So ViacomCBS, which, as you can tell from company name, is already a massive media multinational, has agreed to sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House, which, as you can tell from the company name, is already a massive multinational.
Two of the biggest publishers in the world, Random House and Penguin, merged in 2013.
Two of the biggest mass media companies in the world, CBS Corp and Viacom, merged in 2019.
And now two of the biggest publishers in the world, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, are about to merge.
And that sound you’re hearing is more from the death throes from something used to take for granted in this country — free speech.
“The biggest book publisher in the United States is about to get bigger,” reports the far-left New York Times. “ViacomCBS has agreed to sell Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House for more than $2 billion in a deal that will create the first megapublisher.”
The Times continues: “Penguin Random House, the largest book publisher in the United States, is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann. Adding Simon & Schuster, the third largest publisher, would create a book behemoth, a combination that could trigger antitrust concerns.”
Well, there won’t be any anti-trust concerns if His Fraudulency Joe Biden ends up winning the election. Judging by his wildly premature cabinet picks, we’re looking at Barack Obama’s third term, and Obama was the most corporatist president of my lifetime.
But there should be “anti-trust concerns” based on what we are seeing when these mammoth corporations — like Facebook and Twitter — finagle their way into monopolizing the portals through which we share and express ideas — the public square, if you will.
What’s happening in this country is that since the government is, at least for now, precluded from censoring and blacklisting us, the government has farmed that job out to massive corporations — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, the entertainment business, the corporate news media… They corner the market on the public square, herd us all in there, and then close the trap with fascist censorship while Vichy Republicans, like those at National Review, tell us that’s the free market at work; that blacklisting is capitalism or something.
The writing is already on the wall here. Penguin Random House has allowed the crybully-fascists in the door. The company already employs the kind of crybullies who literally break down and cry because Jordan Peterson’s new book is about to get published.
In other words, Penguin Random House — a book publisher — already employs people who don’t want to have books published that contain ideas they disagree with, which is straight-up blacklisting.
In less than five years, if not sooner, they will run that company and, if this merger is approved, they will run Simon & Schuster, as well.
This could be the fascist takeover at the New York Times all over again.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.