Speech in the Age of Trump..

[Magical Realist]

"I watch the coverage of Trump’s efforts to silence free speech with an increasing sense of dread. The Trump administration’s quiet campaign to reclassify language as incitement marks a shift not just in policy, but in the architecture of democracy itself. Words that once named injustice, identity, or ecological harm are now flagged as ideological triggers. The terrain of speech is being redrawn, and with it, the boundaries of civic life.

This isn’t a debate about tone. It is about the redefinition of what language is allowed. Internal memos instruct federal agencies to flag terms like “transgender rights,” “systemic racism,” and “climate crisis” as provocations. Grant proposals are rejected for using banned phrases. Web pages are rewritten to erase ideological markers. Scientific research is constrained by semantic boundaries. The shift is not rhetorical—it is operational.

The strategy is clear: collapse the distinction between speech and action. Under Brandenburg v. Ohio, only speech that incites imminent lawless action loses First Amendment protection. But this administration is moving toward a model where particular words and phrases are grounds for surveillance. Words are treated no longer protected speech, but as evidence. The legal threshold is no longer violence—it is dissent.

Once that threshold collapses, surveillance expands. Authorities no longer monitor behavior; they monitor vocabulary. Political discourse becomes a minefield. Citizens self-censor, worried that certain terms might trigger algorithmic review or bureaucratic reprisals. The public sphere contracts. Debate is replaced by scripts. The ecology of civic speech shrinks until only loyalty remains safe.

We’ve see this before. McCarthyism treated association with “communist” language as grounds for blacklisting. Fascist regimes criminalized satire and dissent. In ancient Rome, accusations against the emperor were punishable as threats to order. In each case, the surveillance of language preceded the suppression of bodies. The symbolic realm was treated as a battlefield—and then made one.

Using an anthropological lens, this is ritualized exclusion. Power reclassifies certain words as dangerous, not because they incite violence, but because they challenge orthodoxy. The act of naming becomes a threat. “Diversity,” “equity,” “justice”—these are no longer descriptors. They are signals. And once flagged, they brand the speaker as suspect. The ritual is not just linguistic; it is political. It binds insiders through shared silence and pushes others to the margins.

The implications are profound. Legally, this weakens First Amendment protections by normalizing preventive suppression. Politically, it equates dissent with extremism, delegitimizing opposition. Culturally, it erodes trust in the shared public sphere. The result is a civic landscape where speech is no longer a tool of engagement, but a liability to be managed.

This is not censorship in the traditional sense. It is semantic reprogramming. They are not banning books—they are rewriting glossaries. They are not silencing voices—they are criminalizing vocabulary. The effect is subtler, but no less corrosive. It prepares the ground for repression by making language itself unsafe.

And so we arrive at a new threshold: not of law, but of meaning. The Trump administration has not declared war on speech. It has redefined the battlefield. Th"e danger is not what people do—it is what they say, and increasingly, what they mean. In this framing, law becomes a tool not of protection, but of management. Not of rights, but of enemies.

I grieve not just for the words being erased, but for the civic trust they once carried. When language is treated as incitement, democracy falters. Because democracy depends on the ability to name, to argue, to dissent. And when those acts are reclassified as threat, the republic begins to forget itself."

James Greenberg

[Syne]

Welcome to what conservatives have increasingly dealt with over the last several decades. Criticism of Obama and his policies was labeled "racism." Wanting to preserve historical monuments was labeled "white nationalist." Being pro-life was labeled "sexism" or "misogyny." Mainstream Republican positions labeled "far-right" and then associated with "far-right extremism" or "far-right terrorism." Conservative nonprofits targeted by the IRS for simply being "conservative."

The difference is that these largely targeted everyday Americans, where Trump is targeting employees in the executive branch and discretionary spending under his authority.
Democrats have been claiming for years that "words are violence" and even that "silence is violence." So crying about a "collapse the distinction between speech and action" is hypocritical projection. Words aren't being "treated... as evidence." You are just facing the consequences of your words... the exact way that leftists have claimed while they gleefully harmed regular American's livelihoods using "cancel culture." There is no more "suppression" now than there was then, by the left. They're just whining, as they always do, when their own tactics are used against them.

Leftists made political discourse a minefield for years. They shrank the Overton window and pulled it so far to the left that most leftists are now at least three times further left of Obama, in his first term, than Obama was of Republicans. Now, the Overton windows is simply being hauled back to the true middle. The mainstream left has literally been extreme for over a decade. Their media allies were just able to disguise it by reinforcing where the left thought the Overton window was.

If you think the First Amendment is being weakened now, it's been that way for decades. I didn't see any Democrats worried about it while Republicans were targeted for their speech. For decades, Democrats have called the right "extremists," when, in fact, the right has only moved leftward and returned to exactly where it started.


