The Censorship Didn't Start with Colbert, and It Won't Stop There

A big ugly truth.

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By now, you’ve probably heard.

CBS is canceling The Late Show. They’re not just firing Colbert. They’re ending the entire program and bookending its long history. Even if the show was often just providing a short break from the daily assault of American life and politics, it had become a fixture of American culture.

Why should we care?

There’s a few ways to react to the news, and I’ve already met a few of them up close. People have already been telling me it doesn’t matter, because late-night television is dying. Others say Colbert will be fine, because he can find another platform to host his show. Besides, still others say, Colbert only provided light entertainment that ultimately served the interests of the empire. He never really offered the hard truths Americans need to hear. In some ways, you could even say he kept millions of Americans complacent, diverting their anger into harmless jokes.

If you’re busy growing beans for the collapse, Colbert’s cancellation probably doesn’t register on your radar as something that needs your urgent attention. Maybe you even think it’s a good thing. With less diversions, Americans might finally be left with no choice but to spill out into the streets in more meaningful forms of protest, or to finally start growing tomatoes in their yard.

Sure, it’s all valid, but…

Let’s talk about a Russian literary theorist named Mikhail Bakhtin. He came up with a concept that helps explain what’s going on.

It’s called carnival, or the carnivalesque.

Bakhtin lived through the Russian Revolution and the Stalin years. He would know a thing or two about censorship and propaganda. According to him, carnival served an important role in society going back to the middle ages and beyond. Carnivals and festivals offered spaces where ordinary people could challenge power relationships and transgress social norms. And they did. The events at carnivals ridiculed authority openly, and everyone loved it. The rich tolerated it.

According to Bakhtin, it was a mixed blessing.

On the one hand, carnival gave the masses a vital outlet to communicate their discontent to those in power, or even organize for a better future. It let them remember they were something more than a subject. On the other hand, carnival might only serve as a pressure valve for that discontent and keep it from building up into any real kind of revolution. Carnival might only offer the illusion of subversion and challenge to power, and that’s dangerous.

Where does late night television fall here?

It’s probably both.

On the one hand, you could say these comedians have offered an important check on power, and they’ve served as symbols of free speech by criticizing Trump and saying things that daytime news would never dare.

On the other hand, these hosts might just offer up a superficial carnival for their viewers, a safe but temporary space to get their anger out, precisely so they could get up and go to work the next morning rather than participate in anything that actually overturned unjust politics and economic systems.

You could say hosts like Colbert have enabled Americans to live through them vicariously, just like Trump’s supporters live vicariously through him. I know that’s a harsh criticism, but we have to consider that.

Regardless, one thing remains true:

It’s bigger than late night television, and it matters because this cancellation tells us what to expect going forward. Criticize the president, and he’ll make you pay. He won’t always send you to a gulag, but he’ll seek revenge. Letting this happen clears the way for him to go after anyone. We’re talking about the guy who buried his ex-wife on his golf course.

As unlikely as it sounds now, we’re looking at a time when your own media platforms might kick you off for daring to talk about growing tomatoes. Or they might decide your favorite homesteader or prepper on YouTube represents a threat to society. After all, there’s perfectly good veggies at the store, and your communist backyard homestead hurts the economy. Trump isn’t fuming at homesteaders now, but how long do we have until governors, mayors, and county officials start following his lead and targeting media they don’t like?

So, what happened with Colbert?

It’s pretty clear. As Parker Molloy explains, a tech billionaire named Larry Ellison is helping his son’s media company, Skydance, acquire Paramount. The deal needs approval from Trump’s FCC.

Paramount owns CBS, and they’ve already paid Trump $16 million to settle a “meritless” lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with his political opponent, Kamala Harris. They’re never going to come out and say they’re throwing Colbert under the bus. They’re not going to admit they’re caving to extortion or blackmail. They’re just going to call it “a financial decision” and move on. In the end, they’re telling a version of the truth. They’re doing this for money.

It gets worse.

Paramount also owns Comedy Central. So it’s possible, even likely, that Paramount will axe that show as well. Jon Stewart has already said it’s a possibility. “I’ve been kicked out of shittier establishments than that.”

We’re watching thinly-veiled censorship, but that’s been happening for years now. Meta has been censoring information on public health. YouTube has been demonetizing accounts for the same reason. TikTok has been issuing “warnings” to doctors and scientists for fact-checking RFK, Jr. It’s hard to find a media platform or outlet that isn’t suppressing the truth.

The censorship won’t stop with CBS.

Trump is already threatening to investigate multiple media companies and liberal fundraising organizations like ActBlue. He’s currently defunding PBS and NPR. These networks haven’t always knocked it out of the park when it comes to reporting the truth, but Trump wants to kill them completely and replace them with something much, much worse. He’s using every tool at his disposal to remake the media in his own image. He’s going after the cultural and political institutions that feed the resistance. He’s not personally doing it, but he has very smart teams working for him. They’re taking his orders, and they want exactly what he does.

Meanwhile, Skydance looks to acquire rags like The Free Press, run by “journalist” Bari Weiss. They positioned themselves at the forefront of the anti-vaxxer backlash to the Biden administration, feeding their readers a steady diet of misinformation about the harms vaccines can do to children.

Their reward has been tens of millions in subscriptions alone. The Free Press now enjoys a net worth of $100 million.

That’s what the Ellisons and their tech bro billionaire friends want the media to look like. It’s also what they want the internet to look like.

If you want to know the stakes, imagine an internet where you can’t find reliable information about protecting yourself from the next pandemic. You can’t find anyone telling you how to grow tomatoes. You can’t even find anyone to make you laugh about what’s going on. All you can find is pile after pile of bad AI summaries and artwork, and publications like The Free Press telling you why it’s good to drink raw milk and host measles parties for your kids.

There’s one answer to this, but I personally don’t know how to do it. We have to create our own media outlets. We need networks that can’t be bought and appropriated by billionaires in either party. We need places that aren’t going to ghost ban doomers and push pictures of hollyhocks in our faces. We need to talk about that, and we need to either learn the skills or find the people who have them. Even if you think it’s all going to collapse, we need a decent internet in the meantime, free of enshittification. For ten years now, a certain crowd has been telling us this or that can’t happen. When it happens, they tell us it didn’t matter anyway.

It has always mattered.

Of course, maybe you’re ready to throw your devices in the dumpster and move to a farm. If so, I can’t blame you for that either.

But where does this stop? It doesn’t.

Not on its own.