The Death of Free Speech

 

                                                    Cartoon by Pat Bagley

“There was ‘free speech’ for court jesters even if they insulted the king, but not for comedians under Trump.”

In 1351, the English Parliament passed a law called the Statute of Treasons. The statute specified seven different crimes that could be considered either “high treason” or “petty treaason.” Six of them actually required some kind of criminal action, like levying war against the king, or sleeping with his wife, or killing one of his ministers.

But one of them didn’t require any action at all: It was a thought crime. Known as “compassing the death of the King,” merely imagining the king’s death (or the queen’s, or their heir’s) was a crime unto itself. Professor Carlton Larson, author of On Treason: A Citizen’s Guide to the Law (an excellent book and a must read, especially for these times), writes that in defining treason in the Constitution, the Framers easily dispensed with including compassing the king’s death, because “[n]ot only was there no king in America, but this provision had generated some of the worst abuses under English law.”

The crimes against the king — including thought crimes — are an interesting juxtaposition against the role of the court jester, who could get away with quite a lot apart from providing entertainment, including criticizing, mocking, and even insulting the king directly (and perhaps referencing his death, I suppose, if they were funny enough). Shakespeare’s plays have many examples of this “jester’s privilege,” from As You Like It’s Touchstone to King Lear’s Fool. This delightful TED-Ed video narrated by Beatrice D. Otto, author of Fools Are Everywhere: The Court Jester Around the World, shows how close to the line jesters across various cultures:

One of the main purposes of the jester — the entertainer and comedian of the court — was to speak truth to power…even if you were a king or an emperor.

But that role doesn’t extend, apparently, to being a comedian under a U.S. president. Disney’s suspension of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel under pressure from the Trump administration follows in the footsteps of autocrats around the world, who are clearly more thin-skinned than their divinely-appointed historical counterparts.

For instance: In 2000, soon after coming to power, Putin became incredibly irked by a late night political satire show featuring puppets called “Kukly” — watched by over half the households in Russia — that mercilessly critiqued his administration. Kukly had also skewered Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, when he was president; Yeltsin apparently hated the show too but, as the first post-Soviet president who had made claims to support free speech, he “ground his teeth and bore it all.” Putin, not so much. This contemporaneous New York Times article describes the shift after Putin took office:

'Things changed dramatically,' [the program’s writer] said. ‘There were no requests for physical changes. But we've received threats from his political family — not threats to close the program but that the program may have some “difficulties.” And this Russian phrase, “to have difficulties,” can mean many things.’

The threats peaked this March in a private conversation between a senior Kremlin official and a top executive at NTV. Yevgeny Kiselyev, the network's general director, said the official proffered a list of tasks the network would have to meet to escape the government's wrath, including less skeptical political coverage and toned-down reporting on the war in Chechnya. ‘One of those demands was to get Mr. Putin's look-alike — his rubber look-alike, that is — off the “Kukly” show,’ Mr. Kiselyev said in an interview.

At the time of the article’s publication, NTV’s chairman, Vladimir A. Gusinsky, had just been jailed. The show was still on the air, and the show writer was quoted as stating, “I'm not saying we don't have freedom of speech. I'm saying that the field of that freedom is being narrowed. There are fewer and fewer who can speak the truth. And maybe ours is one of the last.”

The show was later canceled, and replaced with milquetoast programs that were allowed to criticize people — as long as they were popular celebrities or enemies of the Kremlin, like President Obama.

Since then, everyone is joining the Autocrat Crybaby Club. Turkey’s Erdogan prosecuted a Turkish man for making a meme that compared him to Gollum. Egypt’s Abdel Fatah al-Sissi threatened to fine a comedian dubbed as “Egypt’s Jon Stewart” with a $10 million fine (he Feld to the U.S….oops). Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes at Lucid that Berlusconi brought the power of the state against media outlets in Italy.

Of course, all of them are following the OG fascist playbook:

 

With Trump, don’t forget that this has been something he been trying to do for a long time. Comedian Michelle Wolf got canceled for her jokes about Sarah Huckabee Sander’s eyeshadow at the 2018 White House Correspondent’s Dinner (which was in my opinion a pretext for the real reason, which was that she roasted Trump, a lot). This year’s dinner’s comedian was canceled after she criticized the Trump administration on a podcast. In fact, the WHCA president decided they wouldn’t have a comedian, at all.

The crackdown at ABC is one that is sure to be the beginning of many more, especially if we don’t resist and speak up, now. Perhaps the silver lining of Disney’s actions against Kimmel is that it might get some ordinary folks who have been in denial that we have crossed a Rubicon to finally wake up and take notice.

Renato and I discuss more about the legal implications of Kimmel being taken off air, as well as the charges against Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer, Tyler Robinson, in this week’s pod:

-Asha Rangappa, The Freedom Academy

Asha Rangappa is an Assistant Dean and Senior Lecturer at the Yale University's Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and a former Special Agent of the FBI, specializing in counterintelligence investigations.