Clear and Present Danger
Lying about an election has proven more harmful to America than a fire in a theater ever could.
In 1984, Oceania’s cultural contexts seem inverted: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
Another way of looking at it would be to understand the ideals of all states are equivalent in their ideal. The extremes are absolute: Impurity is Purity.
As Fascist regimes install themselves, among their very first targets is public speech. Democracy demands public speech, and among the first restrictions placed upon it involve challenges to the regime. However, the operational framework of the social system that preceded the rise of the regime inevitably had its own restrictions upon speech, that had allowed that era’s ruling class its hegemony.
Rights are conceptual universals, without beginning or end, restricted solely by the shortcomings of the Modern Revolution itself to spread them. Universality is often confused with absolutism, and while rights have no beginning or end and we all share in them equally, they have always been limited.
In some cases and in some ways, constitutional rights—citizenship, suffrage, and speech—have been extended to entities previously not recognized to have them. While at various times and places, laws have been created to make crimes of particular speech and suffrage. We are presently witnessing major incursions on the right to citizenship, and to pursue citizenship.
Crying “FIRE!” in a crowded theater when there is none is the apocryphal example of causing clear and present danger through speech. Doing the same thing when there is a fire will likely cause the same outcome, one is immune however from being pinned as the cause; instead it would be the arsonist who caused the panic. This leads to the question what amount of fire is needed for a legitimate cry of “FIRE!”—would sparks suffice?
Unsatisfied with merely targeting an amorphous anti-Fascism in the wake of the Kirk assassination…
Trump’s handlers (the old man is a shell of what he was just a decade ago) have expanded their concept of “anti-fascism” thusly:
Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality. As described in the Order of September 22, 2025 (Designating Antifa as a Domestic Terrorist Organization), the groups and entities that perpetuate this extremism have created a movement that embraces and elevates violence to achieve policy outcomes, including justifying additional assassinations. For example, Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin engraved the bullets used in the murder with so-called “anti-fascist” rhetoric.
Big Bother [no typo] wants people to see the enemies among them. Failure to overtly subscribe to the proper philosophies and demonstrate the proper morality is suspicious—and will be made into probable cause soon enough. It goes without saying that demystifying any of the sacred philosophies constitutes an attack on that philosophy.
Christianity is the only religion, capitalism is the only economy, and America is the best (it says so in the Trump Bible). Under this framework, the publication of the Final Dictionary of the American Language makes sense, in a Christo-Fascist sort of way. [Does anyone want to join me on this grift?]
Christianity as a philosophy has only been able to survive across multiple social orders due to its malleability. It has proven adaptable to feudal monarchies, modern nation-states, and, so far, postmodern global corporatism. These social orders have different relations of production and different administrative social structures; they employ the sign system of Christianity in different ways.
And that’s where we are. Despite all the advances and benefits from scientific and materialist understandings of the world, we ultimately order our social lives around a lot of mysticism. Words are symbols and meanings cannot be fixed.
The current white American Evangelism is largely a Christian Nationalism with a Jesus whose literal teachings must be put aside, for the safety of the nation.
That is why Charlie Kirk preaching against empathy made sense, and did not offend believers’ ears. Uncaring is Christianity. Purity, on both sides.
Talking about rights as if they never faced restrictions in the first place is to leave ourselves more vulnerable to future restrictions. Extortion, blackmail, fraud, threats of violence, libel, conspiracy, causing clear and present danger, pornography, nudity, advertising, and taking certain sacraments are all forms of legally-restricted speech, some of them criminal.
We might imagine a call to action based on what one knows to be untrue to be another form deserving restriction. When a broadcaster titles a network or show “News” and broadcasts known falsehoods as non-fiction on it they should not be immune from consequences. A politics of division relies on misinformation, disinformation, and slander; I learned this well while fighting to end the Drug War.
I was advised by a veteran advocate early in my career, Always tell the truth because you are arguing for the truth—they are the ones who must lie.