Charlie Kirk speaking with attendees at the 2021 AmericaFest in Phoenix, AZ. Photo Credit: Image by Gage Skidmore. Graphic Credit: Tye Brown/The Sentinel
On September 10, conservative political commentator and founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, was shot and killed during a rally on campus at Utah Valley University.
Kirk, 31, was at the university for the first stop on his “American Comeback Tour,” where he had a table in the campus courtyard for the audience to gather and “prove him wrong” by means of a public debate.
The event was slated to begin at 12 p.m. but was cut short when a gunman shot Kirk in the neck from around 130 yards away. Kirk was rushed to the hospital and was pronounced dead later that day.
While the situation is tragic and political violence of all kinds should be condemned, there is no doubt that Kirk’s political views were a point of contention for many people, with some claiming he was a racist and a fascist. Others claim he was a “God-fearing Christian man and a martyr.”
This debate over Kirk’s legacy in the aftermath of his death has exposed a hypocrisy in the Republican Party. For years, Republicans have said that their party is the “party of free speech,” yet they are currently moving to silence Charlie Kirk’s detractors.
On September 12, X user @forcharliekirk1 announced “a searchable database of over 20,000 individuals celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder.”
The now-defunct website was titled “Charlie’s Murderers,” and compiled entries of people who criticized Kirk after his death to identify them and get them fired from their jobs.
The website called itself “the largest firing operation in history.”
The website requested submissions that included full names, employer, location, profile screenshots and post screenshots of the people being accused of “supporting political violence online.”
On Sep. 15, Vice President JD Vance hosted Kirk’s podcast “The Charlie Kirk Show” and encouraged listeners to report people criticizing Kirk to their employers.
“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out,” Vance said. “And hell, call their employer.”
This effort to get people fired is working. People working in a wide range of fields have been let go, including those in media and education. This includes three Cobb County school teachers who were let go for their remarks about Kirk.
On Sep. 16, United States Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the Trump administration would begin to “target” what she referred to as “hate speech” in the wake of Kirk’s death.
“You can’t have that hate speech in the world in which we live,” Bondi said. “There is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society.”
After immediate backlash, Bondi attempted to walk back the statement, saying that she was referring to “hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence.”
The “hate speech” Bondi is speaking of, however, is actually protected speech as outlined in the 1969 Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio, in which the court reversed the conviction of a Ku Klux Klan leader who gave a racist speech.
These comments are a concerning example of an ongoing war on freedom of speech by Republicans. Following their return to power, they seek to silence those who oppose them, which is something that they have accused the left of doing for years.
The Trump administration does not only want to control what citizens can say, but what they can see and hear as well.
On Sep. 17, ABC’s late-night show “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was taken off air “indefinitely” following comments Kimmel made regarding Kirk’s shooter.
“We hit some new lows over the weekend,” Kimmel said. “With the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.”
Kimmel’s show was taken off the air shortly after comments from Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, who said that ABC had “an obligation to operate in the public interest” to maintain the license granted to it by the FCC.
While the FCC did not “force” ABC to take Kimmel off the air, pressuring them to do so is a clear violation of the First Amendment.
Kimmel’s show was reinstated on Sep. 26, amid protests and boycotts of ABC’s parent company, Disney.
The Republican effort to punish dissenters betrays the image that the party has been carefully curating for decades as free speech defenders and paints a foreboding picture of the future.
Today, you may get fired from your job for disliking a Republican online. Who knows what might happen tomorrow?
