A comedian steps onto the stage and makes a joke or barbed comment that offends a powerful leader. Or maybe it’s a cartoon or television program that pushes buttons.

一位喜剧演员走上舞台，讲了个笑话或者尖刻的评论，冒犯了某位有权势的领导人。也可能是某幅漫画或某个电视节目踩到了敏感点。

Regardless, the targets and their ilk accuse the creators and their bosses of violating moral standards and national virtues. Then the state cracks down. The authorities issue threats, exert financial pressure and hint at shutdowns, as the humorists hire lawyers, executives cower and everyone learns the obvious: Nothing negative or embarrassing will be allowed about the government or its friends.

无论哪种情况，被冒犯的对象及其同类都会指责创作者及其雇主违反了道德标准和民族美德。随后，国家便展开打压——当局发出威胁、施加经济压力并暗示要取缔相关机构。与此同时，幽默创作者聘请律师，企业高管退缩让步，所有人都明白了一个显而易见的事实：任何关于政府或其盟友的负面或有失颜面的内容都不会被允许。

Those who live in China, India, Iran, Russia, Turkey and Venezuela are familiar with this scenario. Each is governed with various levels of authoritarianism; all have seen comedians, broadcasters, journalists and cartoonists squeezed toward silence.

生活在中国、印度、伊朗、俄罗斯、土耳其和委内瑞拉的人们对这种场景并不陌生。这些国家都在不同程度上实行威权统治，都曾迫使喜剧演员、广播机构、记者和漫画家陷入沉默。

Now, President Trump, with his threat on Thursday to revoke broadcasting licenses from networks with late-night hosts who make jokes or comments at his expense, has pushed the United States closer to that club. With lawsuits against media companies, cuts to public broadcasting, and threats to rescind licenses or deny mergers while rewarding friendlier outlets, Mr. Trump’s tactics fit a disturbing global pattern.

如今，特朗普总统在上周四对那些拿他开玩笑或发表批评言论的深夜节目主持人发出威胁，要吊销播出他们节目的电视台的执照，这一举措让美国进一步向威权国家靠拢。通过起诉媒体公司、削减公共广播资金、威胁吊销执照或否决并购案，同时奖励更友好的媒体机构，特朗普的策略符合一种令人不安的全球模式。

“Controlling information and media is the one of the early and necessary steps of the authoritarian,” said Jennifer McCoy, a professor of political science at Georgia State University who studies the deterioration of democracy. “Then, repressing dissent and criticism, not just among the media, but among political opponents and citizens follows.”

“控制信息和媒体是威权主义者早期必不可少的步骤之一，”研究民主衰退的佐治亚州立大学政治学教授詹妮弗·麦科伊说。“随后便会压制异议和批评，不仅是针对媒体，还会针对政治对手和公民。”

No expert or organization that tracks free expression is comparing Mr. Trump to the world’s greatest violators. The worst authoritarian regimes have murdered critics and imprisoned anyone deemed questionable. Many dictators shut down newspapers and seized television networks when they came to power.

目前尚没有任何追踪言论自由的专家或组织将特朗普与世界上最严重的言论自由侵犯者相提并论。最恶劣的威权政权会杀害批评者，将任何可疑人士投入监狱。许多独裁者上台后会立即关闭报纸并接管电视网络。

But the United States has historically been a defender of free speech, and the tactics Mr. Trump has embraced — suggesting that only presidentially approved opinions are valid and protected — place the United States in awkward company.

但美国历史上一直是言论自由的捍卫者，而特朗普所采用的策略——表明只有总统认可的观点才是正当的、受保护的观点——使美国陷入尴尬境地。

Freedom of expression is deteriorating in America and 43 other countries, a quarter of the world’s nations, according to the 2025 Democracy Report issued by the Swedish-based V-Dem Institute. That’s up from 35 a year earlier, and the institute says the problem has been getting worse for at least a decade.

