MALAIKA MAHLATSI | Chickens have come home to roost in the United States

Just over a week ago, Jimmy Kimmel, the revered comedian and host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!, which has aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), was suspended by the network after commenting on US President Donald Trump's reaction to the assassination of Charlie Kirk in his monologue.

Kirk, a right-wing political activist, was assassinated earlier this month while addressing an audience on a campus of Utah Valley University. The racist, sexist, and Islamophobic Kirk, who has made dangerous comments about Black people, Arabs, and other minorities in the United States, and who, despite attempts at sanitising him, was a staunch Zionist who supported the genocidal ideology of the apartheid state of Israel, was a friend and ally of Donald Trump.

The two shared the same white supremacist views that have been cemented by the Trump administration since his return to the White House in January 2025.

Kimmel, being the controversial but certainly brilliant comedian that he is (he has the longest tenure of any current late-night television host in the United States), commented about how the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement, led by Trump, is exploiting Kirk’s tragic assassination.

For this commentary, Kimmel was placed on suspension by ABC after government pressure. Following Kirk’s assassination, the US government launched a mass doxing effort to track down and intimidate people who were perceived not to have mourned him.

The US vice president, JD Vance, went as far as to encourage the public to report such persons to their employers – a move that has led to devastating consequences as numerous workers across various fields, including higher learning institutions, have been fired.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, has blamed the assassination on “a vast domestic terrorist network” architected by the left (a term that MAGA uses to describe Democrats, socialists, progressive academics, and anyone who does not subscribe to MAGA ideology).

This is despite the political leanings of the alleged shooter, Tyler Robinson, being unknown. Miller went further, stating that the Department of Justice would use every resource it has in the government to “identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy” this imaginary network.

Affirmingthe Trump administration’s support of Kirk, he added: “It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”

Speaking on a conservative podcast, Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), suggested there could be regulatory consequences for local television stations whose programming did not serve the public interest.

The “public interest”, in this context, is basically anything that Trump does not agree with. Trump has used his platform, Truth Social, to threaten and intimidate anyone with whom he differs – from sovereign nations to media networks. Writing about Kimmel, he stated that the host “puts the Network in jeopardy by playing 99% positive Democrat GARBAGE.

He is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major illegal campaign contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do.” And by “test” ABC, he meant using courts that he has captured to fight his battles.

And fight his battles they do.

His shallow victories against his critics have mboldened him. Just last December, Disney, which owns ABC, settled out of court with him for a staggering US$16 million.

He made sure to raise this issue in his threats to come after the network for the reinstatement of Kimmel, stating: “Last time I went after them, they gave me $16 million. This one sounds even more lucrative.”

For centuries, American people have had a front-row seat to the threats to democracy that the US has posed in distant lands. Successive administrations have invaded nations across the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Africa with complete impunity.

For many Americans, these assaults on democracy were almost insignificant because they were not directly affected.

The children in Afghanistan who had bombs rain on them from American fighter jets, the thousands of Sandinistas killed in Nicaragua, the sovereign nations reduced to rubble by American and allied soldiers – from Libya to Syria – and the many national economies that collapsed through the direct actions of American governments were all happening very far away.

While the children of Guatemala were starving on the streets following America’s violent invasion in 1954, American children were playing in public parks in Augusta and swimming in the warm waters of the Florida Keys.

The American economy was booming while blockades were strangling the Cuban economy. Attacks by the US on democracy were happening elsewhere – until they weren’t.

Trump has demonstrated to his own people a truth that the rest of us already knew – that chickens always come home to roost.

The false sense of security that Americans have always had, the warped idea that they live in “the home of the brave and the land of the free”, was always going to implode because a nation that underminesdemocracy in foreign lands will inevitably use that blueprint on its own soil.

The bullying and silencing of the media through lawsuits and regulatory actions in the US was first tested in other parts of the world, albeit using more draconian means. Lest we forget, the US army bombed the offices of Al Jazeera in Kabul in 2001.

Just three months ago, the US government sanctioned the bombing of Iran’s state television by Israel. Aircraft struck the headquarters of Iran’s state broadcaster in Tehran during a live broadcast. It has happened in many other parts of the world.

The silencing of critics has also been a feature of America’s assault on democracies across the world.

From the assassinations of political leaders such as the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (formerly Zaire) Patrice Lumumba to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, to violent regime changes, anyone who has dared to differ with the US has faced the wrath of its leaders.

They use advanced military technologies to send out a message that their country is untouchable. Not surprisingly, these same tactics are now being used on the very streets of America, where states that do not support Trump’s views are subjected to the use of military force to whip them into line.

The federal deployment of the National Guard in Democratic Party-led cities such as Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Memphis is a chilling demonstration of this. It is a message to Trump’s opponents that state resources can be used limitlessly to force anyone into submission. It has been done in other parts of the world. It has worked.

And now, the monster has circled back to where it was created. It was always going to happen. Chickens always come home to roost.

Malaika is a geographer (with expertise in urban geography and water resource governance) and researcher at the Institute for Pan African Thought and
Conversation. She is a PhD in Geography candidate at the University of
Bayreuth in Germany.