The left is simply reaping what it sowed.


The left... the "progressives"... has always broken old precedents and set new ones, in the culture and in politics. And then they cry like babies when the right merely follows their lead... naive to the fact that every time they escalate the natural consequence is an equal escalation in opposition. It's an arms race, where the left is always afforded the luxury of escalating first. And with that overwhelming advantage, their gains are still always only temporary. The pendulum always swings back.

[confused2]

So you want a state based on a White European Christian model?
When you have a Bible you don't need reasons so it will be tricky for you to attempt to suggest what reasons people might have for rejecting the White European Christian model. Charismatic speakers like Trump and Kirk can make the most absurd things sound 'reasonable' (at the time) .. as neither of us has any charisma we have to do it the hard way ..

[Magical Realist]

Typical kneejerk whataboutism of the partisan hack, as if Trump and Co. is actually doing all this now because some vast conspiracy of so-called "leftists" enforced political correctness on them many years ago. I highly doubt that. For one thing I doubt Trump ever resented that like many of his MAGA followers allegedly do. And as this splendid essay makes clear, this is something totally new. Not the mere organic social evolution of what is and is not offensive in American speech ettiquete, but the deliberate top-down attempt to censor speaking at all on certain subjects. The fascist elimination of certain ideas and values from universities and government agencies. The outright criminalization of certain modes of discourse that in fact are fundamental to living in a free and just democracy. And the attempt to muzzle any spoken dissent or political satire or criticism.

My one assurance in this time of reducing speech to acts to be controlled and punished is that it will all basically go away in 3 years. The natural sensibility of an open market of unfettered conversation and thinking as witnessed on the "wild west" of the Internet will simply sweep away the cancerous malady of the Trump regime as it did with McCarthyism, and we will all look back on this time aghast as a momentary lapse of time-honored democratic values among our own elected government leaders.

[Syne]

Two leftists who are completely out of touch with the reality of the last several decades. 9_9

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/kUbxLm48B0Q

[Yazata]

The Trump administration’s quiet campaign to reclassify language as incitement marks a shift not just in policy, but in the architecture of democracy itself. Words that once named injustice, identity, or ecological harm are now flagged as ideological triggers. The terrain of speech is being redrawn, and with it, the boundaries of civic life.

No, not "incitement" and not "triggers". Your words indicate a particular political ideology, the ideology of divisiveness and grievance. By working tirelessly over the last generation to insert their vocabulary into all aspects of our political discourse, the left has sought to shape that discourse to their own ends. (Reminiscent of 1984's 'Newspeak'.)

All that's happening now is that others are playing the same game, seeking to shape the vocabulary of discourse to favor their own different ideas.

This isn’t a debate about tone. It is about the redefinition of what language is allowed. Internal memos instruct federal agencies to flag terms like “transgender rights,” “systemic racism,” and “climate crisis” as provocations.

Well, they are indicators of political ideology, are they not? Each of those words and phrases implies a whole social change program, a whole set of programs and policies that not everyone agrees with or welcomes.

People who disagree have as much right to oppose left ideologies as leftists do in promoting them.

Just as the left fought tirelessly to insert those concepts into everyone's political thinking, and in so doing vilifying anyone who thought differently ("bigot"! "racist"! "xenophobe"! "transphobe"!), those who disagree with you are simply doing the same thing you've done for so long.

Grant proposals are rejected for using banned phrases. Web pages are rewritten to erase ideological markers. Scientific research is constrained by semantic boundaries. The shift is not rhetorical—it is operational.

Oh, please. Stop crying and wailing like a baby Mr. Greenberg. You're an anthropology professor, you must be aware that 90+% of your profession are political leftists like you. Try getting admitted to a doctoral program if you are a conservative. Try earning the degree. Try getting hired in an academic position. Try getting tenure. Try getting published in the prestige journals.

Nothing that Trump has done in the eight months he's been in office has done anything to weaken the stranglehold that leftists like you have over higher education.

I hope that Trump (and Vance in the eight years after 2028) do a lot more, until the blessed day comes when conservatives are represented on university faculties in proportion to their share of the population. When the day comes when neither side controls the academic discourse, true freedom of thought and discussion might finally return to academia after having been absent for so long.

