Charlie Kirk would not have wanted this

The shocking assassination of Charlie Kirk has caused understandable distress for so many Americans, including not just his fans and supporters but millions of other people who are rightly dismayed by the prospect of political violence. That’s partly because we just aren’t accustomed to it: While it is commonplace for politicians and media figures to warn of violent political rhetoric leading to more actual violence, it remains the case that ideologically-motivated killings of national figures are blessedly rare. The targeted attacks on members of Congress such as Reps. Gabby Giffords (D–Ariz.) and Steve Scalise (R–La.), as well as the attempted assassinations of presidents Donald Trump, Ronald Reagan, and Gerald Ford, are memorable because this type of violence doesn’t happen very often.

Kirk’s grisly murder—which was captured on video and watched on social media by millions of people—is unusual and profoundly unsettling. Many people are processing their grief in ways that are edifying: spontaneous vigils hosted by individuals whose lives were changed by him, kind remembrances of his approach to politics penned by his ideological foes, and so on.

Others are not. In fact, many of Kirk’s most ardent fans are now engaged in one of the largest mass cancellation efforts of all time: Some Republican legislators, MAGA activists, and conservative media figures are assembling watchlists with the explicit aim of silencing, firing, expelling, and perhaps even criminalizing any and all anti-Kirk sentiment. Rep. Clay Higgins (R–La.) wants to use explicit government pressure to crush anyone who “ran their mouth” and belittled the gravity of Kirk’s death; top Trump advisor Stephen Miller is vowing some kind of unspecified crackdown on the right’s political enemies; and conservative influencers are writing down the names and professions of Kirk besmirchers and calling their employers. Vice President J.D. Vance, filling in as a guest host on Kirk’s show, instructed viewers to engage in unrestricted cancelling.

When it comes to cancel culture, it is always necessary to draw distinctions and register certain caveats. Criticism is not necessarily cancellation, and not every person currently under attack for having said something ugly about Kirk is a victim. The First Amendment is a bulwark against government action: It does not mean everyone can say whatever they want and suffer no consequences. If your boss fires you, you aren’t being censored—unless the government twisted your boss’s arm. (See: jawboning.)

That said, it’s worth keeping in mind that many commentators—ranging from classical liberals and free speech centrists on the left-of-center to many folks on the hard right—have embraced a larger view of free speech and cancel culture: It’s better to live in a world where people don’t get fired or expelled because they tweeted something stupid.

And yes, it’s true that there’s a difference between canceling someone for welcoming the death of Kirk and canceling someone for tweeting something homophobic when they were 14 years old. There is also a big difference between canceling someone for justifying violence against Kirk and canceling someone who merely objects to his views, behavior, and political project. Furthermore, there’s a major difference between canceling someone in a public-facing communications role and canceling someone who is otherwise obscure.

Let’s consider three examples of post-Kirk cancellation attempts that aptly demonstrate why caution, discernment, and forgiveness are important.

Students for Trump activist Ryan Fournier attacked Shane Gillis—an anti-woke comedian who was himself canceled by the left and subsequently rehabilitated—for employing an audio technician who called Kirk a nazi.

“Is this who Shane Gillis has running his sound?” asked Fournier.

Gillis responded: No, it isn’t. On X, he shared a photo of his actual sound guy, an entirely different person (who certainly looks the part of “Shane Gillis sound guy”). The tech person identified by Fournier was just a random person who helped with sound for one of Gillis’s shows at some point in the past. Gillis probably doesn’t get to handpick the camera guy or the sound guy—or the janitor or the plumber—at every venue he’s ever visited. No one does! Being mad at Gillis about this is exceedingly lame, and people are rightly dragging Fournier on X.

But this just goes to show how lazy and careless attempts at cancelation can become. Again, this was something the right was well aware of during the heyday of wokeness, circa 2014-2022. Targeting ordinary, working people for unwise statements on social media should be viewed with skepticism.

Conservatives have drawn particular attention to a large number of primary educators who have made ugly comments about Kirk. This is a trickier subject, because parents have every right to object to the manner in which their kids are educated. The best solution, of course, is school choice: Let families decide which school environments are best aligned with their own values.

Even so, it seems wrong to me to attempt to get a teacher fired for merely saying that she really doesn’t like what Kirk stood for. This was the case with a first-grade teacher called out by Libs of TikTok, the ultimate social media scalp hunter, who said the teacher described Kirk as “a gross racist, awful person who fueled the fires of division…please stop acting like he was some hero.”

The ellipsis cut out this important disclaimer: “he didn’t deserve to die, but.”

If a parent does not want their child to be educated by someone who dislikes Kirk, we should support any and all policies that would make it easier for that parent to enroll their child in a different environment. But merely expressing an opinion about Kirk should obviously not be a firing offense, particularly since the view was posted to social media—it was not uttered in the classroom itself.

Then there’s the case of Karen Attiah, a Washington Post columnist and global opinions editor, who was fired by the paper for comments she made about Kirk on Bluesky. This strikes me as a case where the cancellation was justified.

To be clear, Attiah should not have lost her job for merely disagreeing with, or criticizing, Kirk. Yet she contends that this is exactly what happened.

“I am the one being silenced—for doing my job,” she writes on her new Substack.

The Bluesky posts in question were troll-ish and unflattering—”America, especially white America is not going to do what it needs to do to get rid of guns in this country”—though Attiah is entitled to her opinion. What she is not entitled to do, as a journalist and editor, is manipulate someone else’s quote.

Attiah, by her own admission, wrote a post on Bluesky in which she quoted Kirk saying the following: “Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot.”

Kirk never said this: Watch the clip. What he said was that the achievements of four specific black women—former First Lady Michelle Obama, former MSNBC host Joy Reid, Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, and former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D–Texas)—were suspect because of affirmative action; the existence of racial preferences casts a pall over their selections for various positions. One can certainly criticize the point or disagree with how he worded it (Michelle Obama, diversity hire?), but he did not say the words attributed to him by Attiah. And she put it in quotes, which is journalistic malpractice.

That’s a fundamentally different situation. Opposing cancel culture does not mean there should be zero accountability for anyone in a public role. It only means that those of us who denounced the excesses of woke enforcement during the late 2010s should similarly reject a rightwing counter-reaction that seeks to unperson anyone who does not hold Kirk in sufficient esteem.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that Kirk disdained cancel culture and loved debate—seriously, he relished the fray more than most, and enjoyed mixing it up with people who obviously disliked him. Launching a vast and unscrupulous campaign to silence everyone who shares an unkind thought about Kirk is a poor way to honor his legacy.