The Suppression of Free Speech Following Charlie Kirk's Death

Several years ago, I established a rule on DCUM that prohibits negative comments about a person for the first 48 hours after their death. What we now call the “48-hour" rule was established in recognition that even the most detested person was likely to have friends, family, and others who would grieve the person's death. I thought then, and continue to think now, that those in mourning deserve a period of time in which they do not have to confront unfavorable opinions of the deceased. In the first 48 hours after the murder of Charlie Kirk, it was a full-time job to enforce that rule. I literally lost sleep in order to keep up with the task of removing negative posts. This is to say, and to demonstrate with evidence, that I am not a fan of those who immediately celebrated Kirk's assassination. However, the “48-hour" rule is a DCUM restriction. Every American is entitled to the right of free expression within the bounds of the law. Anyone unable to post negatively about Kirk on DCUM was certainly free to do so on their own website, on X, Bluesky, Mastodon, or even shout it on a street corner. The MAGA reaction to even the slightest criticism of Kirk has been the greatest suppression of free speech in the United States that I have ever witnessed. The campaign to punish those who simply haven't mourned sufficiently is less about the grief of those behind the effort and more an attempt to impose autocratic control of discourse. The goal is a broad effort to eliminate dissent.

Almost immediately after Kirk was shot, supporters of his — including some who were new to the bandwagon such as all-around crazy person Laura Loomer — started hunting down anyone who they believed to be "celebrating" Kirk's death. In many cases, "celebrating" included simply stating the facts. While a number of laudable things can be said about Kirk, the opposite is true as well. Kirk said misogynistic things such as publicly telling Taylor Swift after her engagement to Travis Kelce was announced that she should "Reject feminism. Submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge." Kirk made racist statements such as his comment that "If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified." Kirk espoused the "Great Replacement" theory that holds that Jews are financing the immigration of non-Whites to replace White Americans. This theory has been behind a number of mass shootings including the mosque in New Zealand, the Walmart in Texas, and the synagogue in Pittsburgh. Yet just last year Kirk said, "The great replacement strategy, which is well under way every single day in our southern border, is a strategy to replace white rural America with something different." Kirk was Islamophobic, saying that "Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America." Posting any of these quotes could have led to efforts to have me cancelled and punished. It may still do so.

The irony, of course, is that if there is one thing that Kirk's supporters would have us know, it's that he welcomed differences of opinion. Vice President JD Vance wrote a long tweet about his relationship with Kirk and said:

Someone else pointed out that Charlie died doing what he loved: discussing ideas. He would go into these hostile crowds and answer their questions. If it was a friendly crowd, and a progressive asked a question to jeers from the audience, he'd encourage his fans to calm down and let everyone speak. He exemplified a foundational virtue of our Republic: the willingness to speak openly and debate ideas.

In addition, Kirk once made the point that he doesn't like the term "empathy," saying "I can't stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage." One wonders what Kirk would think of the reaction to his death involving the suppression of contrary views and the enforcement of empathy.

Dropsite News has documented more than 60 individuals who are facing firings, suspensions, and investigations over comments they made about Kirk. One example is Darren Michael, who until he was fired yesterday was a professor of Acting and Directing at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Michael's transgression was posting the headline of a Newsweek article from April 2023 that said, "Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment". It is important to note that the headline is accurate and was reporting Kirk saying:

I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the second amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.

U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, who is now running for governor of Tennessee, tweeted a copy of Michael's post, tagging the university and saying "What do you say, @austinpeay?"

Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted a photo of a woman being handcuffed and wrote, "This is what happened to the person who was mocking Charlie Kirk’s assassination at Texas Tech. FAFO". The First Amendment is specifically aimed at preventing government infringement on freedom of speech. Abbott not only wants to stop that right, but arrest those who exercise it.

Congressman Randy Fine, similarly demonstrated a willingness to burn the First Amendment, writing on Twitter that:

Those celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk must be thrown out of civil society.

If you are aware of anyone in the 6th District of Florida — or heck, anywhere in the state — who works at any level of government, works for an entity that gets money from government (health care, university), or holds a professional license (lawyer, medical professional, teacher) that is publicly celebrating the violence, please contact my office. I will demand their firing, defunding, and license revocation.

Fine routinely celebrates the death of Palestinians in Gaza and once responded to a picture of a dead baby buried in rubble by saying, "Thanks for the pic!"

U.S. Representative Clay Higgins said that he would introduce legislation to seek immediate lifetime bans from social media platforms for anyone who "belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk". Senator Mike Lee, who famously tweeted jokes about the murders of former Minnesota statehouse Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, complained about a TikTok video of a young man making fun of the shooting. So easily these elected officials abandon the Constitution that they swore to uphold.

In addition to Congress, several department Secretaries weighed in to promise punishment for those who utilized their free expression rights. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has sought to eliminate any aspect of DEI and anything that does not further "warfighting", implemented his own form of political correctness by telling his staff to hunt for any negative remarks about Kirk posted by service members. Defense officials told NBC News that several people had already been relieved of their duties. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy bragged about getting pilots from American Airlines fired.

Even Elon Musk got in on the act, retweeting a list of 66 random individuals who were accused of saying "vile things" about Kirk to his millions of followers. Loomer similarly retweeted the identities of individuals accused of speaking ill of Kirk to her 1.7 million followers. The notable aspect of many of those being attacked is that they were essentially nobodies. They tended to have few followers, had almost no influence whatsoever, and, in most cases, what they were alleged to have said was not documented. Musk and Loomer eagerly set Internet mobs upon them. This is a form of McCarthyism that would make McCarthy blush.

Even individuals who explicitly condemned Kirk's murder came under fire. For instance, a Social Studies teacher in Ohio told her students that "You should be able to say whatever you want without violence being inflicted upon you" and that even though Kirk was "an absolute terrible person for the things that has said, violence is not the answer" came under attack with a tweet about her getting 2.4 million views.

A high-profile case of a firing due to remarks about Kirk came to light today when Karen Attiah announced that she had been fired from her job as the Washington Post's Global Opinions editor. She was the last Black full-time opinion columnist at the Post. Her offense was posting on Bluesky that Kirk had said that "Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person's slot." Dave Weigel, a former Post reporter who left after being embroiled in a controversy with a female reporter, repeatedly retweeted claims that this quote was made up. In fact, what Kirk said was:

If we would have said that Joy Reid and Michelle Obama and Sheila Jackson Lee and Ketanji Brown Jackson were affirmative action picks, we would have been called racists. Now they’re coming out and they’re saying it for us! They're coming out and they're saying, "I'm only here because of affirmative action." Yeah, we know. You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.

I think that Attiah captured the gist of what Kirk was saying.

What this rash of attacks and firings demonstrates is the success of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump’s implementation of autocracy. When the Trump administration launched attacks on universities, law firms, and corporations, it was sending a warning nationwide: cross us and you will pay. The eagerness to fire anyone shown to have been disrespectful about Kirk shows that the message was received. Entities of all sorts are acting out of fear, not principle, to avoid catching Trump's attention. This is sheer appeasement. Those in charge would much rather fire a professor, a soldier, a pilot, or a school teacher than suffer the wrath of Trump. This is how dictatorships work.

For years we heard that Republicans represent the party of free speech. Today, Republicans are little more than Trump's Stasi, betraying others in the hope of their own advancement. Moreover, this suppression of speech is unlikely to end with Kirk. Just as Trump normalized government suppression of freedom of expression by making it practically illegal to criticize Israel, he has now embedded the view that speech that he dislikes can be declared off-limits even further into the American psyche. Trump and his supporters yearn for a brave new world in which we are only allowed to engage in approved speech.