From Susan Zakin's 9-18-25 JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEARS article entitled "Letter From Spain: Is It Fascism Yet?":
My cousin Ellin wrote a whole book on satire in the 1960s and 1970s, using it as a vehicle to reflect the zeitgeist of those rebellious years. Do satirists change the zeitgeist? Possibly. The unfortunate thing is that someone in the Trump administration clearly believes that.
When Stephen Colbert’s show on CBS was canceled, it was sad and shocking but he’s still around for now so perhaps the effect was muffled. The craven cowardice and corruption on the part of CBS, now controlled by Larry Ellison’s Nepo Baby son, created such a tsunami of criticism that somehow it didn’t seem as bad.
One by one, though, it adds up. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The Smithsonian. The Kennedy Center. All gone or desecrated.
Trump is killing art and substituting his fascist gilt and ormolu.
But Jimmy Kimmel? An everyman, a genial family guy who talks about his kids, crinkly around the eyes, clever but somehow sensible, with Kimmel defenestrated a Rubicon has been crossed. That’s true even here in Spain, where everyone is talking about it.
Well, we still have South Park, we tell each other. And Substack.
Maybe we should stop kidding ourselves. Listen to Russian dissident and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov on his Substack:
“It’s not ‘really’ censorship, they say. There are still other critical journalists, shows, outlets, so it can’t be as bad as you say. That’s what we were told as Putin cracked down a more every day, every year. Don’t make excuses for abuse of power. Don’t comply in advance.”
To read Zakin's entire article, click HERE.
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