Prepare For Republicans To Start Whining Incessantly About Netflix

America's richest assholes have a very unsubtle plan: they want to buy up what's left of major media companies, create a massive safe space for the extraction class, then leverage those platforms to flood the discourse with race and gender-baiting agitprop to befuddle, distract, and divide the electorate.

Whether it's Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter, Jeff Bezos' destruction of the Washington Post, or Larry Ellison's demolition of CBS, it's hard to not notice that they've been pretty successful so far (I wrote a piece for Dame Magazine last year I think offers a good primer on what's going on).

After buying CBS and a large chunk of TikTok, Larry and his nepobaby son David (who resembles a trust fund villain from an 80s ski comedy) have set their sights on acquiring Warner Brothers, CNN, and HBO.

Unfortunately for them, Netflix got there first with a massive $82.7 billion offer accepted by the Warner Brothers Board. Unhappy about this, Larry immediately got to work throwing a temper tantrum that included a failed hostile takeover attempt and an unsuccessful lawsuit trying to scuttle the deal.

When that didn't work, Larry set to work getting his friend Donald Trump – and the vast right wing propaganda echoplex – to start seeding the news with claims that Netflix is a "woke" "leftist" company that's been indoctrinating America's children with vile antifa-approved socialism (or whatever):

Netflix is, to be clear, an entirely opportunistic company that will stream any bullshit it thinks will sell, whether that's military dramas featuring gay people (which you may recall made the Trump Pentagon cry), or down-punching, washed up comedians creepily obsessed with making fun of trans people.

What Republicans want is for Larry Ellison to buy CNN, HBO, and Warner Brothers so they can continue their domination of media. They want to leverage CNN, as they're very clearly doing with CBS, as an ideological bludgeon in the marketplace of ideas.

They want to dominate media and pummel the electorate with propaganda. More specifically, they want to build the kind of state media that's been so effective in propping up autocracies in places like Orban's Hungary or Putin's Russia (whether this weird assortment of brunchlords and nepobabies have the competence is another conversation entirely).

Of course they can't just come out and admit any of this, so instead you get an insane performance where they pretend they want to block the Netflix acquisition to protect the children, as we saw Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley attempt last week in a hearing about the merger:

“Why is it that so much of Netflix content for children promotes a transgender ideology?” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley asked Sarandos on Tuesday. “Almost half of your content for children—I’m talking about minor children now, I’m not talking about teenagers, minor children—promotes a transgender ideology agenda.”

This claim, that half of all Netflix kids' programming promotes the "trans ideology," is, you'll be surprised to learn, a lie. It's a lie made up by the right wing Heritage Foundation (the same folks behind Project 2025), which has been seeding DC with a fake study claiming Netflix is part of a woke, leftist cabal.

Again please notice the trend: the real problem with America is generally corruption, billionaires, and unchecked corporate power stripping the country for parts and selling it off the back loading dock. Trans folk, like immigrants, are useful tool to divide and distract the electorate so they don't unify and begin rolling out the guillotines.

At the same time Republicans have been peppering the media with claims that Netflix is a leftist menace, Trump's DOJ has been dropping hints that it's going to launch a bogus antitrust inquiry into the company. You know, to protect the public interest, and pretend they suddenly care about monopoly.

Republicans love monopoly. A cornerstone of Republican (and often Democrat) policy is coddling the country's biggest, shittiest companies. When convenient they'll suddenly trot out the claim they're interested in antitrust reform, an argument that's then propped up by useful idiots and a lazy press.

This campaign serves two purposes: either it forces Netflix to abandon the deal allowing one of Trump's biggest donors to acquire the company himself, or it forces Netflix to debase itself if it wants merger approval. Trump has made personal investments to ensure he wins either way.

Ideally, you'd have the federal government block all additional consolidation in media, since these deals are routinely terrible for labor and consumers. That's not happening under a Trump administration that has effectively lobotomized U.S. regulators and eviscerated what's left of media consolidation rules.

As such there's really two choices here: let Larry Ellison continue his quest to dominate U.S. media and create Trump-friendly state-television. Or support a Netflix deal that will, admittedly, result in a lot of homogenized cack and shitty comedy, but won't, one presumes, contribute to the downfall of democracy itself.