Charlie Kirk and the growing culture of self-censorship in the US

The heinous murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk may prove a "Reichstag fire" moment in US politics rationalising repression and, especially, censorship against critics of the Donald Trump administration. Mr Kirk was so dedicated that reportedly a mere phone call from the president got him to immediately stop discussing deceased sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.

The administration has made no secret of its intentions. Mr Kirk's widow, Erika, said she forgave his murderer because "it's what Christ did and it's what Charlie would do”. Mr Trump retorted: "He did not hate his opponents. He wanted the best for them. That's where I disagreed with Charlie. I hate my opponents and I don't want the best for them". Of that, there’s no doubt.

Mr Trump’s pursuit of his enemies, weaponising the Justice Department – a charge levelled at the Biden administration but undermined by its prosecution of Mr Biden’s son, Hunter – was starkly illustrated when he fired Erik Siebert, the US attorney investigating New York State’s Attorney General Letitia James for potential mortgage fraud.

She secured a major legal victory in 2024 over Mr Trump and his company for long-standing fraudulent business practices. Mr Siebert found no credible evidence against Ms James and therefore filed no charges against her. He's been replaced by Lindsey Halligan, a staunch supporter of Mr Trump who has never prosecuted anyone for anything.

This appears to be the new standard in Washington: loyalty to the president personally and politically is the qualification that really matters. As 28-year-old Madison Cawthorn, who has just been appointed to a highly sensitive vetting position, explained to incredulous reporters asking how on earth he got such a job, "No one is really qualified for anything. We all just fake it until we make it”. There we have it.

Ms James can expect to be indicted despite the lack of evidence against her. But White House border czar Tom Homan apparently has nothing to fear despite reports that the DOJ has video of him accepting $50,000 in cash bribes last year from undercover FBI agents posing as businessmen seeking contracts from a potential second Trump administration. The investigation was apparently shuttered as soon as Mr Trump resumed office.

Former FBI director James Comey and California Senator Adam Schiff are also squarely in Mr Trump's crosshairs. Naming them along with Ms James on social media, Mr Trump berated his Attorney General, Pam Bondi, for not putting his adversaries behind bars yet. It’s "all talk and no action," he complained, "they're all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done." Needless to say, there’s no precedent for a US president behaving like this.

Mr Trump has threatened to use the sweeping anti-conspiracy law, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act, that was designed to cripple the mafia, against his critics, including women who shouted in his direction at a seafood restaurant. More plausibly, administration officials have pointed to billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Institute and the Ford Foundation as potential targets for conspiracy and even anti-terrorism charges.

The Kirk assassination has prompted a radical reinterpretation of the First Amendment by administration officials and supporters. Ms Bondi and others distinguished between "free speech and hate speech," declaring "we will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech." She later had to admit there’s no "hate speech" under US law, and that only threats of violence, under very limited conditions, can be criminally prosecuted.

The president was right behind her, though. "I'm a very strong person for free speech," he insisted, but when "97 per cent of stories [about me] are bad, I think that's really illegal." (It’s not.)

When TV stations are too critical of him, he has said: "I would think maybe their license [to broadcast] should be taken away." Mr Trump has also used deeply shocking warnings to journalists refusing to reveal sources.

Highly coercive threats from Federal Communications Commission chief Brandon Carr led to the temporary suspension of late-night TV comedian Jimmy Kimmel for remarks about the right-wing reaction to the Kirk assassination. He has since been restored by Disney, which controls ABC, the network on which he appears, even though the FCC is not authorised to police the political content of TV shows.

Jimmy Kimmel being embraced by Guillermo Rodriguez on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Sept 23. Disney via AP

Meanwhile, journalists covering the Pentagon will now have to sign a 17-page pledge not to disclose any information not officially approved for release, even if it is unclassified. That would've meant, for example, no public disclosure of the "Signalgate" texting scandal, planes falling off aircraft carriers, the political purging of military lawyers, and senior meetings beginning with Christian prayers and attended by the Defence Secretary's wife, among other recent news.

It’s unclear how the media will respond to this unprecedented, systematised Pentagon censorship, and the broader range of formal and informal policing of media content. Self-censorship in the US now appears more pervasive than at any time since the early 1950s, if not much earlier.

Beyond the government's assault on free speech, including at the administratively and legally besieged major universities, lies the equally unprecedented centralisation of media ownership and control by a tiny handful of very wealthy people.

Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, and his son, David, both staunch Trump supporters, are building a massive media empire. Their company Skydance effectively took over the media company Paramount Global, which owns CBS, CNN, Discovery and many other assets. They are also reportedly preparing to acquire Warner Bros.

Along with the Murdoch family and Michael Dell, chairman of Dell Technologies – all staunchly on the political right – the Ellisons are preparing to seize control of TikTok. Anti-trust law enforcement is, apparently, a quaint anachronism.

Mr Ellison is reportedly worth $360 billion. Tesla’s board has reportedly offered Elon Musk $1 trillion if he can lead the company to an ambitious but not impossible valuation of $8.6 trillion in the next decade.

Given the virtually unimaginable wealth of a few people with passionate media and right-wing goals, combined with the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision that effectively eliminated any limitations on political spending in the name of free speech, the current campaign of censorship by the Trump administration may be supererogatory.

In recent decades several societies in the west and elsewhere, on both the political right and left, have been characterised by government restrictions and adverse consequences for disfavoured political speech, with a constant barrage of polemical messaging in both legacy and emerging media that are overwhelmingly dominated by a few super-wealthy supporters of the current government.

The outcome is invariably and decidedly grim.