not everybody is a UNIX coder of the 70s with clear memories of the 1960s and your limited world view is based on your own personal near term recollection and, seemingly, no actual reading of US history.
You might be interested to learn about the House Un-American Activities Committee and their attitude wrt cancelling progressives.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_C...
the term "cancel culture" , which i used, refers to the most recent wave of censorship and was introduced in 2018. I assume well-informed readers can infer the context, and understand that i am not talking about the entire history of censorship.
Making berating comments doesn't really serve anything and reflects bad on the commenter.
The more interesting question is why did we go from a relatively laisez-faire attitude of the 90s, which was earned after decades of social activism, to a close-minded culture that fires people for being mildly annoying.
[dead]
The left will never take responsibility for the casualties of their culture wars. They got high silencing people they didn’t like with righteous fury, all the while never taking time to think what would happen if the same behavior was turned on them. Now we are under a fascist regime where you can only speak in government approved language.
Right. Government censorship is exactly the same behavior as private citizens choosing who to listen to. That take is exactly the problem here. That's not how the first amendment works.
I can't tell if you are confused, or are intentionally trying to confuse others.
I hope you enjoy the world you helped create
Pretty sure it was the founding fathers that that passed the first amendment, not me.
The issue is that the current president can't take criticism, and is ignorant of the Constitution. And a lot of people seem hot to excuse his unconstitutional actions.
Give it a rest, it was not just “people deciding who to listen to”.
People were being fired. People were being shamed at scale. People’s careers were being ruined. Some committed suicide. All because of some shit they said online. It just shouldn’t be that easy.
Yes. Your boss can fire you for being racist or sexist or whatever. That's between you and your boss. The government can't threaten you and get you fired. That's unconstitutional.
You perhaps aren't familiar with our first amendment? What part of the world are you from?
If your boss is pressured to fire you, whether that pressure comes from the government or a mass of people who don’t like you, the damage to our liberties is still the same.
Just because a million people hate you for something you said does not mean you should be punished as they see fit. Any punishment should be limited to social status, not employment or other societal benefits. Otherwise, why not just deny healthcare to racists, sexists, or people not aligned with the ruling party’s interests?
But the casualties of prior cancel culture were usually public figures who did racist or sexist things, not people who criticized the administration? I can’t believe you don’t understand this distinction.
It literally doesn’t matter, it’s not illegal to be racist or sexist. You are free to not interact with those people, but it’s not illegal.
You may not be able to practice discrimination legally, but in your heart and mind you can be whatever you want.
When you take that away from people, they no longer feel free, and they will retaliate like a caged animal.
You’re right, but would you also agree there is a difference between a bunch of people in social media saying, “we don’t like this racist person, you should fire them.” And a government official saying, “we don’t like what our critics say, we’re going to revoke their ability to broadcast unless they fire their employee”.
No!! Because the government and its elected officials are merely a representative for a bunch of people!
So... Other people used their freedom of speech to call out racism or whatever, but that was wrong. Only the racists get freedom of speech I guess.
If only those dirty commies didn't light the reichstag on fire.
I think it is wrong for Kimmel to be silenced, as wrong as it was for the Biden administration to encourage social media platforms to silence candidate Donald Trump.
Now that we are here, we need bipartisan cool heads to establish good rules.
Just because someone is a comedian doesn't mean everything they say is a joke. If Kimmel's comment on Monday were a joke,m someone needs to explain it to me, because I didn't get it.
What I did hear was some "facts" that did not seem to line up with things I heard in the news. I just assumed he ignored his staff of "fact checkers" -- see Kimmel's comments when he had the dust up with Aaron Rogers -- and was just on another of his anti-Trump rants.
While his show isn't all that bad, his monologues are political and have gotten old. Stick to jokes.
> What I did hear was some "facts" that did not seem to line up with things I heard in the news.
Perhaps this should encourage you to look inward and acknowledge the “news” you listen to is interested in something other than facts.
Everything Kimmel said was factually true.
If you would like to quote the part you are struggling with, and include an explanation about why you feel his statement lacks truth, I can point you to supporting sources.