39 Minutes of Fascism
Yesterday the White House held an informal briefing (a “gaggle”) in which they excluded several media outlets who have been critical of the Trump administration (including CNN, the New York Times, Politico, and others). According to Dean Banquet, the executive editor of The New York Times, “Nothing like this has ever happened at the White House in our long history of covering multiple administrations of different parties… Free media access to a transparent government is obviously of crucial national interest.” Several other news organizations who were not barred from the event, boycotted in protest. White House press secretary Sean Spicer spent much of the gaggle, which lasted about 39 minutes, defending administration interactions with the FBI and the press.
“It’s not acceptable,” CNN anchor Jake Tapper said of the event. “In fact, it’s petulant … This White House doesn’t seem to value a free press. There’s a word for this. The word is ‘un-American.’ ”
And to top it off, this happened on the same day that President Trump continued his assault of the press, calling journalists “the enemy of the people.”
I’ll go a step further than Jake Tapper. Not only is this un-American, it is fascism.
The founders of this country considered the freedom of the press to be so important that they included it in the 1st Amendment, right alongside the freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Having a free press is instrumental in insuring our individual liberties. We may not like all of the press, and we may not agree with everything they say, but we do need them. Our founders were wise enough to know this. Our president is not.
Silencing the voices of opposition in the press is the first step towards a Fascist regime. We’ve now witnessed a small dollop of fascism, and if that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, it should.
