free speech

Pariah State Comedy Festival

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Today’s the anniversary of the killing of Jamal Kashoggi while the Riyadh Comedy Festival is currently going on featuring some of the most shameless cash grabbers in the business. Many of them have made their careers decrying “cancel culture” but eagerly signed a contract that literally restricts their speech.

None are real surprises, and neither will their unwillingness to accept any criticism about taking the gig. When they get back, they can all whine about the “woke” public’s reaction during a performance at Trump’s Kennedy Center.

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Republican Freedom Fighters

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The fascist crybullies have been hard at work snitching ever since Charlie Kirk’s assassination. From lowly employees’ rude social media posts, to hosts of late night shows, they’re giddy that the power of the state is being used to threaten anyone who points out they’re all fascist creeps. You can denounce political violence without lauding a guy who made a lucrative career promoting it. In fact, you should.

But now that most mainstream media is owned by one variety of billionaire asshole or another, you probably won’t be allowed on TV to say it.

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Coming Soon to CBS

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CBS/Paramount started cleaning house to meet our demented, rapist dictator’s demands and got their merger with Skydance approved. Last week they announced the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, despite it being at the top of the big three networks’ late night shows. There’s still a year left of the show, which seems kinda stupid, but they were trying to meet the demands of the world’s most powerful stupid person.

I’m not a retired Boomer, so I’m not in the target demo for most of CBS’s offerings. I am however, a fan of Star Trek, and currently Strange New Worlds, which spawned as a solution to Discovery’s own convoluted “Oops! All Mirror Universe/Time Travel” problems. I hope they don’t do a Mirror Universe episode this season, or another musical one for that matter.

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Protestiquette

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It’s summer during a fascist Trump administration, so protests are heating up. Many centrist dipshits are critiquing the protestors methods, instead of the police state crackdowns they’re facing. As usual, it’s the police who arrive wanting a riot and an excuse to use all the toys Republicans and Democrats have given them over the decades.

If you’re hitting the streets this weekend, stay safe, and don’t get kettled. I’m unfortunately stuck doing the inverse of the Ikea Man; disassembling our apartment for movers next week.

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Department of Failed State Travel Advisories

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We’re just two months into this administration and the horrors at the border and within continue to escalate. Tourists from close allies are getting sent to the gulags we’ve previously reserved for refugees who are desperate to get here to seek asylum. Residents with green cards or visas are getting arrested, detained, and even deported for their speech. And others are being rounded up without due process and sent to slave labor camps in El Salvador.

This is not a great environment for jokes. My mind keeps going to the fact that all that separates myself from these current victims is my tacky little U.S. passport. Any CBP or ICE thug can take it and instantly render me and anyone they don’t like a stateless individual with no rights.

I don’t have plans (or the budget) for international travel any time soon, but I don’t have to go anywhere for them to claim jurisdiction over me or two thirds of the population. The War on Terror has come home, we’re all the targets, and if you can’t call it fascism, you won’t until you’re the one getting stripped and hosed down in a cage.

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2025 Corporate Media Style Guide

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After less than a week of insane (and illegal, if laws were still real) executive orders, the mainstream media has rolled over and showed its belly to the second Trump administration. The publishers and owners signaled this move was coming throughout the election, but to see them all become state media apparatuses overnight was jarring.

When these policies were first introduced to the public with coverage of Project 2025, the public recoiled, because it’s unpopular Nazi shit. The media gave Trump a boost by letting him claim he disavowed it, but now that he’s practically signing copies with each executive order, they’re desperately trying to spin their audiences into favoring it or pretending it’s not happening.

Unfortunately, mainstream media’s not the only one doing it. Democratic leadership seems to be using this same playbook instead of acting anything like an opposition party.

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A Conversation with the Boot on Your Face

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Protests against Israel’s siege/ethnic cleansing/genocide of Gaza have been happening as soon as it was clear Palestinians were facing collective punishment for Hamas’ brutal October 7 attack. Even as Israel’s war crimes escalated, proponents of a ceasefire have been largely ignored by those in power and people who can only perceive events through their implications on the presidential election.

Until this week, when Columbia University’s administration sent the cops to remove its encampment of student protestors. This delighted reactionaries and spawned solidarity protests on campuses throughout the country, which face crackdowns of their own. The semester ends in a couple weeks. Administrators could’ve just waited the students out, but chose to escalate, just like the country the students were protesting in the first place.

For the past seven months, commenting on Biden’s enabling of Israel’s actions was met with a chorus of “Trump would be worse!” Of course he would be, and he’d send more troops to bust kids’ skulls even harder. But doing or saying nothing today out of fear of something worse happening means fascism’s already here. And being quiet won’t make it go away.

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Flea Marketplace of Ideas

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A lot of right-wing chuds assume their right to free speech means they have a right to say whatever they want to a captive audience everywhere they go. And if someone uses their own free speech to tell them to fuck off, they whine about cancel culture until they get a glowing profile in the New York Times.

Deplatforming works. Anyone claiming they can defeat racism, fascism, or any form of extremism through honest debate is either stupid or a collaborator. People spewing those views need to be ostracized from society. Humoring them just gives them oxygen and drags that poor Overton Window so far to the right it causes the entire house to collapse.

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