{"id":159180,"date":"2025-09-21T16:41:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T16:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/159180\/"},"modified":"2025-09-21T16:41:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T16:41:21","slug":"the-us-right-claimed-free-speech-was-sacred-until-the-charlie-kirk-killing-charlie-kirk-shooting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/159180\/","title":{"rendered":"The US right claimed free speech was sacred \u2013 until the Charlie Kirk killing | Charlie Kirk shooting"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the emotionally and politically charged days since the killing of Charlie Kirk, the conservative youth activist who was a close ally of Donald Trump<\/a>, one statement has loomed large. On Monday, the US attorney general \u2013 the official in charge of the rule of law in America \u2013 said that the Trump administration would \u201cabsolutely target\u201d those who espouse \u201chate speech\u201d about Kirk.<\/p>\n

Unlike in many other countries, hate speech is protected by US law unless it incites imminent violence or constitutes a true threat. But that did not deter the nation\u2019s top law enforcement officer, who also suggested<\/a> that \u2013 for example \u2013 a print shop employee who refused to print flyers memorializing Kirk could be \u201cprosecuted\u201d.<\/p>\n

Since Kirk was shot to death while speaking to college students in Utah earlier this month, the US has been gripped by a bitter debate about the relation between political speech and violence. Bondi later walked back some of her remarks, in part because of criticism from other conservatives worried about the reframing of \u201cfree speech\u201d as \u201chate speech\u201d. But Trump, Vice-President JD Vance<\/a>, White House adviser Stephen Miller and other top Republicans have framed Kirk\u2019s death as the consequence of what they claim is unchecked and violent rhetoric, which they blame on the left wing alone.<\/p>\n

It is a remarkable turn from prominent American conservatives, who until Trump\u2019s return to power in January had long complained of a censorious leftwing \u201ccancel culture\u201d but now seem happy to reframe that, too, as \u201cconsequence culture\u201d. Nancy Mace, a House representative, sounded a lot like the progressives she has often decried for their political correctness when she declared<\/a> last week, during an effort to censure one of her opponents in Congress, that \u201cfree speech isn\u2019t free from consequences\u201d.<\/p>\n

Many conservatives are also now championing a public campaign to get fired from their jobs any Americans who made light of Kirk\u2019s death or disparaged him or his politics in death. Meanwhile, administration officials are proceeding with drafting an executive order for Trump aiming to \u201ccombat political violence and hate speech\u201d, the New York Times recently reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kirk\u2019s assassination was a \u201cdespicable act of political violence, an attack on a figure who built his brand around campus debating, and the outrage, grief, and anger is understandable\u201d, Aaron Terr, the director of public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (Fire), said.<\/p>\n

But instead of recommitting to free speech as a \u201cfundamental value\u201d, the response from many public officials \u201chas been the opposite. They are using the tragedy to justify a broad crackdown on speech,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are openly collapsing the distinction between political dissent and political violence, and it sounds like they are laying the foundation for mass censorship and surveillance of political critics.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pressure campaign\u2019s biggest trophy so far is the talk show host Jimmy Kimmel. After an episode of his show in which Kimmel seemed<\/a> to suggest (wrongly, according to reports) that Kirk\u2019s assassin had Maga sympathies, the Trump-appointed chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the government agency that regulates broadcasting, urged TV networks to drop Kimmel\u2019s show. On Wednesday, ABC announced that it was suspending the program indefinitely.<\/p>\n

The FCC chair, Brendan Carr, applauded ABC\u2019s surrender \u2013 even though just two years ago he said<\/a> that free speech is a crucial \u201ccheck on government control. That is why censorship is the authoritarian\u2019s dream.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an overreaction,\u201d Katie Fallow, an attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute, said, \u201cand it is an example of the kind of \u2018cancel culture\u2019 that major figures on the right have been criticizing for so many years. Now they\u2019re just doing a complete about-face and engaging in it themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bondi\u2019s rhetoric is a particularly \u201calarming threat\u201d given her status overseeing American law enforcement, Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the general counsel of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), said. It is also \u201ca signal that not only does this administration not care about the first amendment, they don\u2019t seem to really understand it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Kimmel is the most prominent media figure to have been punished so far, in recent days a number<\/a> of journalists have faced the loss of their jobs or other disciplinary measures, either at the direct instigation of conservative pressure or in seeming preemption of it. Earlier in the week the Washington Post \u2013 under Jeff Bezos, who has cosied up to Trump and whose ownership has seen the opinion section move closer to the political right \u2013 terminated<\/a> the columnist Karen Attiah for, she said, her unflattering writing about Kirk\u2019s political views.<\/p>\n

