Cancel Culture and the Kirk Murder

"In the immediate aftermath of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk's assassination, the overwhelming majority of mainstream Democrats who hold or aspire to elected office said the right things about nonviolence, albeit sometimes with too much throat-clearing or qualification. There were a few exceptions, and some in the left-leaning media sounded a discordant note, though even MSNBC had limits as to what it was willing to tolerate in the victim-blaming department."

"But lots of random left-wingers with little preexisting notoriety took to Bluesky, TikTok, and Reddit to celebrate Kirk's murder or ridicule his grieving widow, receiving a nontrivial number of pageviews in the process. As these social media users have begun to face a loosely coordinated backlash, in some cases losing their jobs, establishment liberals have started finding their voices in criticizing Kirk's opinions (as is their right) and framing this response as overreach by anti-free speech conservatives and a kind of right-wing cancel culture."

In the immediate aftermath of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk's assassination, the overwhelming majority of mainstream Democrats who hold or aspire to elected office said the right things about nonviolence, albeit sometimes with too much throat-clearing or qualification. A few exceptions and some left-leaning media voices expressed discordant notes, though major outlets set limits on victim-blaming. Many random left-wing social media users celebrated the murder or ridiculed the widow, drawing significant attention. Those users faced a loosely coordinated backlash, including job losses. Establishment liberals criticized Kirk's opinions and framed the backlash as overreach and a form of conservative cancel culture. Polarization and personal ties among conservative media figures intensified emotions and complicated prospects for unity.

Read at The American Conservative