总部位于瑞典的V-Dem研究所发布的《2025年民主报告》显示，美国和其他43个国家（占全球四分之一）的言论自由状况正在恶化，较去年增加了八个国家。该研究所表示，这一恶化趋势已经持续了十年之久。

In democracies and dictatorships, those who bundle their critiques with humor have become frequent targets.

无论在民主国家还是独裁国家，那些用幽默针砭时弊的人都频频成为打击目标。

• In Iran last month, prosecutors filed morality charges against Zeinab Mousavi, one of the first women to do stand-up comedy in the country, over a video that added explicit language to an epic poem about pre-Islamic Iran. It was at least the third time she’d been summoned by the police since she created her character Empress of Kuzcoo, a parody of an old villager who wears a hijab that reveals only her nose.

• 在伊朗，上个月检察官以道德罪名起诉泽纳布·穆萨维，她是该国最早从事脱口秀的女性之一。起因是在一条视频中，关于伊斯兰政权前的伊朗的史诗被加入了露骨的语言。这是她塑造“库兹科皇后”这一形象以来第三次被警方传唤——这个角色是在戏仿一个包着头巾、只露出鼻尖的老年女性村民。

• In Turkey in July, four cartoonists were arrested over an image, in a satirical magazine called LeMan, that seemed to be a caricature of Moses and the Prophet Muhammad fraternizing in heaven as bullets flew between Jews and Muslims below. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the image as “a vile provocation,” and one of the cartoonists was charged with “insulting the president.”

• 在土耳其，四名漫画家今年7月因在讽刺杂志《LeMan》上发表一幅漫画而被捕，画面描绘摩西与先知穆罕默德在天堂友好交流，下方犹太人与穆斯林之间子弹横飞。总统埃尔多安谴责这是“卑鄙的挑衅”，其中一名漫画家还被指控“侮辱总统”。

• In India, another country where free expression has eroded, even obscure jokes about local politicians have proved to be off-limits. At a comedy club in Mumbai in March, Kunal Kamra, one of India’s last comedians still engaging in political humor, sang a playful song that used the word gaddar, or traitor, apparently in reference to a local politician. That was all it took for the state’s chief minister to call for legal action and for government employees to vandalize and ransack the comedy club.

• 在印度这个言论自由不断恶化的国家，即便是关于地方政界人士的隐晦笑话也被证明是禁区。今年3月，在孟买一家喜剧俱乐部，印度为数不多仍从事政治幽默的喜剧演员之一库纳尔·卡姆拉演唱了一首俏皮歌曲，其中使用了“叛徒”一词，显然是指某位地方政界人士。这就足以让该邦首席部长要求采取法律行动，政府雇员甚至打砸并洗劫了这家喜剧俱乐部。

今年3月，印度孟买库纳尔·卡姆拉工作室外的警察。这位喜剧演员在演出后遭到法律诉讼威胁。

Helmut K. Anheier, a sociology professor at the Hertie School in Berlin, said the dynamic of attacking free expression and seeking to punish elites for populist political gain was first identified by the sociologist Antonio Gramsci when the Italian Fascists imprisoned him in the 1920s.

柏林赫尔蒂学院社会学教授赫尔穆特·安海尔指出，这种攻击言论自由、惩罚精英以获取民粹主义政治利益的模式最早由社会学家安东尼奥·葛兰西在上世纪20年代提出，当时他被意大利法西斯监禁。

For many demagogues then and now, Mr. Anheier said, the goal is “to achieve cultural and political dominance” or, as other scholars have put it, to reshape what the public sees as “common sense.”

安海尔说，对当时和现在的许多煽动家而言，目标是“实现文化和政治主导”，或者如其他学者所说，是要重塑公众心目中的“常理”。

Forcing independent institutions to submit is simply part of the effort to enforce a new narrative, to mythologize a rising strongman at the expense of public freedoms.

