What to do when the curtain falls?

RadioFreeAmerica.fr

Post #1 : 08-03-2025

Radio Free Europe was launched in 1950 with the mission to provide listeners trapped behind the Iron Curtain with “a link to the West, to keep the hope of freedom alive, and to promote evolutionary change” toward freedom and democracy. At that time, the Iron Curtain was built of concrete, razor wire and machine gun nests. Secret police aided by their apparatchiks used intimidation, surveillance and all the other tools of oppressive governments to ensure compliance and dissuade dissent.

Radio Free Europe existed to provide audible evidence of a different reality – a way of life that did not resemble Orwell’s 1984 dystopia. Oppressed peoples were given news, information and cultural programming about their own countries that was censored or blocked by regime-controlled state media. They were also given jazz and rock n’ roll.

I think you see where I’m going with this…

Trump, Musk and their legions of elected and unelected apparatchiks don’t need concrete and barbed wire these days to bring an Iron Curtain down over the United States of America. They have gained effective control over a large portion of broadcast, print and social media, and they are tightening the net on those outlets not already brought over to the Dark Side. They have used that growing media power over the course of two generations to convince a minority of the electorate to willingly hand over the three branches of government and allow them to implement Project 2025 with seemingly no effective opposition.

So now they have put a chainsaw to work on those same three branches with the intent to destroy in a matter of weeks our institutional infrastructure of democracy. Given this blitzkrieg, we hold it is NOT hyperbole or Trump Derangement Syndrome to doubt that the elections of 2026, 2028 and beyond will neither be “free and fair” nor will lead to peaceful transfers of power.

I’m American, but I am not a passenger on this particular voyage of the Titanic. For the past 35 years I have lived and worked abroad, first in Taipei, Taiwan, and since 1995, in France. Here I’ve married, raised two sons, divorced and re-married, and built a career. I was safe at my desk in Paris the morning of September 11, 2001. I held a reasonable fixed-rate mortgage in 2008 when the economic crisis hit. I was well-protected by a French labor contract and strong social safety net when I was laid off in 2012. I’m now a French citizen with a healthy family, rewarding career, and a quality of life that any American outside the 1% would likely envy.

So why do I care? Why launch RadioFreeAmerica.fr?

Well, it begins with me. Like you, I’m scared and hurt. I’ve been hurting ever since Newt Gingrich took the stage in 1994. I’ve always believed that living well is the best revenge, and here in France, I’ve found the ideal environment for doing so. But I still hate to see America die like some ivermectin-taking, Covid-denying fool in the ICU. I need more than just an opportunity to vent. I need to commit acts of resistance. RadioFreeAmerica.fr is my chosen way to do so.

Next, it’s about my family. My wife, sons, stepson, siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews are a cosmopolitan bunch. The tribe is spread across several states in the USA, Paris and Marseille in France, and even Hong Kong. We have multiple passports, different accents and different priorities. But no matter where, or under what circumstances we live, we’re feeling the pressure, the threat, that the Trump regime signifies. We’re circling the wagons. We’re texting about finding property somewhere safe to start a “family compound.” We’re getting smart about our options, and we’re no longer taking anything for granted. RadioFreeAmerica.fr is for them, too, to whatever extent they wish to participate.

It’s not just the family circling the wagons. The last two weeks have made clear to the rest of Europe that it’s high time to do the same on a continental scale. Every European I have ever met in my 30 years of living and working across the EU has had deep, complex feelings – good, bad and mixed – for the United States. For post-war Europeans, the USA has always been an inescapable feature of their landscape – economically, culturally, politically. And like the seaside residents of Fukushima, the workers and school children of Chernobyl, the happy families of Asheville, NC, when a familiar feature of the landscape turns against you, it is beyond shocking. It’s the veritable definition of catastrophe. RadioFreeAmerica.fr is for my fellow Europeans. It’s here to help them understand what’s going on, and to give them a voice, broadcasting their thoughts, concerns and hopes to the United States.

Finally, RadioFreeAmerica.fr is for my fellow Americans. The original Radio Free Europe existed to give comfort to those caught behind the Iron Curtain. It existed to speak truth to propaganda and disinformation. It existed to win hearts and minds over to the Free West and help sustain whatever acts of resistance oppressed people had the courage to commit. If you already feel oppressed, we at RadioFreeAmerica.fr will do our best to give you courage and comfort.

Contrary to Trump’s rhetoric, very few people will be winners under the Far Right regime. If you don’t feel oppressed yet. If you don’t feel threatened yet. If you don’t yet feel backed into a corner, forced by the weight of the regime to make choices and take stands that you know are false or ethically wrong, then RadioFreeAmerica.fr is here to try and wake you up.

And we’re here for the jazz and rock n’ roll.