BASKING RIDGE, New Jersey (AP) — After years of complaints from the right about “cancel culture” from the left, some conservatives are seeking to upend the lives and careers of those who disparaged Charlie Kirk after his death. They’re going after companies, educators, news outlets, political rivals and others they judge as promoting hate speech.
A campaign by public officials and others on the right has led just days after the conservative activist’s death to the firing or punishment of teachers, an Office Depot employee, government workers, a TV pundit and the expectation of more dismissals coming.
This past weekend, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted that American Airlines had grounded pilots who he said were celebrating Kirk’s assassination.
“This behavior is disgusting and they should be fired,” Duffy said on the social media site X.
As elected officials and conservative influencers lionize Kirk as a warrior for free expression who championed provocative opinions, they’re also weaponizing the tactics they saw being used to malign their movement — the calls for firings, the ostracism, the pressure to watch what you say.
Such tactics raise a fundamental challenge for a nation that by many accounts appears to be dangerously splintered by politics and a sense of moral outrage that social media helps to fuel.
The aftermath of Kirk’s death has increasingly become a test of the public tolerance over political differences. Republicans are pushing not only to punish the alleged killer but those whose words they believe contributed to the death or dishonored it. At the same time, some liberals on social media have criticized those, such as actress Kristin Chenoweth, who expressed sympathy online over Kirk’s death.
“This pattern that we’ve seen for decades seems to be happening much more now and at this moment than it ever has before,” said Adam Goldstein of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. He dates the urge to persecute people for their private views on tragedies at least to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “If there was ever time to support the better angels of our nature, it’s now.”
Goldstein noted that it’s unpopular speech, like people praising the assassination, that stands as the greatest test of acceptance of the First Amendment — especially when government officials get involved. “The only time you’re really supporting free speech is when it’s unpopular,” Goldstein said. “There’s no one out there trying to stop people from loving puppies and bunnies.”
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, has cautioned that the motive for the assassination has not been confirmed. He said the suspect in custody clearly identifies with the political left and had expressed dislike of Kirk before the shooting. But he and other authorities also say the suspect was not known to have been politically engaged.
Kirk was seen as an architect of President Donald Trump’s 2024 election win, helping to expand the Republican outreach to younger voters. That means many conservatives see the remarks by liberals as fomenting violence, rather than as acts of political expression.
“I think President Trump sees this as an attack on his political movement,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., on NBC as he noted the two assassination attempts against Trump as well as Kirk’s killing. “This is unique and different. This is an attack on a movement by using violence. And that’s the way most Republicans see this.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who is running for governor, called on social media for the firings of an assistant dean at Middle Tennessee State University and professors at Austin Peay State University and Cumberland University.
All three lost their jobs for comments deemed inappropriate for expressing a lack of sympathy, or even for expressing pleasure, in the shooting of Kirk. One said Kirk “spoke his fate into existence.”
Because conservatives previously felt canceled by liberals for their views, Trump on his first day back in office signed an executive order prohibiting everyone in the federal government from engaging in conduct that would “unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen.”
In February at the Munich Security Conference, Vice President JD Vance criticized the preceding Biden administration for encouraging “private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth” regarding the pandemic. He assailed European countries for censoring political speech.
“Under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree,” Vance said at the time.
Still, the Trump administration has also cracked down on immigrants and academics for their speech.
Goldstein noted that Trump’s State Department in the minutes after Kirk’s death warned it would revoke the visas of any foreigners who celebrated Kirk’s assassination. “I can’t think of another moment where the United States has come out to warn people of their impending cancellation,” Goldstein said.
The glimmer of bipartisan agreement in the aftermath of the assassination was in a sense that social media was fueling the violence and misinformation in dangerous ways.
“I can’t emphasize enough the damage that social media and the internet is doing to all of us,” Cox said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said “the most powerful companies in the history of the world have figured out how to hack our brains get us addicted to outrage.”
But many Republican lawmakers have also targeted traditional news media that criticized Trump for contributing to a toxic political climate with his consistent rhetoric painting anyone against him as an enemy.
On Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., blamed news outlets for having guests on who called Trump a “facist” or compared him to the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Such statements have been borne out of Trump’s attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss, his pardoning of Jan. 6 rioters and a range of policy differences. Among them, his deportations, deployment of the National Guard, mass firings of federal employees and his scorn for the historic limits on the power of the presidency.
But for Britt, those expressions were unfair, inaccurate and triggered violence.
“There must be consequences with regards to people spewing that type of hate and celebration in the face of this,” Britt said. “And I believe that there will be.”
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Riccardi reported from Denver. Associated Press writer Jonathan Mattise contributed to this report from Nashville, Tennessee.
