Life in a Consolidating Authoritarian Regime

Karen Attiah just announced that she was dismissed from The Washington Post. As she writes at her Substack:

As the founding Global Opinions editor, I created a space for courageous, diverse voices from around the world — especially those exiled for speaking the truth. I was inspired by their bravery. When my writer, Global Opinions columnist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered by Saudi Arabia regime agents for his words, I fought loudly for justice for years, putting my life and safety on the line to pursue accountability and defend global press freedom. For this work, I was honored with global recognition, prestigious awards and proximity to the world’s most powerful people.

As a columnist, I used my voice to defend freedom and democracy, challenge power and reflect on culture and politics with honesty and conviction. 

Now, I am the one being silenced – for doing my job.

On Bluesky, in the aftermath of the horrific shootings in Utah and Colorado, I condemned America’s acceptance of political violence and criticized its ritualized responses — the hollow, cliched calls for “thoughts and prayers” and “this is not who we are” that normalize gun violence and absolve white perpetrators especially, while nothing is done to curb deaths.

She summarizes her social-media posts — which she includes in her essay— as follows:

I did my journalistic duty, reminding people that despite President Trump’s partisan rushes to judgement, no suspect or motive had been identified in the killing of Charlie Kirk — exercising restraint even as I condemned hatred and violence. 

My journalistic and moral values for balance compelled me to condemn violence and murder without engaging in excessive, false mourning for a man who routinely attacked Black women as a group, put academics in danger by putting them on watch lists, claimed falsely that Black people were better off in the era of Jim Crow, said that the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, and favorably reviewed a book that called liberals “Unhumans”. In a since-deleted post, a user accused me of supporting violence and fascism. I made clear that not performing over-the-top grief for white men who espouse violence was not the same as endorsing violence against them. 

What happened next? According to Attiah:

My commentary received thoughtful engagement across platforms, support, and virtually no public backlash.
And yet, the Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being “unacceptable”, “gross misconduct” and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false. They rushed to fire me without even a conversation. This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.

Since then, my words on absolution for white male violence have proven prescient. The suspect in Kirk’s killing is indeed a young white man, and already, lawmakers are urging us to pray for him. The media is painting the 22 year-old as a good, all-American suburban kid. The cycle I mentioned has once again come to pass.

I was the last remaining Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post, in one of the nation’s most diverse regions. Washington D.C. no longer has a paper that reflects the people it serves. What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful — and tragic.

What’s going on here? One possibility is that the right-wing team that now runs the Post was already looking for a pretext to fire Attiah — perhaps as part of their ongoing effort to become to the Wall Street Journal on the Potomac. Another is the Post is primarily afraid of provoking a far-right backlash, with consequences ranging from stochastic terrorism to state sanctions. Regardless, it’s all bad.

I am still trying to organize my thoughts about the assassination of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath. For now let me just say that:

• We are not out of the woods — the regime is still trying to spin his murder into a justification for a much broader attack on its political opponents;
• The incremental steps it has already taken are pretty chilling;
• Even if all of this fails, the reactionary right has successfully weaponized Kirk’s death on behalf of a more decentralized attack on civil society; and
• The most important drivers of political violence — the ways that the internet is facilitating radicalization; overall political polarization; increasing political repression; a president that incites violence against his political opponents; and a regime committed to dehumanizing both political dissidents and vulnerable minorities — are all heading in the wrong direction.

Happy Monday.

ETA: I now see that Paul already posted about this. Oh, well.