Independence & Bravery

I've been working on aggregating all my essays from June 2023-June 2025 into a single document so I can start the curating process (and thank you to Founding Members who nominated essays for inclusion), and in so doing, I at last saw a number I've been curious about, which is 327,152. This is the wordcount of The Reframe, not counting the LOST posts (of which there will be one in a week).

I've been writing a lot about fascism and antifascism, it turns out. Despite this volume, I feel like I'm just getting started, unfortunately—unfortunately, because there's no shortage of new and terrible things to write about every week.

For example, this week Jimmy Kimmel got his late night show cancelled by ABC and Disney and the rest of that part of the corporate squid that controls pretty much all of our media. He's not the first. Stephen Colbert got cancelled and his whole show—the venerable Late Night—is getting mothballed. That cancellation at least had a patina of deniability to it, as CBS claimed something something ratings something something finances something something, but with Kimmel the government just put out its muddy boot and executives got to licking. Kimmel's crime was telling jokes critical of Dear Leader, whose FCC has governing oversight over mergers, and following Kimmel's rather anodyne comments, the head of the FCC talked to the suits and let them know hey you've got a very nice merger over here, and it would be a shame if anything happened to it. Out goes Kimmel.

The Kimmel story is ongoing, as all stories are. Trump and some of his lackeys said that free speech doesn't count when it is critical of Trump because that's just not fair, and all the alleged "anti-woke" comedians and other anti-cancel-culture pundits, who bravely said slurs or defended those who did, aren't saying shit now, proving that they never cared about free speech and just wanted to say and/or hear slurs, but we already knew that. I've seen suggestions that Kimmel might be reinstated, due to the public backlash over this corporate cowardice and this obvious attack on the 1st amendment and free speech that this government thuggery represents. If this happens, it will be only the latest demonstration of the great and obvious truth that fascists are cowards who hate a fight like any bullies, and we already knew that, too.

Kimmel will be OK, probably. He's famous and wealthy. He will have options no matter what way this goes, and the knowledge of that probably leant him some of the courage over the years—and it does take courage—to speak out directly against fascists. However, the attack on Kimmel—and it is an attack—is an attack on the right to say things, particularly true things, and that affects each of us. That's the reason that they cancelled Kimmel; it wasn't to silence him for speaking, it was establish their right to do so, and let anyone else who might be thinking about speaking to think twice and shut up, if they know what's good for them. But you're smart, so you already knew that, too.

Also honestly? Kimmel might not be OK. Bullies will do whatever they receive permission to do without consequence, and they always seek to expand those boundaries. I reckon if these fascist thugs are permitted to continue unchecked, the day will arrive when it will be permissible go round up and imprison Jimmy Kimmel while the corporate newspapers all murmur about "unconventional methods" and "bold moves," and if that day comes, rounding up Kimmel is exactly what these fascist thugs are going to do. By the time that day comes, permission to round up you or me will be pretty far in the rear-view mirror, so we'd all do well to worry about the fate of Jimmy Kimmel. And we already knew that, too.

Today there is a lot of talk from powerful fascist billionaires and their fascist pet senators and judges and vice presidents and presidents and so forth, that people both regular and prominent ought to lose their jobs for saying true things about recently-slain far-right fascist bigot Charlie Kirk, which is something I have done. And there are grass roots efforts led by everyday fascist citizens, conservative evangelical christians and far right bigots and neo-Nazi organizations and so forth, to compile lists of Kirk wrongthinkers and get them fired in targeted calling campaigns. I haven't been subject to this treatment but I know somebody who has (they were not fired, thankfully). And of course the president recently took to social media to bellow that antifa is a terrorist organization. Antifa is not an organization at all, it is just the concept of directly opposing fascism, so basically a terrorist is anybody who opposes President ALL CAPS or any fascist aligned with him. So we see that all this free-speech talk from conservatives over the years was just special pleading to be a bunch of open fascist bigots without consequence, while receiving permission to punish anyone who dares speak out against them. And we already knew that, too.

In my weaker moments—weaker because I am not one directly targeted by fascist threats and fascist consequences right now—I worry about myself, since over the last two years I have written over 300,000 antifascist words in public. I usually keep this worry to myself. It feels so grandiose and delusional and self-centering and paranoid and downright cringe to say I am worried that I too might someday be targeted by the U.S. government and its stochastic network of clean-scrubbed American fascists with phones and less-clean-scrubbed American fascists with guns. I'm the smallest of small potatoes, after all, and I know it. Additionally, I'm a white middle-aged college educated cis straight guy in a dual-income family, which is the least endangered type of person you can possibly be in America without joining the Nazi party, and it is the group of whom the least bravery is ever asked or required.

Still, it does feel scary some days. We know that fascist bullies love to make lists, and they won't stop unless they are stopped, so, as ridiculous as it may sound to say, it seems that the day really may come for me. Some days it seems wiser to stop writing antifascist essays, but there's never a chance of that, really. I don't harbor delusions that history turns on me in any way whatsoever; it's just that I think each of us is called to bring whatever we have to meet these moments of consequence, and this is what I have to bring, so I bring it. It will do whatever little good it will do; the effects simply aren't mine to control. It's answering a moral responsibility, you could say, if you wanted to frame me in the best possible light (hey, thanks!), but the truth is it's a compulsion. It's in me; I find I really can't stop myself. That's the only way you write that many words in the first place. I already knew that, too.

So I'm not rolling over, but that does not make me particularly special or moral or brave. It just makes me a citizen. The people who are rolling over are not everyday citizens, but corporations, who have profits to lose and prioritize those profits over anything else, and many elected Democrats, who answer to big donors who have profits to lose. So out goes Colbert, out goes Kimmel, in comes anti-"woke" trans-targeting propagandists like Bari Weiss, who I'm told is nearing a deal to take a major role at the once-venerable CBS News. If there is any concern among CBS executives that these moves tarnish their brand irreparably, I'm not seeing it. The spice must flow. You knew that, too.

Everyday citizens don't have profits to lose, mostly; they have increasingly precarious livelihoods, yet they risk them all the same, saying true things at a time when speaking the truth is being made dangerous and criminal. So much for the bravery of corporations and of the elected officials whose ear those corporations have. We'll have to rely on the bravery of regular people to oppose these fascists. We knew that, too.

Look at this. Another 1,500+ words, and I spent them on stuff we already know. I never said I was efficient.

Here's what you might not know, if you are a paid subscriber to this newsletter. Your patronage gives me independence, and in my moments of weakness and fear, that independence lends me courage. I have no idea if targeted attempts to ruin me will ever arrive, but if they ever do, will be harder to achieve because I am supported not by corporations but by hundreds of you. If they take my job, it would be a hardship but it wouldn't be ruination. The purse strings here aren't controlled by the demand for more and more and more profit, but by my readers. The bully's threat is muted. I think this sort of independent model may point to the way forward, when it comes to raising voices to speak out in this moment, now that corporate voices have proved themselves so horribly untrustworthy.

Every 3 months I interrupt regularly scheduled programming to remind you about how patronage works around here, and invite those of you who haven't chosen to join to do so. And 3 months have gone by since the last one, so that's what I'll close with.

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And here's to another 300,000 words.

A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He's up before the dawn; a thousand barefoot children outside dancin' on his lawn.