Jimmy Kimmel’s Reinstatement Shows The Power Of Noncooperation

Disney’s reversal on Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension wasn’t an act of corporate consciousness — it was a strategic retreat forced by coordinated pressure.

By Joe Worthy, Waging Nonviolence

The attempt to silence late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has backfired in a big way, with Disney/ABC now reversing the “indefinite suspension” it announced last week. This important victory over the Trump administration’s efforts to suppress free speech provides insight into the workings of nonviolent noncooperation and how it can effectively defend democracy on its most critical fronts.

Still, Kimmel’s reinstatement today shouldn’t breed complacency. What we’ve seen is the power of the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, to approve mergers and how that gives the executive branch dangerous leverage over media. Though it was unsuccessful in this instance, movements need to stay vigilant and be willing to take action to prevent further efforts to consolidate power.

A popular tool used in nonviolent trainings, called the pillars of support, provides a helpful framework for understanding what just happened. The model examines how regimes source and maintain power. The pillars that prop up any government include security forces, the bureaucracy and business leaders, as well as educational, religious and media institutions. In authoritarian systems, controlling the media pillar is crucial, as it allows regimes to shape public narratives.

In this case, the FCC leveraged a merger that would affect Disney/ABC in order to push Kimmel off the air, and exert control over the media pillar. But it’s crucial to understand that what’s happening isn’t just about the media. Kimmel’s now temporary suspension isn’t a “one-off” thing. It’s bigger than that. It’s part of a trail of actions designed to dismantle any institution that could challenge the regime in the court of public opinion. It’s the culmination of a long-term strategy by the administration to consolidate power across multiple pillars of support at all costs.

They’ve targeted law firms and universities, signed executive orders that allow civil servants to be fired for dissent — in an attempt to neutralize the civil service pillar — and have dramatically expanded ICE’s budget. The large signing bonuses they are offering new agents are just one way they are solidifying control over the security pillar.

All these actions work together: They remove lawyers who might challenge them, silence federal employees who could speak out, and empower police forces that could potentially pivot to suppress protest under the guise of “obstructing immigration enforcement.” It all forms part of the same strategy: systematically consolidating all sources of power under an authoritarian regime and eliminating every mechanism society uses for self-correction.

And yet, in light of all these dangerous developments, Jimmy Kimmel will be back on the air.

The speed and intensity of the backlash against the suspension demonstrated that pillars of support have many facets. Our swift and widespread opposition showed that just because corporate bosses value their stock prices more than free speech, that doesn’t mean ordinary people have to. The reversal wasn’t an act of corporate consciousness — it was a strategic retreat as they began to understand that their media conglomerates are ultimately accountable to the people.

The media pillar consists of more than just the companies they represent. Even if corporate executives’ primary interests are more revenue and a bigger market share, they depend on lots of ordinary people to succeed. In this case, we saw how both consumers and the workers/talent within a pillar can cause it to change course.

The Writers Guild, or WGA, issued a strong statement condemning the government action and “corporate cowardice,” accompanied by a protest outside Disney’s headquarters, signaling the first step towards more coercive action. Even Disney’s talent began to call for a boycott and, almost immediately after the suspension, Google searches for “cancel Disney+” surged, with people soon following suit.

The good news is, workers and consumers make up every single pillar of support in society. That’s to say, there is no way that any of the pillars can provide an authoritarian regime with power unless we allow it. No business can handle a large-scale consumer withdrawal, and no government agency can handle widespread worker withdrawal. So even though the Trump administration has been moving methodically to consolidate power, the people of this country have the power to make it an exercise in futility.

We have to organize and coalesce ourselves to ensure that what we do as individuals makes the intended impact on whichever pillar we’re working to influence. The goal can’t just be to keep comedians on the air; it has to be to ensure that the media pillar and other pillars like it don’t acquiesce to the strong-arm tactics of this administration.

This episode with Kimmel serves as a critical stress test. It exposed the opposition’s playbook and demonstrated that coordinated pressure can force a retreat. However, this victory must be seen as temporary and incomplete. The structural vulnerabilities that enabled this coercion — such as the FCC’s regulatory leverage, the prioritization of corporate mergers and the degradation of antitrust enforcement — remain in place.

Furthermore, the goal of the suspension might have been partially achieved; it may already have had a chilling effect across the industry. The message to every writer, producer and journalist is clear: Get out of line with the regime and you risk termination. The next attempt at censorship will likely not target high-profile hosts; instead, it will be a quiet cancellation of negative segments or a subtle encouragement of self-censorship at lower levels.

Still, this is a significant victory and should be celebrated. We observed the emergence of a broad network that was willing to work together, share information and amplify each other’s messages with a single focus: boycotting Disney/ABC until Jimmy Kimmel returns to the air.

The fight isn’t over, and there is still work to do. Dozens of ABC affiliates (owned by Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast Group) are still saying they won’t air Kimmel. A new group called I Have Friends Everywhere, a reference from the Disney+ show “Andor,” has put out a toolkit to shift the boycott energy to Nexstar and Sinclair, and pressure their advertisers to cut ties until the censorship ends.

It’s essential that people remain mobilized, not just to ensure that our airwaves are distributed fairly and access to media is not influenced by an authoritarian regime, but also to leverage this growing, increasingly coordinated network to subvert other pillars sustaining its power.

Even in the darkest of times, people can rise up and ensure they hold onto their democracy. By understanding the strategies used to enforce obedience and applying principles of strategic nonviolence, we can reclaim the media and other pillars to strengthen democracy.

Joe Worthy Jr. is a grassroots organizer who has organized youth in Cleveland, Ohio, to overhaul their police review board to have “teeth” and organized black women in Mississippi to win postpartum health care rights. He is now establishing the Strategic Nonviolence Academy to educate and empower leaders in nonviolent revolution, drawing on his international work with climate justice activists.