Alleged Free Speech Champions Are Campaigning Against Speech They Don’t Like

There’s more than a little irony in the fact that acolytes of slain right-wing provocateur Charlie Kirk, hailed as a champion of free speech, have spent the days since his death working hard to attack people and even get them fired for factual social media posts about Kirk’s noxious and loudly broadcast political beliefs.

Brutally murdered last Wednesday, allegedly by a 22-year-old Utah man with a rifle and a dangerous immersion in Internet “meme” culture, the founder of Turning Point USA has been eulogized, even by some liberals, for his commitment to free speech and his willingness to debate—often on wildly uneven terms—his detractors. Yet his admirers, from the powerful Stephen Miller to the obscure folks who run a website called “Charlie’s Murderers,” want to silence not only the handful of random folks alleged to have celebrated Kirk’s death (I have literally not seen a single social media post like that) but those who have described, accurately, his racist, homophobic, sexist, antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant views, blasted to all who’ll listen.

The highest-profile casualty of this crusade is now-former Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, who announced Monday morning that she was fired by the paper today for a series of social media posts deriding gun culture and “inaction” by “white America” to do anything about the gun violence epidemic. On her Substack, she wrote that the Post said her social media posts were “unacceptable,” “gross misconduct,” and endangered “the physical safety of colleagues.” In none of her posts did she applaud Kirk’s murder. The day Kirk died, MSNBC contributor Matthew Dowd lost his job for saying on air, “I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions.”

Unfortunately, politically motivated firings come with the territory when you’re a mainstream media commentator—often lamentable, but not uncommon. Much more unusual has been the dozens if not hundreds of firings of people whose jobs have nothing to do with politics.The Carolina Panthers fired a communications coordinator who posted: “Why are y’all sad? Your man said it was worth it…,” a reference to Kirk’s public statement that “I think it’s worth 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.”

Teachers and administrators in Greenville, South Carolina; Forest Grove, Oregon; Miami Country Day School, and at least a dozen other districts lost their jobs or faced suspension for “inappropriate” social media posts, school districts confirmed. (A few posts did seem to celebrate Kirk’s death, which seems like questionable judgment but would still seem to be protected speech.) The Department of Defense announced that it was reviewing service members’ social media posts for errant Kirk opinions, including expressing insufficient grief over his death. A Department of Homeland Security employee was terminated for posting on X: “If you are mourning this guy, delete me. He spewed hate and racism on his show.” An X account assembled a “Trophy Case” of these and other firings.

Delta, United, and American Airlines announced that they had suspended pilots and other employees, pending an investigation, for Kirk posts one CEO said “went well beyond healthy, respectful debate.”

The “Charlie’s Murderers” site says it has collected more than 30,000 submissions of people said to be celebrating Kirk’s death and or calling for violence. I couldn’t access the site on Monday, but other media outlets have reported seeing few if any calls for violence.

Canadian journalist Rachel Gilmore said she received a “tsunami” of threats after the site shared an online video by Gilmore criticizing Kirk, but saying she hoped he survived the shooting, before his death was announced.

“It’s absolutely fair to call it a coordinated harassment campaign,” Laura Edelson, assistant professor at Northeastern University and director of the Cybersecurity for Democracy Project, told CNN. “That’s absolutely why it exists, to coordinate and target the harassment toward the selected individuals.”

My X mentions have been a sewer since I wrote “Let’s Not Forget Who Charlie Kirk Really Was,” on Thursday, with a partial list of his offensive statements over the years. The insults are all familiar, a lot of the C-word, the B-word, lots of comments about my age and ugliness (which go hand in hand). The nicest critic called me “grandmother-aged.” Luckily, I don’t have to fear getting fired, though many critics called for my firing, since I work at The Nation.

We shouldn’t be surprised that right-wingers who purport to favor free speech only want freedom for their own views. Their goal isn’t freedom but power. They are going to use this tragedy to grab more power, and hurt more dissenters, as the days pass. They’re not celebrating Kirk’s murder—many no doubt cared about him—but they are certainly making the most of it, even reveling in it. I wouldn’t go anywhere near his funeral at 60,000-seat Arizona Cardinals stadium near Phoenix next Sunday, and I’ve ventured into all kinds of scary Trump events over the years. But I think this crusade is just getting started, with Miller and Trump threatening the prosecution of people they perceive as contributing to the atmosphere that led to Kirk’s killing. Of course, there is no single American more responsible for the country’s current climate of fear, enmity, and violence than Donald Trump. Just don’t expect him to look in the mirror.