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The right wants to ruin your life if you don't mourn Charlie Kirk [1]
['Daily Kos Staff']
Date: 2025-09-16
Conservatives are engaged in a coast-to-coast witch hunt meant to punish people who aren’t marching in lockstep with the right’s attempts to lionize slain bigot Charlie Kirk. In a push led by Republican lawmakers, people are being hounded, fired, and even arrested for not going along with the right’s sanitized narrative of Kirk’s life.
Kirk spent his years as a political influencer and organizer attacking the rights of trans people, women, racial minorities, and others. He promoted baseless smears and conspiracy theories and delighted in antagonizing his political rivals. Kirk even belittled the dangers of the gun violence that ultimately took his life.
The right is now pushing for all of this to be forgotten in favor of a cleaned-up version of Kirk that emphasizes the loss experienced by his friends and family while omitting the harm he did to public discourse.
Related | The whitewashing of Charlie Kirk’s toxic legacy is underway
On Monday night, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott praised the arrest of an 18-year-old Black woman at Texas Tech University. Camryn Giselle Booker protested a candlelight vigil for Kirk, noting, “Y’all homie dead.” Booker was charged with simple assault and kicked out of the university.
Abbott wrote that the student “definitely picked the wrong school to taunt the death of Charlie Kirk.” The protest occurred in a designated “free speech” zone at the school.
The Washington Post, which is owned by billionaire Trump supporter Jeff Bezos, on Sunday fired Karen Attiah, the paper’s lone Black columnist. Her sin: social media posts noting Kirk’s extensive history of racism, targeted toward Black women in particular. The paper said Attiah’s posts constituted “gross misconduct.”
More than 30 people across the country have faced retribution, with some even losing their jobs for not getting on board with hagiographies of Kirk or refusing to whitewash his extensive history of bigotry.
While guest hosting Kirk’s radio program on Monday, Vice President JD Vance encouraged people to tattle on friends and neighbors who speak ill of Kirk.
“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out,” Vance said. “Hell, call their employer.”
Appearing with Vance on the program, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller—who trafficked in many of the bigoted circles that praised and supported Kirk—said the full force of the federal government would be used to suppress criticism of the slain conservative activist.
Miller promoted a fantasy of a “vast domestic terror movement,” and promised to “use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks.”
Speaking to reporters on Monday, President Donald Trump endorsed Attorney General Pam Bondi’s argument that speaking ill of Kirk (again, by accurately quoting his hateful rhetoric) is “hate speech.”
At a Tuesday news conference, Speaker Mike Johnson made clear that congressional Republicans are all in on suppressing speech.
“Now, that said, if I'm an employer or I'm a government agency and I have someone in my employ who is online celebrating the heinous murder of an innocent person, a young husband and father, I can make the decision that they don't deserve to work for me. They shouldn't represent my company or my agency, and I have every right to do that. And I think that's appropriate. That's not the government censoring speech,” Johnson said.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who for years has claimed that he represents the libertarian viewpoint in Congress, was perhaps the most explicit about censoring speech.
“People say, 'Oh, people have a right to say things.' Well, actually they don't necessarily have a right to say things.” Paul said during an appearance on Fox Business. Noting the existence of “a morals clause” in many employment contracts, Paul concluded, “I think it is time for this to be a crackdown on people.”
Conservatives have always been against speech that strays from their chosen narrative. Now the right is using Kirk’s murder to suppress dissent, and Republican leaders are celebrating censorship while doing their best to pull focus away from the hatred that Kirk luxuriated in while he was alive.
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