The assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10 in Utah spawned an immediate barrage of comments and memes on all sides of the political spectrum.
The most extreme commentary blasted Kirk, sometimes saying he got what he deserved. The other end of the spectrum praised Kirk as a martyr for free speech. Others fell in between, and many called for an end to political violence.
At least two journalists have lost their jobs because of comments they made following Kirk’s death.
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, who said she was the only Black full-time opinion columnist at the paper, told The Guardian that she was fired after 11 years for “speaking out against political violence, racial double stands, and America’s apathy toward guns” after Kirk was killed. “They rushed to fire me without even a conversation.”
Variety reported MSNBC political analyst Matthew Dowd was fired for comments he made when an anchor Katy Tur asked him a question about “the environment in which a shooting like this happens.”
His response: “He’s [Kirk has] been one of the most divisive, especially divisive younger figures in this, who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech or sort of aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions. And I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in.”
MSNBC President Rebecca Kutler apologized for the comment.
Dowd also apologized and condemned violence. He still didn’t get his job back.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, speaking on the NBC Sunday morning program Meet the Press, said no one person can stop the politically motivated violence that seems to be escalating throughout the country.
“People keep waiting for somebody to lead us out of this,” Cox said. “I think that’s a mistake. … I don’t think anyone can change the trajectory of this. It truly is about every single one of us.”
He pointed to the shooting death of Kirk at a Utah Valley University event as much like the political violence in the ’60s and ’70s, and noted one serious difference between then and now: the internet.
“I can’t emphasize enough the damage that social media and the internet is doing to all of us,” he said. “The most powerful companies in the history of the world have figured out how to hack our brains, get us addicted to outrage … and get us to hate each other.”
He said Americans need to take back the agency they have lost to “the conflict entrepreneurs” who revel in the discord.
“We have to get back to community, caring about our neighbors, the things that make Americans great, serving each other, bettering ourselves, exercising, sleeping, all the things that it [conflict] takes from us,” Cox said.
As a newspaper, we also condemn the political violence that caused Kirk’s death and killed or injured other political figures in recent months. Violence is not the way to make any change happen.
We also encourage more free speech. Instead of trying to stop speech one doesn’t like —especially through violence like that seen last week—we should turn to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ counter speech doctrine from almost a century ago: Counteract the message with “more speech, not enforced silence” in the marketplace of ideas.
Preserving the right to speech with which some or even many disagree also protects the free speech rights of the rest of us to speak and write about whatever we want.
If the government were allowed to censor speech based on the message, it could eventually turn that power toward any unpopular opinion, and that might include positions we support.