迫使独立机构屈服只是手段之一，目的是推行新叙事、以牺牲公共自由为代价来神化崛起的强人。

“The old is dying and the new cannot be born,” Gramsci wrote around 1930, while still behind bars. “In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

“旧的正在消逝，新的尚未诞生，”1930年前后，仍在狱中的葛兰西写道。“在这个过渡期，各种病态症状层出不穷。”

China is perhaps today’s most successful master of expression management. While controls have ebbed and flowed over the decades, under Xi Jinping, Beijing has tightened command, turning news outlets, films, comedy and social media into carefully monitored fonts of government-approved messaging.

中国或许是当今最成功的言论管理者。过去几十年里，控制力度时紧时松，但在习近平领导下，北京加强了管控，将新闻机构、电影、喜剧和社交媒体转变为受到精心监控的政府认可信息来源。

As part of a 2016 tour of Chinese media outlets, Mr. Xi explicitly declared that “media sponsored by the party and government” — which includes nearly all major media outlets in China — “should serve as propaganda platforms for the party and government.”

2016年视察中国媒体机构时，习近平明确表示，“党和政府主办的媒体”—— 包括中国几乎所有主要媒体——“是党和政府的宣传阵地”。

Since then, investigative journalists, who once held the government to account for abuses of power or corruption, even as they were employed by state-controlled outlets, have all but vanished. In a pattern found elsewhere, including Hungary and Russia, loyalists have been installed at once-independent publications.

从那以后，曾经能够监督政府滥用权力或腐败的调查记者——即使他们受雇于官方媒体——几乎消失殆尽。在匈牙利和俄罗斯等国家也出现了类似模式，忠诚者被安置到曾经独立的媒体机构。

The authorities have also tightened controls over movies and books, putting them under the direct supervision of the Communist Party’s propaganda department. Censors keep watch not only for political content, but also for anything deemed out of line with the party’s priorities.

当局还加强了对电影和书籍的控制，将它们置于共产党宣传部门的直接监督下。审查人员不仅关注政治内容，还监控任何被认为不符合党优先事项的内容。

The risk of overstepping can be immense. In 2020, Hong Kong’s public broadcaster ran an episode “Headliner,” its signature satire program, suggesting that the police were hoarding masks at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The show had been doing this sort of thing since 1989. Months after that one episode, it was axed.

越界面临着相当大的风险。2020年，香港公共广播机构广为人知的讽刺节目《头条新闻》的一集中，暗示警方在新冠疫情初期囤积口罩。该节目自1989年以来一直在做类似内容，但这一集播出几个月后，节目被取消。

2020年，香港电台《头条新闻》系列节目的录制现场。该节目因播出关于新冠病毒口罩的专题后被停播。

In 2023, a stand-up performer in Beijing was accused of insulting the Chinese military with a joke involving stray dogs. The authorities imposed a roughly $2 million fine on the comedy studio where the performer worked. The police in northern China, far from the club, also detained a woman who had defended the comedian online.

2023年，北京一位脱口秀演员因一个涉及流浪狗的笑话被指侮辱中国军队。当局对其所在的喜剧工作室处以1335万元罚款。与该俱乐部相距甚远的华北某地警方还拘留了一名在网上为该喜剧演员辩护的女性。

In the United States, satire and criticism, often including sharp insults and investigations into potential corruption by the Trump family, continue to flow through the media to large audiences.

在美国，讽刺和批评——经常包括对特朗普家族潜在腐败的尖锐嘲讽和调查——仍在媒体中大量存在并拥有广泛受众。

But experts see flashes of a familiar authoritarianism as Mr. Trump threatens broadcasters’ licenses or files lawsuits against universities and newspapers like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

但专家们从特朗普威胁广播执照或对多家大学以及《华尔街日报》、《纽约时报》等媒体提起诉讼的行为中，看到了熟悉的威权主义迹象。

Mr. Trump’s licensing threats followed ABC’s decision to pull Jimmy Kimmel’s show “indefinitely” under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr. He had criticized Mr. Kimmel for comments about Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin — insisting that Trump supporters were “desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them” — and Mr. Trump said that maybe cancellation of the show was not enough.