Academics<\/a>, too, are under threat, with three professors at Clemson University in South Carolina recently fired<\/a> for making allegedly inappropriate social media posts about Kirk\u2019s death. Dubal is concerned by this aggressive campaign<\/a> to get professors fired or disciplined for their \u201cextramural\u201d speech, particularly when academics are often contractually entitled to rigorous processes before they can be terminated.<\/p>\n

It seems as though many employers have decided that it is worth violating principles of academic freedom and contractual obligation, she said, rather than \u201cdisplease the president, or displease rightwing donors. And that\u2019s a political calculation, it\u2019s a legal calculation. But it\u2019s dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Fallow finds the attempt to suppress speech after Kirk\u2019s death disturbing because she sees it as part of a larger and \u201cunprecedented\u201d attempt by the second Trump administration to use \u201cevery available lever of power to try and suppress dissent and chill speech\u201d \u2013 including but not limited to threatening universities with investigations or financial penalties because of protests on campus; targeting law firms with executive orders for their legal work; deporting international students for participating in protests or writing op-eds; kicking reporters out of White House press conferences based on their publications\u2019 coverage; and bringing frivolous defamation lawsuits against media outlets.<\/p>\n

The general message, Fallow said, is that if you disagree with Trump or his allies \u201cyou\u2019re going to be in the administration\u2019s crosshairs\u201d.<\/p>\n

Although some people have defended the suspension of Kimmel or the firings of professors on the grounds that these are private employer decisions, and not matters of first amendment-protected public speech, Dubal and other experts feel that the government\u2019s increasingly naked involvement makes it difficult for that argument to carry water.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere \u2026 you have a vice-president [Vance] who\u2019s calling for employers [and] third-party vigilante organizations and individuals to force employers to terminate their employees and others based on speech,\u201d Dubal said. \u201cCoercive government speech is very different than the creation of political cultures where it\u2019s not okay to say certain things based on social response. I think what we\u2019re seeing is really, at least for my own lifetime, unprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conservatives are making arguments similar to the ones that some progressives used to make about cancel culture, Terr noted, particularly during the wave of firings<\/a>, de-platformings, and social-media shamings that occurred during the national \u201creckoning\u201d after George Floyd\u2019s murder. \u201cAnd conservatives at the time, I think rightly, argued that we should think of free speech not just as a legal right, but as a broader cultural value.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, Terr said, \u201cmany of the same politicians who have long railed against cancel culture are leading the loudest calls for censorship \u2013 often using, either explicitly or implicitly, rationales that they\u2019ve dismissed when invoked by the left: \u2018This is hate speech.\u2019 \u2018This is misinformation.\u2019 \u2018This will lead to violence.\u2019 \u2018Stochastic terrorism.\u2019 \u2018This speech makes us unsafe.\u2019 It\u2019s amazing. And I think the lesson here is that once the justification for censorship is put on the table, it\u2019s a loaded gun just waiting to be picked up by the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some conservatives have pushed back. Bondi\u2019s remarks, especially, were condemned by rightwing commentators including Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson. Referring to Bondi, Walsh wrote<\/a> on social media: \u201cGet rid of her. Today. This is insane. Conservatives have fought for decades for the right to refuse service to anyone \u2026 Now Pam Bondi wants to roll it all back for no reason.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walsh also argued<\/a> that a crackdown on speech would come back to haunt the right: \u201cEvery Trump supporter right now applauding Trump threatening ABC with consequences unless they suspend Jimmy Kimmel must also applaud when a Democratic president in 4yrs threatens Fox News with consequences unless they suspend Greg Gutfeld. Hey Maga, do you understand?\u201d<\/p>\n

Dubal said she thought conservative pundits were right to lambast Bondi. \u201cThere are principles of speech in this country that apply broadly \u2026 and the idea that they were going to go after businesses and individuals based on protected speech was really kind of shocking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The late Kirk was an inconsistent defender of free speech \u2013 his organization, Turning Point USA, famously maintains a \u201cwatchlist\u201d of professors it describes as dangerously leftwing \u2013 but some conservatives have argued that Kirk would not want the right to turn against free expression. \u201cYou hope that Charlie Kirk\u2019s death won\u2019t be used by \u2026 bad actors to create a society that was the opposite of the one he worked to build,\u201d Carlson recently said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cHate speech does not exist legally in America,\u201d Kirk wrote<\/a> on social media last year. \u201cThere\u2019s ugly speech. There\u2019s gross speech. There\u2019s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the emotionally and politically charged days since the killing of Charlie Kirk, the conservative youth activist who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-159180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}