It took the removing of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel to lastly stir at the least just a few on the best into motion within the United States.
The unconstitutional, mafioso-like threats by Donald Trump’s head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Disney’s preemptive cave-in, have been sufficiently egregious an infringement of the First Amendment that even right-wingers like Ted Cruz raised the alarm. The literal cancellation in July of Stephen Colbert by Paramount to facilitate administration approval of a key merger was, apparently, insufficiently apparent.
Shutting down comedians who mock the Great Leader president is textbook authoritarianism, whereas preemptively complying with the diktats coming from such regimes is the textbook company response. You can’t depend on firms, regardless of how avidly they endorse values equivalent to free speech and primary rights, to ever do something aside from serve their very own pursuits and people of their shareholders.
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If FCC boss Brendan Carr’s assault on the First Amendment was maybe just a bit too blatant, you possibly can’t actually blame him or the Trump cabal: there was so little pushback to the regime’s regular implementation of an authoritarian agenda. In reality, there was assist from the best for the regime’s dedication to weaponise the homicide of right-wing extremist Charlie Kirk to justify a crackdown on progressive teams and liberal speech, regardless of a dearth of any proof thus far of a connection between the assassin and left-wing teams.
Trump’s fat-fingered directive to his attorney-general to undertake political prosecutions of his opponents has additionally failed to draw a lot criticism from the best of the political divide.
If the continued assault on political liberalism has drawn little opposition from the best, Trump’s assault on financial liberalism attracted even much less. It goes far past tariffs: Trump’s ongoing makes an attempt to convey the US Federal Reserve below government management, it doesn’t matter what the value in inflation, his crony capitalist offers with firms like Nvidia, his seizure of fairness stakes in firms, and his makes an attempt to intervene within the manufacturing of impartial financial statistics have all handed with comparatively little remark from the best, aside from diehard neoliberal economists.
This failure to object continues the regular erosion of any coherent ideology on the best. As Crikey identified six months in the past, the best gained the ideological wars within the Nineteen Eighties however is now by far the most important risk to the concepts it elevated to the standing of Holy Writ within the years of Reagan and Thatcher: free commerce, globalisation, small authorities, impartial central banks and open borders. But the descent of the US, the supposed bastion of democracy, into fascist autocracy below Trump confirms that the democratic components of that program — particular person freedom, rule of regulation and freedom from authorities interference — have joined the listing of core values being trashed by the best.
That victory of neoliberalism on the best amounted to the defeat of old-school average conservatism, with its emphasis on custom, avoidance of large-scale change, confirmed establishments and societal norms, which performed out in several methods and at completely different occasions in several international locations — Thatcher changing Ted Heath within the UK; the celebration of Nixon changing into the celebration of Reagan within the US, the Fraser-Peacock Liberals being changed by the dries of the Howard years right here. Now neoliberalism faces the identical destiny: to be swept apart as yesterday’s ideology by a brand new, extra hardline breed of right-wingers.
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Problematically, nevertheless, it’s not clear what these right-wingers consider, judging by their enthusiasm for Trump and different autocrats. Certainly not within the neoliberal financial agenda. But nor in democracy, based mostly on their assist for Trump’s try and overthrow the 2020 election consequence. Nor the rule of regulation, judging by their assaults on judges who fail to make politically appropriate selections. Nor in particular person freedom, judging by their assist for the seizure of individuals off the road by masked authorities brokers. And nor in freedom of expression — the opponents of woke censorship and “cancel tradition” have confirmed essentially the most ardent and hardline cancellers of all as soon as in energy.
Indeed, it seems that the dedication of so many on the best, together with right here in Australia, to their supposed shibboleth of freedom was weak certainly. At greatest, it was a fist with which to punch downward at desired targets — minorities, migrants, ladies, progressives — at worst, a deliberate lie to cover an agenda very a lot the alternative of freedom: a program of governmental management of each facet of life embodied in a single chief.
Perhaps the phrase “agenda” overstates its coherence: it’s no extra coherent a program than Trump is intellectually or ideologically constant. It is an “agenda” of the white male id — capricious, short-fused, anxious, paranoid, jealous, demanding of management however resentful of the burden of accountability management brings — the nihilism of privilege.
From conservatism to neoliberalism to nihilism in simply 50 years is a historic transformation, one which continues apace.
