Will Bunch - "Billionaire cowards at Washington Post, L.A. Times show what life under a dictator is really like"
On Friday, the world’s third-richest person, his scandal-scarred British publisher Will Lewis, and the iconic newspaper they control stunned both the American body politic and the media world by spiking their editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris for president. The move came just days ahead of an election defined by her rival Donald Trump’s increasing threats to impose a tyrannical form of government with mass deportation camps and arrests for his growing enemies list, including journalists.
Lewis’ utterly incoherent defense of the decision — ending a tradition of presidential endorsements the Post launched in 1976, the same year that All The President’s Men was released — did nothing to quell the rampant, informed speculation that his boss Bezos has killed the already-drafted editorial out of fear a revenge-minded Trump 47 could terminate the billionaire’s extensive business dealings with the federal government. It seemed all too fitting that Trump was in Austin meeting executives of Bezos’ space venture, Blue Horizon, at the same time as the endorsement kibosh.
If this looks like the latest saga of open corruption in a nation that’s become a billionaire kleptocracy, it is — but this moment is also so much more than that. America is witnessing the raw power of dictatorship some nine days before voters even decide if that will truly be our future path. The cowardly Bezos can spend billions to erect a manmade projectile that sends him into space, but he’ll never have the cojones of a Katharine Graham. He is obeying fascism in advance, and he is not alone.
[. . . .]
The message here is clear. The cowardice of the news organizations controlled by Bezos and Soon-Shiong has already taught Trump — in the words of Yale’s Snyder, a leading U.S. expert on fascism — what power can do, and if he prevails in next week’s election, he plans to bring that hammer down in full force. What happened at the Post and the L.A. Times was a stunning betrayal of journalism’s moral values, but in a strange way the papers did perform a public service: showing American voters what life under a dictator would feel like.
https://archive.ph/O6xKH
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