America’s political Right is telling the Left to ‘come and take it.' It’s an ancient expression, its use spanning 2,500 years, from the Battle of Thermopylae to the opening salvo of the war for Texas independence. Today, the defiant taunt is aimed at Leftist politicians trying to relieve Americans of their First Amendment right to free speech.
Opposition to California Governor Gavin Newsom outlawing the distribution of AI-generated political humor, parody, satire and related content prior to Election Day has sparked one of the most vocal outcries to a new law in living memory. A chorus of critics is literally daring Newsom to prosecute them for creating an expanding portfolio of humorous satirical videos, cracking-up conservative viewers on X.
The action of Newsom and similarly inclined authoritarians reflects another trend in American politics. Conservatives have finally learned and understand the tactics of Saul Alinsky and his celebrated book Rules for Radicals. His instruction manual on political combat teaches, “Humor is essential to a successful tactician, for the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule.” Give the man kudos for being right about that, and to the Right for figuring it out.
Now that conservatives are using the Left’s tactics against them, the reaction is to criminalize the satire that Alinsky has advocated for a half century. Should Newsom’s law withstand the inevitable court challenges, it’s a good bet that it will be selectively enforced to the detriment of those who disagree with center-Left policies and the politicians promoting them.
The key to effective satire is that it must seem plausible. The Left has become increasingly radical in recent years - tampons in the boys' bathrooms in Minnesota and LGBTQ support for Islamist terror groups come to mind - resulting in what might be called a target rich environment for producing believable satire. The Right is responding with creativity and today, these occasionally hilarious satires are galloping across the nation and beyond via social media.
One pre-social media example from the early 21st century involved a satirical send-up of the influence of university radicals on American culture. This piece from 2002 focused on a fictional researcher from a Massachusetts college promoting a study characterizing the songs of country music icon Patsy Cline as “dangerous to women.” The piece was peppered with clues as to its satirical nature and even labeled as such, but was still plausible enough to prompt a Newark (NJ) Star-Ledger writer to earnestly opine on the study in one of his columns.
It took many days for the fictitious Patsy Cline study to be finally debunked in the pages of The New York Times. The newspaper’s exposé included a quote from the Star-Ledger’s editor, who called his columnist’s analysis of the study, “sloppy and embarrassing.” Two decades later, an expanding stable of conservatives is creating a growing volume of satire lampooning the Left and their policies. Because it’s amplified by social media, the Left’s response is to crack down on it.
Gavin Newsom is not alone in his desire to topple the free speech protections of the First Amendment. Democrat vice presidential nominee Tim Walz claimed, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation.” It’s a curious statement from someone who used his free speech rights to spread misinformation about his own military record.
Not to be outdone, Hillary Clinton this week echoed the need for censorship, telling MSNBC, “Americans who are engaged in this kind of propaganda, and whether they should civilly, or even in some cases criminally charged, is something that would be a better deterrent.”
Americans ought not be so naive as to think Newsom’s censorship law is merely about AI-generated satire and assorted gags mocking the policies of the Left. It is not about combating misinformation or propaganda or Russians meddling in our politics; it’s about the destruction of the foundational liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. Political assaults on comedy, humor and satire have created the ‘come and take it’ moment of our time, and people are standing up to defend it.
It used to be easy to dismiss the gripes of humorless politicians who would benefit from a life lesson on comedy from Foghorn Leghorn. But today, the Left is serious. Humor is now a crime and the jokes of the Right are so funny and so effective, the people who crack them must be prosecuted. The tactics of Saul Alinsky are being used against the Left and they’re infuriated, so they pull the levers of power to silence the ridicule of their critics.
Benjamin Franklin foresaw the potential for American tyranny when he told Elizabeth Willing Powel that the founders at the Constitutional Convention had created, “a republic, if you can keep it.” Gavin Newsom has given us the chance to find out whether we can.