Why Authoritarians Fear Political Satire

They also fear teachers.

Update

ABC/Disney announced that Jimmy Kimmel will be back on air on Tuesday, September 23.

Introduction

Stephen Colbert’s CBS show was abruptly canceled. Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night program was suspended this week under White House and FCC pressure. It was tempting to dismiss the moves as show-business drama. After all, networks shuffle their programming constantly. But these were not business decisions. They were political punishments. And they strike at the very heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect.

But we should also note that it isn’t just Colbert and Kimmel being canceled. Teachers in Cobb County, GA, where I live have retired. Some were fired or put on suspension because of what they wrote on social media. Still, as reported here, there were mass disciplinary and retaliatory actions against people for commentary. Social media posts that celebrate, justify, or trivialize Kirk’s death faced backlash. Posts encouraging further political violence, denigrating Kirk, or tarnishing his legacy were also targeted. But these efforts were promoted and directly engaged in by the U.S. federal government. President Donald Trump explicitly condemned the left for the violence in his speech to the nation. Left-wing groups and causes were targeted. He also planned to watch political speech. He decided to revoke visas. Furthermore, he aimed to label far-left groups as domestic terrorists in response to the attack.

Satire at the Core of the First Amendment

The Constitution does not treat all speech equally. Political expression — especially satire, parody, and criticism of those in power — occupies the highest rung of protection. The Supreme Court has made this clear in rulings from Hustler Magazine v. Falwell (1988), which defended offensive parody of a public figure, to New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), which set the standard for criticism of officials. Colbert’s sharp-edged jokes and Kimmel’s earnest monologues about Trump administration policies were not mere entertainment. They were commentary, and thus shielded. Retaliating against that speech is like retaliating against democracy’s watchdogs. These are the comedians who hold up a mirror to power.

Government Power, Private Networks

Defenders of the cancellations will say: “CBS and ABC are private companies. They can do what they want.” True — unless they are being coerced. And coercion is exactly what happened here. According to reports, the Trump White House threatened ABC’s parent company with FCC scrutiny. They even hinted at affiliate license reviews if Kimmel’s program was not “disciplined.” The FCC holds enormous power over broadcasters. Licenses must be renewed regularly, and the threat of non-renewal can sink a network.

What did Jimmy Kimmel say that led to this upheaval? On Monday, he mentioned a disputed claim, that the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize” Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old man charged with the murder of Charlie Kirk, “as anything other than one of them.” Kimmel did not make evil or thoughtless comments about Kirk.

He mocked Donald Trump. Trump, like any authoritarian, hates it when someone makes a joke out of something he said or did. On last Friday’s Oval Office presser, Trump was infatuated with the numbers in the high 90s. He claimed that more than 90% of the stories written about him are propaganda and simply not true. He went on and on, very much like the 4-year old mourning a goldfish.

Kimmel was on the mark when he said that MAGA was trying to distance themselves from Tyler Robinson. Robinson grew up (he’s only 22) in a republican family, and lived his life in a conservative community. Of course he has his own opinions, but we don’t really know what they are. Do we. He apparently isn’t who Trump claimed, that the killer had to be from the radical left. That was even before he was arrested.

The Chilling Effect of Fear & Silence

The immediate casualties are Colbert and Kimmel. But the larger danger lies in the ripple effect. Other hosts — Seth Meyers, John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Jimmy Fallon — will reconsider their satire. They will think twice before aiming satire at the administration. Network executives, fearing federal retaliation, will preemptively cut risky material. Writers’ rooms will mute punchlines. The edge that makes satire powerful will be dulled. This is how censorship spreads. Not through sweeping bans, but through fear, and silence. The government does not need to cancel every show; it only needs to make one or two high-profile examples. The rest will self-censor.

But so far, the response has been just the opposite. The late night hosts came out taking the government, ABC/Disney, and affiliate networks to task. All of the hosts backed Kimmel, and mocked Trump, and Brendan Carr, head of the FCC.

Why Authoritarians Fear Laughter

It is telling that satire, of all genres, is under assault. Authoritarian leaders understand that ridicule delegitimizes power more efficiently than argument. A chart or a speech can be rebutted. A joke that makes the president look ridiculous can’t. That is why Soviet authorities censored jokes. Autocrats in Hungary and Turkey sued comedians. Despots everywhere fear being laughed at. When the United States begins punishing its comedians, it signals a shift. The shift is from democracy confident enough to tolerate ridicule. It progresses to illiberalism that can’t bear mockery.