[Magical Realist]

I'm always amused at how often an idea or an intelligent articulate person and their thoughts are just unilaterally dismissed because they are labeled "leftist". As if the mere having of beliefs and values other than those espoused by MAGA is automatically immoral and in need of being stamped out. And ofcourse what is simply assumed to be morally wrong and subversive and even dangerous from the outset solely because it is called "leftist" need not ever be argued with or taken seriously. Because being leftist carries all the usual sinister associations with communism and stalinism and even an atheist police state. A single word meaning all that. It's like how religions call all opposing beliefs or ideas "heresies" that must never be thought about and simply be eliminated. All of them just one selfsame thing to be avoided at all costs. The reduction of all thinking and discourse to little more than dogmatic position-taking. And it's also the real life equivalent of thought crime:

“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. . . . The process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there's no reason or excuse for committing thought-crime. It's merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won't be any need even for that. . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”
― George Orwell

[Syne]

No, the term "leftist" is not a thought-terminating cliche, much less a thought-crime. It's an objective descriptor. Much like the distinction between a Muslim (someone who believes in Islam) and an Islamist (someone who supports Islamic theocratic government), there is a distinction between a Democrat (someone who votes Democrat) and a Leftist (someone who supports more socialist/communist/radical policies and/or forms of government). AOC, Bernie Sander, Democratic Socialists, etc. are leftists, as they specifically want more government control of people's lives, so they can enforce their own political, economic, cultural changes. Mere Democrats are what we would now specify as old-school or establishment Democrats. These are the people who are leaving the Democrat party over the vile reactions to Charlie Kirk's murder or people, like John Fetterman, who will call out the extremism within the left.

You're not dismissed for being on the left. You're dismissed for having bad policies and radical notions, warranting ridicule.

But you are hypocritically using "MAGA" exactly as you whine about people using "leftist." In your bubble, you've decided MAGA is some extremist thing, when it's actual decades-old mainstream conservatism pushed to the left by Trump. But since Trump has opened the door to using leftist tactics against them, it scares you, so you have to label it something "other" and lump everything that scares you in with it.

All while being complete unaware of how the left has been creating Newspeak for decades. 9_9

[Magical Realist]

No, the term "leftist" is not a thought-terminating cliche, much less a thought-crime. It's an objective descriptor. Much like the distinction between a Muslim (someone who believes in Islam) and an Islamist (someone who supports Islamic theocratic government), there is a distinction between a Democrat (someone who votes Democrat) and a Leftist (someone who supports more socialist/communist/radical policies and/or forms of government). AOC, Bernie Sander, Democratic Socialists, etc. are leftists, as they specifically want more government control of people's lives, so they can enforce their own political, economic, cultural changes.

No it isn't a descriptor. If you were actually interested in precisely describing someone's political position like AOC or Sanders or democratic young people you would be using the term "progressive". That's the name for their values and ideas, not leftist. Read up on Progressivism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressivism
Leftist is a nonspecific and pejorative label meant to lump inidviduals into one generic group including communists, anarchists, antifa, eco-terrorists, and any other far left radical organization. Which of course serves the purpose of dismissing everything they think and say because after all who wants to listen to the ideas of sinister radical leftists. For you it is all conveniently simplified and reduced to just one ideology and one value system out to subvert the values of conservative America. No discussion needed. No finer shades or distinctions from one leftist to another. Which means never having to consider any other views but those your party, or actually Trump, has decided for you. It's the same thing you all did with McCarthyism and the big scary label "communism" in the 50's, blackballing famous people solely on the grounds that they supported such a treasonous ideology. You're repeating history by blackballing anyone who supports "leftist" ideas, and we can see right thru it.

As far as using MAGA, that's the term exactly designating your politics. Pretty much the whole American populist anti-government movement led by Trump over the past decade. MAGA was YOUR chosen motto, not ours. And it has no evil historical connotations like leftist does. That's why it is legitimately used, because it really does describe what you support and believe in. Leftist describes nothing.

[Syne]

No, "progressive," as the name implies, has an ever changing meaning. It's not a stable social/political platform. It can certainly work as a catchall, for different agendas on the left, but only because the left, in general, is progressive, as a defining characteristic. As opposed to the right being conservative, the left is progressive, as a natural dichotomy. So "progressive" describes no uniquely distinct wing of the left.

Populist, anti-big-government has been mainstream in the Republican party since the Tea Party, in 2007. Your use of "MAGA" is exactly what you're whining about "leftist" being used as. Lumping all decades-old mainstream Republicans in with the supposed "far-right," "alt-right," extremists, etc..

Leftists, like Islamists, are distinct from the generally progressive left in that they want bigger government, with higher taxes to fund it, in order to force their policies on people (like Islamists wanting government to enforce Sharia law). This is why leftists favor socialism and communism, which both seek to concentrate power in a centralized government.

We've been through decades of the left cancelling, deplatforming, boycotting, etc. over nothing more than policy differences. So your crocodile tears over blackballing people, when it's literally been happening to conservatives in Hollywood for far more than a few decades, is just ridiculously ignorant of history. At least McCarthyism was driven by hostilities between actual geopolitical enemies, not just Democrats hating Republicans domestically.



But sure, where on the Democrat left are policies that aren't seeking to "subvert the values of conservative America"? @_@
Go ahead, tell us.