Eliana Johnson writes for the Washington Free Beacon about those who celebrate Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, there is an effort underway to equate the celebration of political assassination with the expression of conventional political opinion. Democrats and the mainstream media argue that firing, suspending, and shaming people for the former amounts to the right’s embrace of “cancel culture.” Please.
Here is Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of Axios, writing about four “ominous trends” that “suggest America’s volatile politics, culture, and security could worsen in the months ahead.” There are “high-profile assassinations,” “school shootings,” “calls for violence,” and an “unprecedented online hunt … on conservative social media to name, shame, and contact the employers of people who mocked or celebrated Kirk’s slaying.”
The Washington Post highlights the workers sent packing over “Charlie Kirk posts.” But it’s the Associated Press that takes the cake, writing that after years of complaining about cancel culture, a “chorus of conservatives” now wants Kirk’s “critics ostracized or fired.” And by critics, they mean those who have cheered his death.
Those working to bring to the attention of employers public expressions of glee by their employees over a man’s murder are not engaged in cancel culture, the imposition of a penalty disproportionate to the transgression. Anybody saying they are is gaslighting you.
Cancel culture aimed to establish new norms of speech and debate, like the notion that publishing an op-ed arguing for a mainstream policy was inappropriate because it put employees of the New York Times in physical danger. Cheering the murder of our political opponents has long been outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse.
A disturbing number of the people fired in recent days work in education. There is UCLA’s director of race and equity, Johnathan Perkins, who wrote on Bluesky that “It is OKAY to be happy” about Kirk’s death. “Good riddance.” There is the Tennessee high school teacher who said Kirk’s murder was “worth it.”
“Don’t mourn his death,” she wrote.