Ruth Ben-Ghiat has written much about how humor is an effective anti-authoritarian tool. In one of her Lucid (Substack) posts, she explains why “strongmen” fear ridicule the most. She provides examples to illustrate this. Here are two examples:

1. Humor can be a way to cope with fear and dread in circumstances where freedom has been vanquished. Journalist Masha Gessen has written that jokes “reclaim the power to define.” They help inhabit reality in situations where people can feel powerless. Even if those jokes can seem ghoulish to outsiders fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with such realities. “Did you hear about the new bus line? It runs from the National Stadium (site of mass detention and torture in Santiago) to the cemetery. Pinochet is really efficient!” This was “gallows humor” during the Chilean dictatorship.
2. Humor can make us aware of corruption and injustice. It allows us to see people, places, and situations differently. These may be things we have come to regard as inevitable or ordinary. That was one goal of the projections. The artist Robin Bell staged them on the facade of Trump International Hotel during Trump’s presidency. A May 2017 work read “Pay Trump Bribes Here.” In 2018, another projection stated “This is a Sh*ithole” with its whimsical poop emojis. This projection responded to Trump saying that he did not want immigrants from Haiti and other majority non-White “shithole” countries. Lucid (Substack) post,

Consequences Beyond Comedy

The silencing of late-night satire does not stand alone. It echoes what we have already seen on university campuses, where professors face funding freezes and political monitors in classrooms. It mirrors attempts to pressure journalists with access threats and selective prosecutions. Step by step, the Trump administration is narrowing the arenas in which dissent can be voiced. Censoring satire matters because it collapses one of the last mass-audience platforms for critique. Millions never read a legal opinion. They not attend a lecture. Still, they still meet politics through Colbert’s monologues or Kimmel’s opening jokes. Shut those down, and you have not just silenced comedians — you have muted a public square.

What Comes Next

ABC and CBS have already capitulated to Trump. ABC paid Trump $15 million because the word “rape” was used by George Stephanopoulos in an interview. ABC decided not to fight Trump, and paid up. CBS was sued by Trump for $10 billion over a 2024 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. The case was settled by Paramount for $16 million. Paramount was seeking federal approval for a merger. The settlement was highly controversial and condemned by many media experts. 

Kimmel did not make “offensive and insensitive” remarks about the murder of Charlie Kirk. Yes, the network can make decisions about programming. But “a government official can’t compel a private party to punish or suppress disfavored speech on his behalf. In the Kimmel case, a government official (National Rifle Association v. Vullo}. In an article on MSNBC, Jacob Schriner-Briggs is a visiting assistant professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law. Brendan Carr, FCC Chairman, suggested he tell ABC/Disney that Kimmel should be punished for his speech. He even went as far to say, we can do it the easy way, or the hard way. Brendan Carr also said, “These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel. If not, there’s going to be extra work for the FCC ahead.”

The legal challenges will come. Networks sue. Civil liberties groups will file briefs. Courts eventually reaffirm that the First Amendment forbids retaliation against political speech. But lawsuits take years, and the damage happens now. In the meantime, networks will err on the side of silence. That chilling effect is harder to measure than a canceled show, but it is more corrosive. A student who stops asking questions means a small silence. A professor who drops a reading does too. A comedian who trims a monologue is also a small silence. Collectively, they create a democracy that speaks less, laughs less, and thinks less freely.

Naming the Pattern

If there is one lesson from history, it is this: censorship rarely arrives all at once. It arrives as a series of “exceptions,” each one justified as minor, situational, or deserved. It started on January 20, 2025 with Trump’s first set of Executive orders, and continued for months. Today it is Colbert and Kimmel. Tomorrow it is a journalist, a novelist, a professor, or a teacher. The pattern is clear: when power fears ridicule, it begins by silencing the jesters. The canceling of a late-night joke seems trivial against the backdrop of global crises. But in a democracy, humor is not trivial. Humor is a form of truth-telling. And when the government cancels the joke, it is really trying to cancel the truth.