In the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting, some political figures are threatening a crackdown on free speech — a cause Kirk claimed to fight for. Members of Congress, the State Department, and President Donald Trump have all attacked people who celebrated Kirk’s death online or criticized him while he was alive, in some cases saying they’ll use the government’s authority to punish statements almost certainly protected by the First Amendment.
While it remains unclear who killed Kirk or why at a college campus in Utah Wednesday, Republican political figures all the way up to Trump have threatened retaliation against Democrats and the left. Trump blamed rhetoric from the “radical left” that “compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis” as “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” He pledged to “find each and every one of those who contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence, including the organizations that fund it and support it.” It’s unclear exactly what Trump’s threatening — White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that “The President was clear: the perpetrator or perpetrators of this horrific act will pay for what they did,” but did not directly say what would count as contributing to an event like Kirk’s killing nor what organizations Trump was referring to.
Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said that “foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country” and promised to direct US consular officials to “undertake appropriate action” against social media commenters who have been “praising, rationalizing, or making light” of Kirk’s killing. The State Department has already made clear that immigrants’ social media posting will now factor into their visa status — applicants for several types of visas now must set their social media profiles to be public to help the government identify potential security threats, and the agency has defended canceling visas for pro-Palestinian academics. Landau encouraged the public to reply with accounts that had celebrated Kirk’s death and said his team would monitor the responses.
“I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination”
Meanwhile, some lawmakers pushed for tech companies to crack down on speech that was insufficiently respectful of the right-wing influencer, threatening consequences if they didn’t. “I’m going to use Congressional authority and every influence with big tech platforms to mandate immediate ban for life of every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) wrote on X. His spokesperson did not immediately respond to a question from The Verge clarifying what authority he planned to use. “I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting, their businesses will be blacklisted aggressively, they should be kicked from every school, and their drivers licenses should be revoked. I’m basically going to cancel with extreme prejudice these evil, sick animals who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s assassination.”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) said she would contact the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and ask Apple to remove Roblox from its app store unless the user-generated gaming platform removed an alleged game “referencing the assassination of Charlie Kirk.” Soon after, she said that Roblox was working to remove the content, and she also said TikTok similarly would be removing videos of Kirk’s killing. Her spokesperson also did not immediately respond to a question about the relevant FCC authority.
Social media companies have voluntarily moderated videos of Kirk’s slaying and posts that celebrate it, but government figures demanding the removal of legal speech under implicit or explicit threat of punishment — known as jawboning — is a different story. Republicans castigated the Biden administration for communicating with social media companies about concerns over specific posts and users, bringing the issue to the Supreme Court, which did not find a clear link between the White House’s messages and companies’ policies.
Alongside causes like opposing LGBTQ rights and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Kirk positioned himself as a champion for free speech
In the meantime, amateur internet sleuths have been compiling posts from people who spoke negatively about Kirk in the wake of his death, including on a dedicated website that lists the posters’ employers. Laura Loomer, a far-right activist who is close to Trump, has been publicly blasting government employees who criticized Kirk after the shooting, continuing her pressure campaign to fire allegedly disloyal workers. At a press conference Thursday morning, law enforcement urged the public to stop harassing two people of interest it had questioned after the shooting and later cleared.
Alongside causes like opposing LGBTQ rights and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Kirk positioned himself as a champion for free speech, railing against alleged censorship by Big Tech companies, and wrote that “Hate speech does not exist legally in America. There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment.” Still, his organization Turning Point USA maintains a “Professor Watchlist” that aims to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom” — which academics on the list say amounted to a targeted harassment campaign for expressing opinions Kirk disagreed with. Now, lawmakers and Trump may be bolstering that campaign with the power of the state.
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