Paving the Road to the Next American Reign of Fear.
Nha Trang, Vietnam, November 24th, 2024.
Salaroche

Self-censorship is not unusual in America. Not among the general population and certainly not in American journalism (see here). As an example, just check out the era of McCarthyism, (late 1940s to mid 1950s), also known as the Second Red Scare, but also check out the period leading to, and after the Iraq invasion of 2003, when Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s press secretary, infamously warned all Americans to “watch what they say, watch what they do” (see here).

As a result, the American press of the moment engaged in a self-censorship campaign that not only allowed but promoted the whole WMD hoax, thereby writing one of the most shameful chapters in the history of American journalism. Now, history seems poised to repeat itself.

In claiming neutrality for his newspaper The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos gave a free pass to Donald Trump at a crucial time before the election. So did Patrick Soon-Shiong, the owner of the LA Times. Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Meta-Facebook, had his team consort with Trump’s Presidential campaign before the election. Elon Musk, the self-anointed king of misinformation, owner of X, and powerful Trump-sycophant, has basically said that most other influential liberal publications are “fake news”.

Now, just a few days ago, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, hosts of “Morning Joe”, a successful MSNBC left-leaning show, went personally to Mar-a-Lago to curry favor with the incoming dictator-king. Darryl Cunningham, a British author and cartoonist, tried to publish his new scathing, graphic novel on Elon Musk, but he only found a publisher in France, as those in America and the UK refused to do so out of fear of retaliation (see here).

The American reign of fear is spreading fast as we approach January 20th. Fear of power engenders acquiescence and submission to power, which translates into self-censorship, which is what is widely known as “toeing the line”.

Just check out how the pro-Trump Latino vote increased by 13 points between the 2020 and the 2024 elections, reaching a 45% pro-Trump record on November 5th (see here). They may say they voted for Trump because of the economy, but many of them were afraid of being further discriminated by the aggressive, vociferous, even violent Maga masses, so they saw no choice but to toe the line and went along with the bullies.

And the reign of fear hasn’t even officially started yet. Let’s just wait and see what Donald Trump’s acceptance speech will be. I wouldn’t be surprised if he invoked the Insurrection Act of 1792 right there and then, thereby authorizing himself to deploy the US Military within our borders against whatever domestic civilian targets he wishes (see here).

The reign of fear is certainly creeping up on us and, given the sweeping powers the Supreme Court has already granted to US Presidents, the next logical step could easily be a 21st-century version of Maximillien Robespierre’s reign of terror in 1793-94 France (see here), except that in our case the “enemies of the State” would be any government officials and members of the American press who refuse to kiss the ring of the Felon-Emperor in Chief.

The road to the next American Reign of Fear is being paved as we speak. Whether such ominous road will finally lead us there will depend largely on you, the American citizens, and on whether the American press refuses or acquiesces to toe the official Trumpian authoritarian line.  

Salaroche