After conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk was publicly murdered in early September, many among the political elite, especially conservatives but also “liberals,” celebrated his memory, while also characterizing him as a “champion of free speech.” Now Trump’s government, along with some state governments and a number of corporations, are using Kirk’s murder as the justification for trying to destroy the free speech rights promised to the American people by the First Amendment.
We do not celebrate Kirk’s death, but neither are we going to praise someone who was an unapologetic racist and tried his best to sow the seeds of hatred and division.
It is no coincidence that billionaires and corporations want to silence the people now. The economy is in trouble, with unemployment going up, prices skyrocketing, and an unsustainable national debt. Resistance is rising to the attack on immigrants; to the cuts coming down in Medicaid, food assistance and other programs; to the wholesale assault on democracy and the steady creation of a dictatorship; and to the wars and genocide the US is involved in.
The giant corporations, government and the far right have been working for some time to eliminate our right to speak and protest, and Kirk’s murder is providing the excuse to intensify the attack.
Things are already escalating, with people getting fired from their jobs for criticizing Kirk, the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, the firing of journalists, the apparent lynching of African Americans, the growing assault on universities, lawsuits against the media and attacks on their funding, the plan to dismantle the network of NGOs “that foment violence,” sending more troops into our cities, labeling Antifa a “terrorist group”, etc.
And note that while journalists have been fired for criticizing Kirk, a Fox news host kept his job after calling for lethal injections for the mentally ill homeless.
Trump, Vance, some members of Congress, and heads of various national agencies contributed to the censorship effort on multiple fronts, including threats, proposed legislation, enforcement changes, provable lies, deleting of evidence, and more.
But Trump only accused his political opponents of inciting violence, ignoring the numerous examples of inflammatory language from himself and his allies, and examples of political violence perpetrated against his opponents. The president vowed to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity [Kirk’s killing], and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi said the Department of Justice “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Trump claimed that hate speech applies to journalists who he thinks treat him unfairly, as he threatened multiple reporters.
Trump and his chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are making threats against television broadcasters to silence critics.
Vice President J.D. Vance equated protestors harassing political figures to encouraging violence, and cited examples of political violence against conservatives while ignoring those against liberals and leftists. He then claimed that “it is a statistical fact that most of the lunatics in American politics today are proud members of the far left.”
But if Vance meant that “lunatics” are people on the left who commit violence, then it’s actually the opposite — it’s people on the right, according to a study the government deleted from a website right after Kirk’s death. The published study, which concluded that “the number of far-right attacks continues to outpace all other types of terrorism and domestic violent extremism” since 1990, disappeared from the Department of Justice website on Sept. 12, according to an archive of the webpage found on the WayBack Machine website.
Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio reported on Sept. 15 on X that the government is revoking visas of immigrants who are “cheering on the public assassination of a political figure,” in reference to Kirk. Florida U.S. Rep. Brian Mast sponsored a provision to the larger State Department reorganization bill that would have allowed Rubio to suspend American citizens’ passports for political speech, according to The Intercept. But Mast proposed an amendment that removed these provisions which was approved, killing the idea following backlash.
Censorship of this kind is not just a threat to the left. As the government strips its opponents of their right to free speech, that right is threatened for everyone.
This is not a fight between right and left. It’s a fight between the billionaire-controlled corporate government and the people. The situation is urgent. The house is on fire, and we cannot act like it’s business as usual.
The resistance to the immigration raids, the people joining in protests and boycotts, and people coming together around their economic needs in the Mamdani mayoral campaign in New York City shows what can be done, and shows what the billionaires are worried about. People are getting organized and fighting at the grassroots level, and people of all colors and nationalities are coming together against their common enemy. They are pointing the way forward.
