Fascism doesn’t start by kicking down the door. Sometimes it demands a settlement, manipulates a corporate merger, cancels a comedian, or silences the press. Some thought it couldn’t happen here. But the evidence is all around us.
Yesterday news broke that CBS is reportedly appointing Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of its news division — part of parent company Skydance Media’s plan to appease Trump. Weiss has little reporting experience — she worked in the opinion sections of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal — but has had a long history of empowering rightwing voices while silencing progressive dissent.
Weiss rage quit the Times in 2020 claiming censorship and went on to found the substack Free Press, which as David Klion wrote for The Guardian, she’s used to attack “wokeness” and carve out a role as the Trump administration’s de facto ally.
“Weiss will be an ideological commissar situated within the highest levels of the media business, wielding her considerable platform to help the White House enforce compliance in spaces that fostered resistance during Trump’s first term: the media, academia and civil society,” said Klion.
On Tuesday, President Trump stood in front of an unprecedented gathering of top military brass flown in from around the world. “I told Pete,” he bragged, referring to Secretary of Defense Hegseth, “we should use some of these dangerous cities as training ground for our military.”
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that YouTube has agreed to pay $24.5 million for suspending Trump’s account after his Jan. 6 attempted coup. Meta already paid $25 million. X paid $10 million.
And just before that, ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel for mocking Trump and his supporters. The president himself said the quiet part out loud: “They’re giving me all this bad press, and they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away.” The FCC chair, Brendan Carr, added on a right-wing podcast: “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.” Hours later, Disney caved. These capitulations and bribes haven’t bought these companies relief from the consequences of enabling a fascist president, and only empower him to expand the scope of his rapacious greed and malevolence.
This is how fascism works — one capitulation at a time.
Meanwhile, government intimidation is out in the open. Vice President JD Vance singled out one of us personally — senior advisor Elizabeth Spiers — calling her “soulless and evil” for a column in The Nation on Charlie Kirk’s legacy, and telling an absurd lie that she was paid by Open Society and the Ford Foundation to write it, unleashing doxxing and death threats. He also encouraged Americans to report anyone critical of Kirk to their employers, punishment for exercising their right to free speech. Trump has filed unsuccessful lawsuits against The New York Times, CNN, and famed investigative reporter Bob Woodward.
Charlie Kirk’s murder gave Trump cover to persecute his critics under the guise of preventing the kind of harassment and violence Kirk himself was happy to unleash on anyone who wasn’t white, Christian, straight, and male. Black students and professors have been expelled, fired or suspended for comments about Kirk. More than 350 Texas teachers remain under investigation for the same. A Washington Post journalist was fired for quoting Kirk’s own words, after Jeff Bezos had already corrupted the paper’s opinion section by dictating which opinions it could and couldn’t hold. ABC paid Trump a $15 million settlement, despite having a robust First Amendment case. CBS paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris to get their merger approved. Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong has interfered with the paper’s coverage. All of these acts were committed by organizations that are, in theory, devoted to defending free speech. They have failed us.
Journalists still trying to do their jobs have been targeted, too. In Chicago, ICE officers allegedly shot pepper bullets into a CBS reporter’s vehicle unprompted. In New York, they shoved journalists to the floor. Emmy-winning Atlanta journalist Mario Guevara has been held in ICE custody for more than 100 days “in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity,” according to the ACLU. News broke on Thursday that he would be deported this week to El Salvador.
Corporate outlets aren’t resisting fascism. They’re enabling it. All the president’s men aren’t breaking into the Watergate; they’re buying up the media and firing anyone who won’t toe the line.
Sinclair Broadcasting Group and Nexstar Media Group, responsible for much of Kimmel’s local distribution, pushed for Kimmel’s suspension, and continued a blackout of his show days after Disney and ABC capitulated to public pressure.
Nexstar, based in Irving, Texas, operates 28 ABC stations and is trying to acquire Tegna, which owns another 64 stations. Meanwhile, Sinclair has offered to merge with Tegna. The consolidations would require the FCC and Carr to change its rules on the number of stations a single company can own.
And in Texas print journalism, the corporate takeover is nearly complete. The Dallas Morning News was, until last week, one of the last papers in Texas that still operated like a family-owned company — or at least a locally owned one. Hearst now owns the Morning News, the Austin-American Statesman, the Houston Chronicle, the Beaumont Enterprise, the Laredo Morning Times, the Midland Reporter-Telegram, the Plainview Herald, and the San Antonio Express-News. That’s a lot of control over the journalism being read by a state with a population of about 30 million people.
While corporate media consolidates and collaborates, the right has built a self-sustaining propaganda machine. Fox News is only the tip of the iceberg. The real engine is online: Breitbart, The Federalist, PragerU, The Daily Caller, journalist-turned-plagiarist-turned-unwitting-Russian-asset Benny Johnson, influencers like Ben Shapiro and Megyn Kelly, and thousands of podcasters, YouTubers, TikTokers, and meme factories.
This is the asymmetry: The forces of fascism are on the march and the opposition dithers.
“I thought we’d be met with fury on the left, but they’re sort of giving up, I must be honest with you,” Trump told the gathered generals on Tuesday. “I really thought that we were gonna have to sort of fight it through. There’s been no fight.”
Fascism is here, and we need to act. Corporate media has demonstrated that they’re not willing to hold those in power accountable, and we need media organizations that will not be intimidated into doing the president’s bidding.
Independent, pro-democracy outlets are doing the work, but they’re subscale, underfunded and hanging on with duct tape and paperclips. Digital startups are clawing for an audience, trying to reach younger readers abandoned by legacy outlets.
But we can still tell the truth. We can call fascism what it is. We do not have to display fealty. In fact, dissenting voices are at the heart of the American experiment.
A year ago we founded The Barbed Wire because it’s not too late to do something. But we need support, and so do other independent news outlets. If we do not build an alternative media ecosystem that is still dedicated to telling the truth, corporate media isn’t going to do it for us.
And if we wait much longer, it will be too late.