The media are the regime. In a democracy, media control is power. No politician can really be considered a “leader” without the press behind him. Even a landslide victory such as Richard Nixon’s in 1972 is hollow without media support.

The media have always been biased, but the United States was different from the rest of the Western world because of its guarantee of free speech. This changed after Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. Those in media and in the government concluded, perhaps rightly, that they must not let Americans discuss certain subjects for fear they would reach the “wrong” conclusions. Much of the press also abandoned the pretense of impartiality. Instead, many journalists took it upon themselves to police speech and to encourage deplatforming. 4chan is the latest target.

The best way to justify repression was to torture the language. “Hate speech” became dangerous violence; actual violence against “haters” became self-defense. (Even self-improvement is “radicalism.”) Repression requires high-profile cases that can be used to justify censorship.

The most important such case was the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. State and city police allowed the violence; an independent report found that the police chief instructed his men to let the opposing parties fight. Few journalists cared. Many white advocates, even those who had nothing to do with the event, were deplatformed. The justification was Heather Heyer’s death and the ideas that supposedly led to it.

Joe Biden claimed Charlottesville was the reason he ran for president, saying there was a battle for the “soul of this nation.” Despite the confused circumstances of James Fields’s actions, he was sentenced to life in prison. The Alt Right never recovered, with activists cut off from financial support and broader audiences. The Alt Right did not “die.” It was killed by state and corporate action. That may strengthen us in the long-run and may have been necessary, but it was shocking to those who believed freedom of speech meant something.

In 2022, when Payton Gendron killed ten people in a grocery store in Buffalo, he left behind a manifesto that blamed mass non-white immigration and the Great Replacement. Both the state and media decided “The Great Replacement” was a dangerous idea that fueled violence. Thus, the idea itself became quasi-criminal and journalists hunted “root causes.”

The government also edged closer to criminalizing speech. H.R. 61, introduced by Shelia Jackson Lee, was an act “to prevent and prosecute white supremacy hate crime and conspiracy to commit white supremacy inspired hate crime.” It defined “white supremacy inspired hate crime,” in part, as crimes in which someone published material that generated “antagonism based on ‘replacement theory’ or hate speech that vilifies or is otherwise directed against any non-White person or group.” This absurd law failed.

In June 2022, the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning Great Replacement Theory. Rep. Jamaal Bowman called it a “toxic lie.” He argued it was a “dangerous intoxicant for extremists” that might lead people to go on “shooting sprees and massacres and members of targeted minority groups.” He said Critical Race Theory was not linked to any such crimes. That’s because no one is looking. There have been many black attacks on cops inspired by false claims of “racism,” including the BLM-inspired murder of five police officers in Dallas. The media and universities seem unworried about the possible consequences of the ideas they preach to a group with low impulse control.

The conservative movement, including President Trump, did little in the face of censorship. Conservatism Inc.’s inaction isn’t surprising. The key lesson in 2016 was not that the Republican Party lost control over its voters, but that the conservative movement lost control over its supporters. The Alt Right, which was most effective when it was an online subculture, began beating mainstream conservative outlets in audience share. If free speech had prevailed, it’s possible that the most “hardline” figures, such as Andrew Anglin, the hosts of TheRightStuff.biz, and podcast or YouTube hosts would enjoy larger audiences than “mainstream” hosts. Instead, they are cut off from access and from financial services. Self-declared anarchists and communists have no such problems. President Trump’s own complacency lasted until he himself was deplatformed. If he had managed to keep speech free, he might not have lost in 2020 or been indicted in 2023.

This is the way power works, and it’s useless to complain that it “isn’t fair.” It does mean that we can dismiss naïve claims about the “marketplace of ideas.” American society is governed from the top down by control of media, with the state and its security organs partially determining who speaks and who does not. It is not outright totalitarian, but neither is Russia. This doesn’t stop people from accurately calling Russia an illiberal, authoritarian regime. If America isn’t quite as authoritarian as Russia — and that’s debatable — it’s clearly moving in this direction, but in defense of values of which the media approve.

Nontheless, one might expect that “transgender” Audrey Hale’s murders at a Christian school in Nashville might cause some reaction. In a free society, speech and violence are not the same thing. A person should not be blamed if someone twists his words and murders innocent people. However, those with power have already decided that certain ideas are dangerous.

“Transgenderism” and its persecution complex could be one such idea. Though we live in a society that demands media be carefully controlled lest young people absorb dangerous ideas, it is impolitic to suggest young people are being brainwashed or pressured into going along with a psychological desires that every other generation would have called mental illness. Nor dare anyone suggest that the parents who run to journalists to claim their toddlers are “trans” are suffering from Munchausen by proxy or are attention addicts and status seekers. Our society celebrates grooming youth into a lifestyle where more than 40 percent of those involved try to kill themselves. According to recent surveys, the number of young people claiming to be “trans” has nearly doubled in recent years. Today, the intersectional and transgender flags have more moral significance than the American flag.

Though some conservative states are restricting medical treatments for minors, those in the heights of power clearly favor the “trans” trend. The White House and other leading Democrats support what is delicately called “gender affirming care.” Giving grotesqueries in women’s clothing an audience of children is the newest way Democrats such as New York Attorney General Letitia James taunt conservatives.

Media may insist that people “affirm” a “trans” person’s imagination and use the pronouns he or she demands, but most people will notice someone’s real sex. Someone using the wrong pronoun or saying “sir” or “ma’am” could spark a psychological crisis. The newly invented “trans” community is, not surprisingly, insecure, and claims that bans on “gender affirming care” are “genocide.”

A lot of talk of victimization is probably driven by social media or sexual fixations, and by the desperate desire of many young Americans to seek out victim status and thus win moral superiority. However, it also appears that the “trans” community is sensitive and quick to violence. It’s not surprising that the working-class Communist toughs of previous generations of antifa have been largely replaced by “trans” activists whose mug shot photos often belie their preferred pronouns.

Inventing a victim category that appeals to the mentally instable, pumping them up with claims that they face “genocide,” and then urging them to take up arms against persecution that no one is actually suggesting is incitement.

Transgender human blames J.K. Rowling for trans deaths and praises book in which J.K. Rowling dies:

"People like J.K. Rowling need to f*cking stop because my people are dying because of her. She is killing us.

There's one more good thing about this book – J.K. Rowling dies…I… pic.twitter.com/GUw8rsFdBH

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 30, 2023

let's do a little shopping on Etsy!

oh no, increasingly normalized extremist rhetoric has somehow aged terribly! pic.twitter.com/yZ20GVQu4L

— Males Of Reddit (@MalesOfReddit) March 29, 2023

Rainbow Cult: Blend natural female irrationality with natural male irrationality—puree scoops of synthetic hormones and ‘recreational’ chemicals —mind-rape programming. CULT of Madonna, Cher, Lady Gaga. Dead children. NOT born this way. Rainbow Flag = Death of Life: pic.twitter.com/B9166uuvXn

— Michael Yon (@Michael_Yon) March 30, 2023

(Note: the flyer featured from 0:11–0:12 is a fake, but the rest appear legitimate.)

*Reposted for the record with some content now censored per Twitter rules*
In recent months, rhetoric about carrying out "revenge" & "vengeance" on society for some states restricting the medical transitioning of minors has surged. Through my reporting on #Antifa, I've long… pic.twitter.com/34krz6ENWt

— Andy Ngô