Opinion | Conservatives vs. Hasan Piker

The administration currently is, in my opinion, perhaps in a very cynical manner, utilizing Charlie Kirk’s death as a way to bring about significant clawbacks of the First Amendment: free expression and free, free organizing of the political left. And they haven’t necessarily made this a secret either. They’ve gone after Jimmy Kimmel and numerous other cultural figures that conservatives have petty grievances around. And they’ve done so in a way where even the most vanilla, the most timid assessment of events is enough for the administration to pull the F.C.C. in to demand taking Jimmy Kimmel off the air. And this has created tremendous backlash from even Republicans, as a matter of fact, because a lot of people do love free speech. I love free speech. I come from a country that does not have free speech. I came to the United States of America from Turkey, originally, a country that actually does jail political dissidents and journalists quite frequently. And I don’t want that to happen here in the United States of America. But that is what they’re going towards. So you have the Jimmy Kimmel controversy as of this conversation, he’s back on the air. But what they’re doing with calling in Twitch and so on, that’s kind of about you, right? Like you are, you are a target. For sure. And are you a target. And are you a target just because you say, you’re some kind of Marxist who wants to be post-liberal or is it something else. I think conservatives have a really great way of designing a narrative that makes sense to as broad of an audience as possible, even though their own setback is oftentimes how hard they go after certain people. But in the grand design of things, if you look at the antifa designation as a domestic terror group, for example, if you read the executive order, it makes sense. They’re presenting this as this violent leftist organized unit that is responsible for so much political violence that’s taking place. Of course, built up around this hysteria that they expertly craft as a media narrative first and foremost. But then but then they want to tackle it. And everyone is in the business of crafting media narratives. And I wish the Democrats were a little bit better at it, to be fair.