“Tame the Flame”: How Food Media Is Helping Fascism Go Down Easy

Jul 27, 2025

This was a real article that appeared in my news feed this morning.

They’re not even subtle anymore. On the same week the Department of Homeland Security posts paintings glorifying Manifest Destiny, as ICE ramps up violent raids in brown communities and federal agents detain migrants without due process, Epicurious publishes an article titled: “How to Make a Dish Less Spicy: Tame the Flame in that Fiery Curry Like a Pro.”

Now, if this were 2010, I might’ve chuckled, bookmarked the tip, and moved on. But this is 2025. And in 2025, every headline like this is a dog whistle. A coded message. A quiet, culinary metaphor for the broader national project of whitewashing—not just food, but culture, identity, and history.

We are not in a neutral moment. We are in the middle of a cultural purge masquerading as domestic policy.

And make no mistake: this article is not just about curry. It’s about erasure.

Spices, Symbolism, and the Sanitized Plate

Let’s look closer.

“Tame the flame…”
“Make a dish less spicy…”
“Fiery curry…”

We know what this language means—especially when it shows up alongside DHS propaganda of white settlers “bringing civilization west” and Kristi Noem tweeting about “restoring our heritage.” This isn't just cooking advice. This is metaphor wrapped in magazine gloss. Hot, spicy, fiery—these are all code words for Othered People, too. Especially Latinos.

In culinary writing, spice has long been shorthand for racialized “Otherness.” It's the flavor of immigration. The heat of diaspora. The thing you “tone down” to make the dish palatable for the white mainstream.

So when a major Condé Nast platform runs a how-to guide on removing the signature trait from South Asian cuisine—“taming” its fire, neutralizing its soul—it is participating in the same ideological project as border walls and ICE raids.

Epicurious, Condé Nast, and the Infrastructure of Erasure

Let’s connect the ownership chain:

Epicurious is owned by Condé Nast
Condé Nast is owned by Advance Publications
Advance is owned by the Newhouse family

The same Newhouse family that helped manufacture Donald Trump’s celebrity through glossy magazine profiles and a ghostwritten Art of the Deal.

They were the architects of his myth—and now, through their sprawling media empire, they’re helping mainstream his message. Even in the kitchen.

While DHS posts Manifest Destiny paintings to justify ethnic cleansing, Epicurious tells us how to make brown food taste... less brown. More neutral. More comfortable. More “ours,” if by “ours” you mean the historically dominant white readership Condé Nast has always pandered to.

The Press Isn’t Free—It’s Flavorless

This is how fascism works in a country with advertising metrics and UX design. It doesn’t just burn books. It buries their themes beneath aspirational lifestyle content.

The media doesn’t silence dissent with force; it softens it with Pinterest fonts and saffron-colored lighting. The press doesn’t have to be state-controlled when it’s brand-controlled.

A truly free press would be screaming right now. A truly free food section would be running stories from migrant chefs cooking under siege, or farm workers being deported mid-harvest. But instead, we get this: “Tame the flame.”

Cool it down. Smooth it out. Make it safe for racists.

How Press Freedom Became Fiction in the U.S.

Most Americans have no clue how unfree their press has become, how much of what passes for “news” here is actually state-sanctioned propaganda that pretends to be private business. Press freedom once meant fearless reporting. Now it’s a product shaped by metrics, stakeholders, and silence, things that are every bit as effective as government censorship when they’re in the hands of people like the Newhouse family or Peter Thiel.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) now ranks the United States 57th out of 180 countries in its 2025 World Press Freedom Index—sharing space with nations like Gambia and Uruguay. Once considered the gold standard, the U.S. is now labeled as having a “problematic situation”.

This collapse didn't happen overnight—it’s the downstream effect of decades of media consolidation and deregulation, especially since the 1996 Telecommunications Act:

That Act unleashed sweeping corporate mergers: now just six companies (Comcast, Disney, Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros Discovery, etc.) control most of what you see, hear, and read.
This concentration crushes diversity. Media became a "guard dog" for elite interests, not public accountability.
Local journalism is disappearing—more than one third of U.S. newspapers from 2005 have shuttered, leaving massive “news deserts”.

Add to that:

Journalists faced 49 arrests in 2024 alone—over triple the number in 2023. Physical threats, surveillance, and intimidation are becoming routine.
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker and CPJ report growing harassment and censorship—even in "free" America.

With limited legal protection (the PRESS Act failed again in 2024), with public broadcasters under threat, and with news outlets starved financially, the U.S. press is technically free—but practically crippled.

Monopolies, MAGA & Media’s Role

Media monopolies don't just stifle diversity—they deepen authoritarian branding. Even in seemingly innocuous places, like cooking magazines. You can bet your ass there’s been an editorial directive at Epicurious for less “woke” recipes.

Trump’s rise owed much to a media ecosystem molded by profit-driven giants. Sensational coverage, ratings wars, and spectacle-laden headlines made him visible—and emboldened him. It used to just be Fox News. Now it’s also Newsmax, Sinclair, even the old media brands have been bought by men like Jeff Bezos (he now owns the Washington Post). You. Are. Surrounded.
Heritage Foundation and similar think tanks regularly lobby for deregulation—supporting FCC rollbacks that enabled the consolidation we're stuck with today. They love this shit.
Once Trump claimed the media was the “enemy of the people,” many of those same media monopolies opted for self-censorship—or cheerleading—instead of resistance. It was painful to hear NPR trying to kiss Trump’s ass over the past two months, only to have him defund them anyway. If anything, they should have spoken out HARDER against fascism in their dying moment. They didn’t.

As media ownership tightened, opportunities for dissent or radical critique dwindled. In the age of clicks and corporate sponsors, it’s safer to publish how-to recipes for getting rid of spiciness in your curry (like, actually, WHAT) than expose horrific deportation camps.

You Cannot Gentrify Genocide

To anyone saying, “It’s just a recipe,” I say: So was America. Just a recipe. For stolen land, broken treaties, forced assimilation.

Folks, we are in the midst of a soft coup wrapped in gingham napkins. And if we don’t start calling out the coded language of erasure—in food, in media, in government—we will lose more than our spices. We will lose our truth. And our lives.

So here’s mine: You can’t colonize curry without colonizing people. And you can’t silence heat without silencing the hands that bring it.