Defiance!
Called for, but Scary
By Arthur Schwartz
The 24-hour news cycle is numbing. Donald Trump has been a master at turning heads as soon as something negative comes up. But September wasn’t numbing; it was scary.
I thought back to 1968 when I was teenager attending my first anti-war demonstration. I came home with a bundle of handouts from various left-leaning groups. One of them was The Daily World, the newspaper of the Communist Party USA. When my dad saw what I was reading, his face lost all color. “We have to burn this,“ he said. “If anyone sees you with this you could be blacklisted for the rest of your life.” And burn it he did. I thought he was nuts, but soon this naïve 15-year-old read about the McCarthy period, which had faded out in 1960, even though its architect, J. Edgar Hoover, remained FBI director until 1972. It was a period where, despite the First Amendment, tens of thousands of Americans suffered great harm because they had “associated” with the Communist Party. An astounding list of people were barred from their jobs, including such luminaries as Lucille Ball, Charlie Chaplin, Zero Mostel, Burgess Meredith, Arthur Miller, Leonard Bernstein, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Danny Kaye.
Demonization because of political views continues to exist but efforts at suppression of the free press were generally sporadic. During Trump’s first term, he made inflammatory statements about the media, and helped stoke the rise of Fox News and its sycophants. But what we have seen of late is something new.
Trump’s Term 2 has been an attack on freedom from day one. His first targets were schools and universities. They rely heavily on federal funding which Trump began to use as a weapon immediately. I hate using the word “fascist,” but I have written before about how fascism begins by attacking critical thinking. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, just published a book, called, Why Fascists Fear Teachers. In it she says, “Teachers are widely recognized and appreciated for dedicating themselves to helping all children reach their unique potential… Why do so many extremist politicians think it’s OK to smear and insult teachers? Why are we seeing the defunding of already strapped schools, the book bans, the censoring of honest history and so many other actions that prevent our children from getting the education they deserve? Why are these actions, which are warning signs of increasing authoritarianism, happening in the United States today? The answer is that authoritarians fear a well-educated citizenry. They fear the teaching of critical thinking, of honest history, of pluralism—because their brand of greed, power and privilege cannot survive in a democracy of diverse, educated citizens.”
One way to attack teachers, and starve critical thinking was to bar teaching about our country’s history of oppressing Black people, the subjugation of women, LBGTQ people, the disabled and immigrants, and to stop teaching about the amazing struggle to overcome prejudice and inequality. State after state has bowed to Trump’s Day One dictates. In Florida, schools must teach that there were benefits to slavery. Schools like my alma-mater, Columbia, fearing hundreds of millions in cuts, are sharing admissions data and lesson plans and eliminating whole departments.
Trump started his free speech attacks by bringing baseless “defamation” suits against the media. Fearful of government persecution — now suffered by NPR and PBS — the titans began caving in. ABC paid him $15 million, Paramount $16 million, and YouTube $24 million. He also has multibillion-dollar lawsuits against The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.
Then came the Charlie Kirk assassination. I had barely heard about Charlie Kirk before he was killed. Who was he? Kirk was a speaker who went from campus to campus building a movement centered on MAGA politics — politics excoriating Blacks,
LGBTQ folks, immigrants, and yes, Jews. Kirk did not invent traveling “stump debates” or campus spectacles. But he mastered a modern version of it — by bullying underprepared college kids rather than engaging seasoned orators, scholars, or those with deep pockets and experience. The absurdity lies not just in his tactics but in how the media framed them as legitimate debate, when in fact the entire setup was a carefully staged performance.
Kirk’s “Prove Me Wrong” campus tours were never about truth. They were about manufactured victories. Vulnerable students became props for viral clips. Intellectual violence replaced intellectual humility. And a generation of learners was left with the impression that serious debate is nothing more than entertainment. The tragedy is that college campuses desperately need more authentic, principled dialogue. Students deserve engagement that strengthens their reasoning, not performances designed to make them look foolish. And as his support grew, Kirk doxed people with whom he disagreed, and went after the jobs of academics and journalists. At 32, when he was killed, he had a long list of people who he had driven from academia because of their views.
It is not ironic that Donald Trump, FCC Chair David Carr, and Vice President J.D. Vance have led calls to punish those who were critical of both Kirk and Trump. Trump has openly stated that media reports which are critical of him are unlawful. Fear of Trump and the FCC drove Steven Colbert off the air followed by Jimmy Kimmel. The list of media figures and journalists fired for being critical of Kirk and/or Trump is astounding. On Fox, a host said that homeless people should be given lethal injections. He gave a half-assed apology after the internet exploded. But The New York Times reported on September 26 that more than 145 people in a wide range of occupations have been fired or disciplined after they made statements about the assassination of Kirk, mostly teachers and media personnel.
We live in a liberal community, in the most politically progressive county in the United States (not one elected Republican in Manhattan). It’s up to us to say “No!” and to speak out and to help us publish the Village View, so we can tell it like it is. Don’t let my father’s fears come true 60 years later.
Footnote: When you vote on November 4, vote for a bright vision of the future, not for a “Liberal Donald Trump,” who Mayor Eric Adams has called a “snake in the grass.” Andrew Cuomo once tried to get me fired because I said something critical of him which was picked up by the NY Post. His vision of the future of our city is no better than Trump’s.
