Fascist Fun

The only thing worse than the self-aware Bad Guys winning is the self-aware Bad Guys having a good time, rubbing it in your face that they never tried to hide who they were or what they wanted to do with the power they sought.

The American fascist movement, operating in broad daylight and treated by the press and most of the Democratic establishment as a normal, pro-democracy political party, published their plans for everyone to see last year. They called it Project 2025, which promised to weaponize the U.S. government against the right's many enemies and effectively end democratic self governance in America. It was always going to be a big lift – a lofty goal – to unravel 250 years of governance. Usually you'd keep that a secret.

These guys did not. They were open and honest about their aims to plunge the United States into autocratic nightmare waters, to turn America into Russia or Hungary, models of 21st Century authoritarianism. You have to respect that honesty (you don't).

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr, running the agency exactly like the mafia, shake downs and all, made is perfectly clear this week with a simple GIF that using government power to silence all prominent opponents of the Trump regime was always the grand plan. After pressuring Disney to pull regime critic Jimmy Kimmel off the air, Carr – part of our Dictatorship of Posters – posted this reply to an X post about his intentions.

After using threats of FCC investigations and punishment to boot Kimmel from the air – "We can do this the easy way or the hard way" – Carr went on the internet and bragged about his blatant corruption and unlawful use of office. These guys feel invulnerable right now. They're having fun like only a fascist can: By doing bad things, bragging about it in public, and telling us they can never be held accountable. Maybe it's good that they're having fun right now because they probably won't be having as much fun if members of the Democratic Fight Caucus rise to prominence in the next year or two and make men like Carr pay for the crimes they're doing, as fun as they are right now. I'm hoping someone in Congress has the above screenshot.

The Media Can’t Handle This Bad Faith

The modern media was not designed to responsibly cover an ascendant fascist movement determined to use democracy against itself

Bad Faith TimesDenny Carter

Carr knows what he's doing. He doesn't believe he's a Good Guy in this awful little movie. How can I be sure? It wasn't all the long ago that Carr, a shameless right-wing hatchet man for much of his career, correctly called government pressure campaigns against media outlets a "chilling transgression of free speech." Whatever Carr is, he's no dummy. He fully understands the role of the FCC is not to serve as the president's attack dog against those willing to criticize autocracy on American TV. Yet he does it anyway, and worse, he tells us this was always the plan. There was never any scenario in which Carr would become the head of the FCC and not run it as a mafia-style enforcement front, he says. We told you this was coming and no one could do anything about it.

I wrote last summer that the structure of American media made it incapable of accurately and responsibly covering a rising fascist movement that planned on using democracy against itself. Probably you understood this too. The gaslighting around Project 2025 – which was sold to the public as something entirely different from the Trump campaign – was stunning in its reach and effectiveness. American voters went to the polls in November without an inkling of how Project 2025, written by avowed enemies of representative democracy, could affect their lives in the coming years. If they had even heard of the evil right-wing plot, they were told by mainstream media outlets with great certainty that it had absolutely nothing to do with the Republican presidential candidate.

Working the media refs into not connecting the easily-connected dots between Project 2025 and the Trump campaign was a monumental victory for bad faith politics.

A media that gives everyone the benefit of the doubt and never questions the true intentions of those in power is useless in our post-truth, fragmented political and cultural era. The modern media was not designed to responsibly cover an ascendant fascist movement determined to use democracy against itself, operating within the confines of democratic politics until it gains power and undoes the system from within. Covering politics through the lens of bad faith would create a far healthier, more honest political environment in which the truth can finally draw some oxygen. Otherwise, we have to do stupid shit like pretend Project 2025 has no connection to the Republican Party and would not be implemented down to the letter in a second Trump administration.

Now we have Carr, booting regime opponents off the TV sets of Americans everywhere, smiling and laughing and having a grand old time while happily conceding that yes, this weaponization of the FCC was the plan and it's working beautifully. It's crazy-making shit for the clear-eyed among us.

The hope, for now, is that Carr and others who are publicly admitting their transgressions against the country and its constitutional order are one day held to account by Democrats who seem eager to make the fascists pay a price for their fun.

Follow Denny Carter on BlueSky at @dennycarter.bsky.social