Are conservatives now engaged in cancel culture? Are they now embracing the idea that “hate speech” is a form of violence and should be prosecuted as a violent crime? Here’s a good piece on this issue from a recent edition of The Free Press. I’ve cut its length down by 70% to convey only the gist of it. – MF
Are Conservatives Embracing Cancel Culture?
From the Editors of The Free Press
“In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, an alarming number of Americans made light of his assassination or tried to justify it. An angry right wing has emerged to ensure that such people pay, kicking off a wave of firings and suspensions that have affected journalists, Secret Service agents, and university employees.
“We aren’t supposed to do guilt by association in this country. Conservatives, who for years have rightly complained about the excesses of leftist cancel culture, certainly shouldn’t be engaged in this sort of thing.
“But they are – en masse. To understand why, you have to go back to the first Trump term.
“After Trump won in 2016, the American left was beset by feelings of powerlessness. And so it lashed out, and started a cultural revolution with the aim of making it socially unacceptable to disagree with them. Originally, at least some of the targets were actual racists, sexists, and antisemites. Eventually, they weren’t. Scores of normal, good people were fired from their jobs, kicked out of school, and socially ostracized for expressing opinions that were ‘harmful’ and ‘dangerous’ – definitions that became looser as time went on. Ultimately, as with all revolutions, perfectly innocent people were swept up in the fervor, their reputations and much more forever ruined.
“Now the right is doing precisely the same thing.
“A new site called Charlie’s Murderers is crowdsourcing a list of individuals who reacted inappropriately to Kirk’s assassination…. The site says it has received nearly 20,000 submissions. Some are truly horrific, containing explicit justifications for, or praise of, Kirk’s murder. Some are nihilistic trolling. Others are merely insensitive….
“Already, as in the woke era, the scope of who deserves to be fired for their political beliefs has been expanded to include milquetoast opinions that no reasonable person would construe as dangerous. The very name of the site – Charlie’s Murderers – equates expressing the wrong opinion (however disagreeable or tasteless it might be) with murder itself….
“Some lawmakers believe these grassroots efforts are not enough. The day after Kirk’s assassination, a Louisiana Republican congressman promised he would get a law passed that would ‘ban for life every post or commenter that belittled the assassination of Charlie Kirk…. I’m also going after their business licenses and permitting,’ he said…
“Say what you will about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but she’s never proposed taking away people’s driver’s licenses over an X post….
“Principles don’t matter when things are easy. They matter when they’re hard. They matter now.”
This essay was sent to me by a high school classmate. I thought it was a reasonably evenhanded analysis of this very pressing question: Is there a way out of this for America? – MF
Why America Is at a Dangerous Crossroads Following the Charlie Kirk Shooting
From Katty Kay, BBC News
“It has been a brutal week in America and I’m not the only one wondering whether the country can pull itself out of this spiral of hatred and violence.
“After one of the most searing assassinations in US history, the governor of Utah pleaded for Americans to turn down the political temperature.
“But hardly anyone that I’ve spoken to since Charlie Kirk’s death thinks that will be the path the country will choose. Not anytime soon, at least….
“Americans didn’t even come together in the face of a global pandemic. In fact, COVID made divisions worse.
“Within days of Charlie Kirk’s death, the country’s political camps had already retreated to opposing narratives.
“The reason is simple, yet hard to change. The incentives that fuel American political life reward the people and platforms that turn up the heat, not those who dial tensions down.
“Around the country, you’re more likely to get elected to political office if you run on policies and rhetoric that appeal to your political base, rather than the political middle. (It’s the depressing byproduct of gerrymandering – the original sin behind America’s dysfunctional, divided politics.)
“Equally, in the media, people who opine about politics are rewarded for being more extreme and stoking outrage – that’s the way to get more eyeballs and, ultimately, more advertising dollars.
“This incentive structure is what makes Utah Governor Spencer Cox something of an American exception.
“Utah Governor Spencer Cox has tried to turn down the political temperature. After Charlie Kirk was killed, he urged Americans to ‘log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in the community.’
“He sounded so sane, so wholesome – an effort, in a sea of division, at reconciliation….
“Division and political violence are not new phenomena in America. Some 160 years ago, the country went to war with itself and it has never really stopped.
“Over a period of five years in the 1960s, a US president was killed and then his brother was killed while campaigning to become president. In that same period, two of the nation’s most prominent civil rights leaders were assassinated too.
“In the 1970s, President Gerald Ford was shot at on two separate occasions. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan was struck by a bullet while walking to his limousine.
“And of course, just last year Trump was the victim of a failed attempt on his life by a gunman in Pennsylvania – and a second alleged attempt by a gunman in Florida, whose trial began the week Kirk was killed.
“What makes this era so different from the 1960s and 70s, though, is what Governor Cox is worried about….
“‘I believe that social media has played a direct role in every single assassination and assassination attempt that we have seen over the last five, six years,’ Cox said in an interview on Sunday.
“He went on to say that ‘cancer’ was likely too weak a word for what it has done to American society….
“Tragic and ironic, since Kirk saw himself as a champion of free speech, even as his critics often disagreed with that framing. His death though may push the country further from civil discourse.
“Within days of Kirk’s death, the country’s political camps had already retreated to opposing narratives.
“Many on the left are eager to explore the ways that Kirk’s killer might have been radicalised by internet subcultures and group chats. Many on the right prefer to unpack whether the suspect was part of a left-wing conspiracy.
“Neither group seems particularly keen to prioritize reconciliation or healing.
“The reality is that those who study extremism believe that left-right may not even be the most helpful way to look at the division of this current moment.
“‘It’s better to look at what’s causing people to be ungovernable,’ says Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who specializes in polarized democracies. It does take a desire to turn down the temperature… [and] requires people to have a little more courage than they’re showing. I think it is more useful to focus on how we as a society turn a page and open a new chapter, because this is like a bad marriage. And like a bad marriage, you can only lose by pointing fingers.’”