ABC电视台迫于联邦通信委员会主席布伦丹·卡尔的压力“无限期”停播吉米·坎摩尔的节目之后，特朗普又就执照问题做出威胁。卡尔批评坎摩尔对查理·柯克遇袭事件的评论——坎摩尔坚称特朗普支持者“拼命试图将杀死查理·柯克的这个孩子说成是与他们毫无关系的人”——而特朗普表示，或许停播节目还不够。

In those threats of regulatory aggression, Italians see shadows of Silvio Berlusconi, who combined political power and media ownership, blacklisting critics and pressuring executives to silence dissent. Venezuelans recall Hugo Chávez’s revoking radio licenses and forcing television networks to broadcast his populist speeches. Viktor Orban of Hungary, a hero to the Trumpist right, used tax policy to harass and weaken major media outlets.

在这些监管威胁中，意大利人看到了西尔维奥·贝卢斯科尼的影子，他将政治权力与媒体所有权结合，将批评者列入黑名单并施压高管以压制异议。委内瑞拉人会回忆起乌戈·查韦斯吊销电台执照并强迫电视台播放其民粹主义演讲的往事。匈牙利的欧尔班——特朗普右翼的偶像——则利用税收政策骚扰和削弱主要媒体机构。

Russia scholars, however, see a parallel to Mr. Trump’s threats against late-night comedians in Vladimir V. Putin’s early years of rule in Moscow.

而俄罗斯学者在特朗普对深夜喜剧演员的威胁中看到了普京在莫斯科执政初期的影子。

At the time, a satirical TV show called “Kukly” used oversize, somewhat grotesque puppets to parody political figures and current events, from the war in Chechnya to President Boris N. Yeltsin’s heavy drinking. In the post-Soviet 1990s, as Russia sought to portray itself as a democracy, the show was mostly tolerated, even by the Kremlin.

当时，一档名为《库里》(Kukly)的讽刺电视节目使用夸张、略显怪诞的木偶来模仿政治人物和时事，从车臣战争到叶利钦总统的酗酒问题。在后苏联时代的20世纪90年代，当俄罗斯试图塑造民主国家形象时，克里姆林宫大体上容忍了这档节目。

But that changed when Mr. Putin rose to power. First through harassment and then an outright takeover by the state oil monopoly, he refashioned the once-independent network that ran the program into a friendly outlet. Without “Kukly.”

但普京掌权后，情况发生了变化。他首先实施骚扰手段，然后让国家石油垄断企业直接收购，将曾经独立播出该节目的电视台改造为亲政府媒体。《库里》也随之消失。

“In general, few authoritarian leaders have a sense of humor and even fewer can laugh at themselves,” said Daniel Treisman, a political science professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an expert in dictatorship. “Putin was said to be enraged by his portrayal as an evil dwarf.”

“威权领导人普遍缺乏幽默感，更没有几个人能自嘲，”加州大学洛杉矶分校政治学教授、独裁政权问题专家丹尼尔·特雷斯曼说。“据说普京对自己被描绘成邪恶矮人的形象感到愤怒。”

周四，洛杉矶埃尔卡皮坦剧院——《吉米·坎摩尔直播秀》的录制地。坎摩尔的节目已被美国广播公司“无限期”停播。

Mr. Trump may also be taking jokes personally — or channeling the outrage of his political base.

特朗普可能也拿这些笑话当了真——或者觉得它们是在传达他选民的愤怒。

“They give me only bad publicity,” Mr. Trump said of the major networks.

“他们只给我负面报道，”特朗普这样评价主流媒体。

To which many Russians have already responded: Watch out, America, for what comes next. Viktor Shenderovich, the main writer for “Kukly,” was later forced to flee Russia because of government harassment and death threats.

对此，许多俄罗斯人已经做出了回应：美国，要小心接下来会发生什么。《库里》的主创维克托·申德罗维奇后来因政府骚扰和死亡威胁被迫逃离俄罗斯。

Many others who worked on the comedy show also fled their homeland in fear.

其他许多参与这档喜剧节目的人也因恐惧而逃离祖国。