Debates over the protection of free speech have been raging since long before the killing of Charles Kirk, but the aftermath of his assassination has taken the discussion into another realm. Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was a high-profile casualty of the skirmish. He was suspended from his show and returned recently to record audiences, even though the companies on the political right, Sinclair and Nexstar, initially refused to air his show on the stations they owned.
It was demanded of Kimmel that he offer a full-throated apology to the Kirk family and contribute to Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded, as an act of contrition before he can really be forgiven. The premise is that short of that it would be doubtful whether he was actually remorseful.
But while the corporate media focused on Kimmel and his suspension, plenty of other people lost their positions because they exposed the racist things that Kirk uttered on his podcast and in public forums on a regular basis. Kimmel returned to TV after a short suspension because of public pressure. But there are untold numbers of people who are still without jobs because, like Kimmel, they exercised their First Amendment right and expressed outrage, disagreement, and concern over this Kirk moment in the political life of the country.
Some questioned the way that the MAGA base was gathering around the spirit of Kirk, canonizing and deifying the man and using him as the litmus test of whether people were aligned with the political right and the Trump agenda or not. The MAGA white supremacist agenda was emboldened in their right-wing “Onward Christian Soldiers” march to win new ground and to increase their abilities to conquer the left.
Criticism of what Kirk said in life could not be submitted for examination. According to the political right, to do so was a celebration of the killing. This was a calculated stretch, but it worked, as corporate America fired workers who felt sorry for his death but questioned his words and their intent.
Karen Attiah, the last full-time Black opinion writer and editor of Global Opinions at the Washington Post was fired in the midst of the Kirk storm, but unlike Kimmel, she did not get her job back. MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd was also terminated. We all hear about the high-profile people affected, but there are uncounted people whose experiences don’t get reported.
Educators in high schools and colleges, lawyers, doctors, first responders, people working in a variety of businesses, government workers, and many other professionals have been shown the door because employers felt that their comments on social media were too raw, not remorseful enough, or had crossed the line as far as free speech was concerned.
A monster has been let out of its cave. The mantra of advancing free speech is now utilized, weaponized, and targeted toward “wokeness,” “critical race theory,” Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), affirmative action in college admissions, voting rights, women, LGBTQ people, and every other policy, group, or person that is non-white and/or not in the fold of the MAGA/Trump camp and its white supremacist agenda.
Someone needs to explain to me this new set of rules concerning free speech. Last week at Tennessee State University, a MAGA group wearing those offensive red hats breached the safety of that HBCU with signs that said, “DEI should be illegal” and “Deport all illegals now.” They called themselves the “Fearless Debaters,” and they claimed that this was their first stop on a new tour. The mob argued they were exercising their First Amendment rights. They were escorted off campus by security, but the incident demonstrates how the right has raised the ante on free speech from something that should be revered but now is being used in hateful and destructive ways.
The First Amendment is noble and an expression of a free and open society where debate and discussion is welcomed. But freedom of speech for the political right has little to do with worthy ideas, valued discussion, or honest debate. It has nothing to do with advancing the dignity of the world or of the human race, but it has everything to do with advancing racist and hateful ideology under the guise of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment is being turned into a litmus test to certify those who are on the right versus those on the left. The right wing interprets freedom of speech as the right to say anything they want, with all of the disrespect and hatefulness that they can. The idea that you can say anything you want disrespectfully to anyone you want is what the political right means by freedom of speech. They mean to offer the most demeaning, degrading, insulting, and racist speech in the political and public arena. This is what they want the freedom to do, and are expressing this with a vengeance after their canonization and deification of Kirk.
The political right felt growing restrictions on their ability to engage in such speech from the 1970s until recent times. Over the past few decades, racist speech has become less acceptable in the public domain. Popular TV shows took on the idea of racist attitudes and speech and comically showed how boorish, foolish, and ill-mannered the practice and people engaged in it were. Many of us remember the Archie Bunker character from the series All in the Family, which exposed the subject of racism and bigotry in a comedic way every week. There were many other programs and popular shows that also took on the theme, and racist speech was exposed for the virus that it is. It became less and less popular to express racist ideology openly.
But that was then, and this is now. We have taken giant steps backwards.
When I listen to the political right, I hear the Klansmen screaming about how racial mixing will create a mongrel race. What the political right wants to bring back is the speech of old, along with the attitudes and racial restrictions of yesterday. The conservative MAGA/Trump political right wants to freely and publicly utter ideas and present attitudes that were exposed as wrong in the past and which are just as wrong in the present.
They want to talk about how Blacks and women are unqualified for a job. They want to talk about how every Black or brown person in the job market represents a white person who should have had that job. They want to talk about how Black and brown people coming into the country will soon out-populate white people unless we remove them and turn them back at the borders. They want to talk about DEI as a threat to qualified white people and a means of offering less competent non-white people the job. And most of all, they want to call me the “N” word in a myriad of free speech ways.
It has been argued and decided in courts before that speech can be limited if it creates an imminent danger or causes serious harm. Free speech can be deemed unprotected due to its intent and the danger it may cause to others. For example, there is the often-cited example: You yell fire in a crowded movie theater, and if there is a fire, the speech is protected. Speech however, that is not true, such as yelling fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire and causing a stampede and injury to others, is not protected because it was intended for harm and caused bodily injury.
I am a preacher and not a lawyer, but the speech that is being pushed by the political white supremacist MAGA agenda is intended to cause harm and to inflict mental anguish. The words they use, the ideas disguised as simple free speech, are metastasizing as a cancer and infecting the country. It will be difficult to pull it back. Words will lead to violence as we already have been witnessing, and it will get worse unless our ideas of speech edify instead of denigrate, unless they engage in the weightier things of existence.
Our freedom to speak should deal with how we respect and live together as human beings, how we share and protect the bounty of creation, and the many other things of worth and dignity. Unless the political rhetoric and public discourse become serious and thoughtful, the polarization of the country will persist, and we will become weaker as a nation, not stronger.
The hateful and racist white supremacist ideology of the present must be put back into the past and made once again boorish and obsolete. We have to find a way to retire hate and harmful speech to the dirt pits of history, where relics lie buried. Unless we can elevate free speech to a loftier place, we will be doomed and remain polarized and broken as a people and a country.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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