From Satire to Silence: Colbert and Trump's kulturkampf

The cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert has made headlines over the past few days, sparking strong reactions across the intellectual left and even parts of the right. With annual losses exceeding $40 million, much of the public debate has focused on the financial logic behind the decision. But this lens is too narrow. President Trump’s gleeful reaction to Paramount’s move — which includes cutting Colbert and the entire franchise by mid-2026 — hints at a deeper, more political dimension that is rooted in the Kulturkampf raging the US. 

I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert! Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.” - Donald Trump

For many — myself included — Colbert’s sharp, satirical analysis served as a kind of daily intellectual sustenance during Trump’s first term. His exaggerated impersonations, teetering on the edge of parody and pretension, have taken on a near cult-like status, especially among those craving a clear-eyed critique of power.

The abrupt and unceremonious cancellation of The Late Show strikes many not merely as a financial decision, but as something far more troubling — a form of retribution with an alarming signaling to those criticizing Trump on television and beyond. To observers across the political spectrum, it feels like the price Stephen Colbert is now paying for years of sharp, unapologetically partisan satire aimed at Donald Trump and his enablers.

A New kulturkampf & Toothless Networks

But the implications go beyond one show or one host. Colbert and his team now seem to be caught in the crossfire of a broader Kulturkampf — a cultural battle in which media companies, whether out of fear, political pressure, or economic insecurity, begin to preemptively censor or dismantle the very values they once stood for. Among them: freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of satire.

This self-inflicted retreat — dressed up as fiscal pragmatism — risks normalizing a new era where institutions abandon their role as platforms for dissent and become complicit in silencing it. The real tragedy may not be Colbert’s departure, but what his absence says about the shrinking space for bold, critical voices in mainstream American media.

An Authoritarian Playbook in Slow Motion

What’s most alarming is the creeping sense that we’re watching an authoritarian playbook unfold in slow motion. First came the public attacks on elite academic institutions — with Harvard cast as enemy of the people. Then followed the wave of book bans, erasing voices on race, gender, and history from school libraries. Almost in parallel, state after state began rolling back LGBTQ+ rights through legislation — restricting healthcare, silencing identity, criminalizing expression.

Now, it seems, the critical press is next in line. The cancellation of The Late Show, framed as a financial decision, fits eerily well into a broader pattern: institutions retreating from dissent, media outlets preemptively silencing themselves. Step by step, what’s being dismantled isn’t just content: it’s the infrastructure of free expression itself with nothing to replace it. 

And Switzerland?

In Switzerland, the cancellation of The Late Show might not trigger similar intensity and outrage. Yet, we are seeing public service media subjected to budget cuts that disproportionately affect precisely those formats that gave voice to complexity, nuance, and the margins of society. Shows like Zivadiliring, which dared to experiment with format and perspective, have vanished — not because of political censorship, but because of strategic „savings.“ Yet the effect is eerily similar: satire, dissent, and cultural experimentation are the first to go when institutions retreat. What looks like fiscal pragmatism on paper often turns out to be a quiet narrowing of the public sphere — and an erosion of the democratic role media is meant to play.