Across the country, ordinary Americans are fired Express their views on Charlie Kirk’s killing. Sometimes, these views are mean, such as supporting his assassination. But in other cases, they are isolated, such as expressing disgust for some offensive remarks in Kirk’s life.
Famous right-wing voices like Laura Loomer and Tiktok’s social media accounts are happily identifying more targets, including police, high school teachers and nurses. An anonymous website called Charlie Kirk Data Foundation is being based on blacklisting More than 60,000 reports The alleged response to the killing was unacceptable.
Kirk Radio Show hosted by Vice President JD Vance Encourage people arrive”Call their employer” When they saw someone celebrating Kirk’s killing. Federal suppression of left-wing organizations They claim there is no evidence and they are some responsibility for Kirk’s death.
“The last message Charlie sent me is…we need to have an organized strategy to follow the left-wing organizations that promote violence in this country. I will write these words in my mind, and I will execute them, Miller says. “As God testifies for me, we will use every resource we have to use for the Department of Justice, the Bureau of Homeland Security and the entire government to identify, destroy, tear down and destroy these networks. This will happen and we will do it in Charlie’s name.”
Every Wall Street Journalsome policies deployed “after this week” include depriving left-wing organizations of tax exemption status and weaponizing anti-corruption laws against them. Secretary of State Marco Rubio claims to be Screening visa application Based on social media statements about Kirk. Attorney General Pam Bondi threaten (Unconstitutional) Prosecute anyone with “hate speech” related to Kirk’s death and punish employers fail The staff who destroyed his memory was fired.
She said: “Employer, you have to be obliged to get rid of people. About Fox News. “If you want to print a poster with Charlie’s photo for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can sue you.”
President Donald Trump threatened to sue the press when reporters asked Bundy about his “hate speech” comments on Tuesday. “We might follow people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hatred. There’s a lot of hatred inside you.” He said. Indeed, hours before these comments, Trump filed a $15 billion lawsuit against the New York Times – absurdly claiming the key report of the document Constitute a form of slander.
When I Warn of the coming democratic crisis On the day Kirk was killed, that was exactly what came to my mind. Although American rights have spent years lamenting the death of “cancellation of culture” and freedom of speech, it is clear that the Trump administration and the consistent magazine movement are totally satisfied with political power over opponents – using their control over the state to suppress it. Kirk’s death caused this impulse to cause up to 11 impulses.
The darkest and most liberal elements of rights are working to launch a broad-based campaign to suppress the political opposition. This is very similar to the 20th century Red Scare, as allegations of dangerous radical influences are exacerbating wider attacks on free expression. This time, it happened after the tragic killings, adopting the enormous monitoring capabilities created by social media and explicitly leverage the broad American left (rather than the margins of communism) as a source of extremist threats.
In short, this is the decisive moment for American democracy: testing whether its ability to protect core democratic freedoms exceeds effective points of resistance.
I’ve written extensively The “liberal” turn of intellectual rights: It is increasingly believed that the idea of a society in order to protect individual freedom is a mistake and that the state should serve as an authoritative guide to force its citizens to accept a conservative lifestyle.
Kirk, what we see is that the doctrine is applied to the realm of freedom of speech.
“We have an open market for ideas; the left shot.” Michael Knowles wrotea prominent post-liberal expert on the Daily Wire. “We have to discredit certain evil thoughts and behaviors, and we have to exclude those who stick to them. More practically, this means that those who stick to this disease should lose their social status. In some cases, they should lose their jobs. There must be consequences.”
To impose such “consequences”, the Trump administration and its allies sometimes consciously borrow several different repressive plots in U.S. history.
As I suggest, the most important point of reference is two red fears: after every world war, the twins’ panic, that the United States is infiltrated by the Communist Party. In both cases, the state targeted the repressive targets of political dissidents – most notably the “Palmer Raid” in 1919 and 1920, the massive arrests of so-called communists, and the reign of terror in the 1940s and early 1950s by Senator Joe McCarthy.
The Red Panic is actually the smallest basis, because there are communist agitators and spies in the United States. However, the scope of this question is very exaggerated to prove that the state-sponsored right to suppress freedom of speech is the right to freedom of speech for those who do not like it.
Today, the so-called pro-violent “radical left” is playing the role of the Communist Party. Indeed, there are such radical leftists. But again, the scope of the problem is simply exaggerated – such a person is No meaningful existence In the Democratic Party or major liberal NGOs – to justify a wider attack not only on the margins of radical politics, but also on the White House opposition. There is a reason for this repression that was led by people like Laura Loomer (an informal adviser to government and far-right influencers), who recently described one of her political goals as “Making McCarthy great again. ”
Therefore, the red fear provides the basic structure of what is happening: exaggerating the fundamental threat to the state’s repression justified. However, some more specific strategies borrow from recent episodes.
The first is the war on terrorism. During this period, the direct terror of terror – the 9/11 attack – raised a broad national expectation that any objection to the presidential government’s dominant front would constitute a crime against the dear dead. One may still remember The wave of hatred against Dixie Chicken Country artists express shame for Iraq war, or Persecution and ultimate firing by University of Colorado professor Ward Churchill After his (recognized) description of 9/11 (the chicken returns home).
The key to this period is that the glue that glues the consensus on the population survey is the common belief of the American elite that 9/11 is an attack on the United States, and in the president, you are right. George W. Bush’s Terms) Together with us as a collective objection. The current right is an atmosphere of trying to exploit Kirk’s killing horror in the same way to build a forced consensus from the evil of his killings.
Don’t cancel the culture, but worse
The second precedent for this moment is the “cancellation culture” that has attracted much attention in the past decade. It’s not that the right is a “borrow” left-wing desire for censorship, but that it is improving modern cancellation technology. Social media turns anyone into a potential micro level: statements once preserved for friends and family are now broadcast to the world, where angry businessmen can weaponize these statements to focus on the currency most importantly and ultimately fire the target.
I have long expressed doubts about the impact of “cancel culture” on American elites, I think Fundamentally exaggerated my own predicament. But elevating the average citizen to the object of hatred has always been about me: such a goal does not cause a tricky conversation about the moral boundaries of public discourse (e.g., platform Nazi or terror defenders), but rather whether private citizens have the right to speak their minds and keep the economy going to sustain their lives.
Despite all the criticism of left-wing culture, on the right is optimistically deploying cancellation technology in an attempt to punish ordinary citizens who hold left-wing political views. The excuse for such people is that they sometimes celebrate Kirk’s death, but in other cases they just say they hate his politics, or that they are not particularly sorry that he is dead. For any of these views, the idea that an elderly care worker or police officer should be fired, the two goals of the latest Tiktok Libs, clearly crossed the red line of core rhetoric.
In short, what you have is the beginning of a new red panic that leverages the emotional consequences of political violence and modern cancellation techniques to amplify your own repressive power. This sounds bad, but – if anything, it underestimates the severity of the problem.
In the second Red Scare, Joe McCarthy was the Senator, not the President – Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Finally helped to train his downfall. Today, however, the president is Donald Trump, who fully supports the McCarthy faction of his administration. The president’s participation fundamentally changed the game: it brought all the repression of the modern U.S. government, most notably federal law enforcement, to the hands of Stephen Miller and others. this Huge range of safety status after 9/11now able to monitor people in detail on social media, provides them with unprecedented ability to punish unwelcome speeches – especially considering the government’s Records that ignore legal restrictions About its power.
Trump seems to like it very much Full support There is no Eisenhower on the wings of his party leadership. His ultimate goal is not a true radical disruptor, but the core of the Democratic Party itself.
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