I’ve been haunted every day since Charlie Kirk was assassinated. The graphic video images of his killing are the culmination of a kind of savagery that is appallingly common in America, but which no person should ever have to see. It’s an unspeakable trauma and loss for his loved ones and supporters, and it is a legitimately devastating tragedy for America. The political morass into which we have been sinking for years accelerated to terrifying degrees over the past week.
There is no “but” here. Murder is wrong, and political murder should be unilaterally condemned. Period.
Another principle I hold without equivocation is that speech is not violence, and violence is not speech. I went on record, in real-time, deploring the rioting and violence associated with the protests against George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police in 2020. I also opposed hysterical overreactions from the left about allegedly problematic incidents involving nonpublic figures, as well as organizations cowardly bending to the whims of a moral panic that fairly deserved to be called “cancel culture.” And I also put a spotlight on the wanton police violence inflicted on peaceful protesters that same summer.
That’s why I feel qualified to call the “reckoning” following Kirk’s murder — currently being perpetrated by the ruling party in the United States government — a moral panic, a moment of shameless hypocrisy and opportunism, an appalling assault on free speech and a level of government overreach that should send chills down the spine of any American.
And it’s why I’m genuinely terrified by how the Trump administration, MAGA media and some of their “centrist” fellow travelers are cherry-picking a handful of people acting crudely and stupidly on the internet by making light of Kirk’s murder and using them to justify or excuse a crackdown on Americans.
Free speech doesn’t mean you can’t lose your job, but it does mean the government can’t go after you for even the most “offensive” speech, as long as it falls short of a direct incitement to violence.
The New York Times, citing two senior Trump officials Monday, reported that the administration’s goal “was to categorize as domestic terrorism left-wing activity that they said led to violence, a continuation of existing efforts by federal agencies to try to punish liberal groups they have accused of funding or otherwise supporting violent protests.” And Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday said, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” (There is no “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment, and the government has not presented evidence that left-leaning political action is fomenting “terrorism.”)
To be very clear, in a country with increasingly fewer labor protections and a general “at will employment” understanding — it’s just part of the system that you can be fired for making statements that your employer deems bad for business. Praising murder could certainly fall among that criteria. Free speech doesn’t mean you can’t lose your job, but it does mean the government can’t go after you for even the most “offensive” speech, as long as it falls short of a direct incitement to violence.
But that’s what’s happening now. And for anyone who has even once described themselves as a “free speech” advocate, the government taking steps to effectively outlaw criticism of Kirk should be far more appalling than even the most tasteless, vicious, cruel social media post making light of his murder.
Bad ideas, bad thoughts, hurtful words are part of America’s tradition of free expression. Bringing the brute force of government down on one side of the political aisle, and framing it as a national security crisis like “terrorism” should be anathema to anyone who believes in the letter or spirit of the First Amendment.
Trump administration officials are demanding an employment purge of anyone accused of “celebrat[ing] or mock[ing] the assassination of a fellow American.” People are being doxxed, fired and threatened over mean things they expressed about a political activist who the day before his death posted to X, “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”
This is the kind of incendiary speech that was so common to Kirk — and Trump and MAGA in general — that it passes by unnoticed.
But the people in power who are threatening an unprecedented crackdown on free thought have not defined where the line that must not be crossed is with regards to commenting on Kirk’s murder. If Vice President JD Vance’s comments on Monday as the guest host of “The Charlie Kirk Show” are any indication, it’s any person or institution that expressed something negative about Kirk — including citing Kirk’s own work and ideas. Vance said that “by celebrating that murder, apologizing for it, and emphasizing not Charlie’s innocence, but the fact that he said things they don’t like, many of these people are creating an environment where things like this are inevitably going to happen.”
The people in power have not defined where the line that must not be crossed is with regards to commenting on Kirk’s murder.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller — unlike Vance, never one to hide his demagoguery behind false pleasantness — said: “We are gonna channel all the anger we have over the organized campaign that led to this assassination to uproot & dismantle these terrorist networks … we are going to use every resource we have at the DOJ, Homeland Security & throughout this govt to dismantle & destroy these networks.”
On his podcast, MAGA stalwart Steve Bannon said, “They are at war with us,” adding, “Everybody’s accountable … the politicians, the media, and all these rats out there. … This is a turning point and we know which direction we’re going.” Writing for The Dispatch, Never Trump conservative Jonah Goldberg likened Bannon’s rhetoric to the kind that incited the Rwanda genocide of 1994. “The Hutus seeded the airwaves with claims that the Tutsis were the ones waging war on the Hutus and that turning machetes on them wasn’t an act of aggression, but one of self-defense against the ‘fifth columnists,’ the ‘snakes,’ ‘rats,’ and inyenzi (cockroaches),” Goldberg wrote.
Powerful MAGA figures are pushing a narrative that to describe one’s political adversaries as “racist” and “fascist” are incitements to violence. And yet, the front page of Monday’s New York Post showed a photoshopped image of Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul in the likeness of Che Guevara, featuring a caption that assails the governor for endorsing “antisemitic socialist” Zohran Mandami for mayor.
If “racist” and “fascist” are dangerous banned words under MAGA rules of political correctness, wouldn’t altering an image to make it look like a Democrat was in fact a notorious communist revolutionary — while calling another Democrat “antisemitic” — be equally inciting?
Kirk’s fellow Christian nationalists would be highly unlikely to demand a government-enforced national moratorium on speaking negatively about a recently deceased person who posted, “Christianity is the sword the right is using to slit the throat of America.” It’s equally hard to imagine MAGA-centrist civility cops praising the brave debating skills of someone who posted something like, “Judaism is the sword the left (or the right) is using to slit the throat of America.” To that point, in its encomium to Kirk, The Free Press argued that while there are many parties to blame for increasing political violence, “to our minds, among the biggest culprits are the universities. In the same way that madrassas radicalize jihadis, America’s campuses are among the places in the U.S. most hostile to disagreement and debate.” (Comparing American college campuses to the Islamist schools that breed suicide bombers — kind of incendiary!)
What’s needed now is courage. Corporations, nonprofits, colleges and other institutions must understand — if it isn’t evident already — that capitulation will not save you.
There’s too much hypocrisy in the MAGA ranks on “offensive speech” to unpack in one column, but it’s highly relevant that when a politically motivated assassin attempted to kill former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and brutally maimed her husband, Paul — Kirk said that “some amazing patriot out there” should out bail the assailant. Donald Trump Jr., Laura Loomer and numerous MAGA influencers also mocked the appalling act of political violence. And Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, made light of the June assassination of Minnesota Democratic politician Melissa Hortman and her husband in a series of since-deleted tweets.
But America doesn’t have time to litigate the double standards; the future of free expression in this country is at stake. Even though Trump’s second term has already featured a unilateral attack on Iran and masked, unaccountable secret police assaulting and detaining people with impunity, Kirk’s assassination might have sparked the first truly existential crisis of this administration.
What’s needed now is courage. Corporations, nonprofits, colleges and other institutions must understand — if it isn’t evident already — that capitulation will not save you. This is a lawless bandit of an administration that disdains the First Amendment as much as any other constitutional limit on the federal government’s power, no matter how much it brands itself a champion of free speech.
Kirk’s murder is a national tragedy. That is true no matter what one thinks of his politics. And the tragedy will only be compounded if it’s allowed to be exploited with impunity by an administration and a political movement that believes might-makes-right and that its opponents are “rats” to be crushed.