We Shouldn’t Welcome Right-Wing Cancel Culture

I didn’t follow Charlie Kirk closely, but he was by all accounts a decent man, a loving father and a devoted husband. On top of that, he championed free speech and debate. His entire career involved going around the country and hashing out the issues of the day with left-wing college students. He even organised debates between different factions on the right. So kudos to him—and sincere condolences to his family.  

Regrettably, leftists across America have been celebrating or making light of his death, particularly on social media. And this, in turn, has spurred right-wingers to track down those individuals’ employers and get them fired. The right-wingers involved in this campaign include not only social media activists, but also senators and congressmen. Even the Vice President, J.D. Vance, told supporters that “when you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder” you should “call their employer”.

This morning, the campaign bagged its most high-profile target yet, with talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel being taken off air for some fairly innocuous comments about the “MAGA gang”. (Kimmel had already condemned the killing and offered his condolences to Kirk’s family.) His suspension came after explicit threats from Trump’s FCC chairman that there are “actions we can take on licensed broadcasters”.

Such threats are noteworthy given that one of the very first executive orders Trump signed upon returning to office aimed at “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship”. What is threatening licensed broadcasters if not federal censorship? (The ‘F’ in ‘FCC’ stands for ‘Federal’, by the way.)

Meanwhile, we have Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, warning that his administration “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.” Of course, Bondi had to quickly walk back her comments due to a minor legal technicality—that any such targeting would be in blatant violation of the US Constitution. I guess knowing what the Constitution says is too much to ask from the Attorney General.

Those engaged in the campaign of cancel culture have offered two main justifications for their antics. The first is that the Left was doing this for years and is now getting a taste of their own medicine. But this simply isn’t convincing.

To begin with, the Left is not a single actor who did something wrong and should be punished for it. If a specific individual got someone cancelled over an ‘offensive’ comment and then made an ‘offensive’ comment themself, getting that individual cancelled might represent justice. However, we are talking about the cancellation of people who merely share opinions with the people who were getting others cancelled a few years ago. (Kimmel, for example, has criticised cancel culture.)

What’s more, there’s an important principle you might have learned about in primary school, which is that two wrongs don’t make a right. If left-wing activists set off a bomb, should right-wing activists do the same? Obviously not. Either cancel culture is bad, in which case we shouldn’t engage in it, or it’s good, in which case right-wingers have been consistently wrong for the past decade. (Hint: it is bad.)

Finally, getting revenge on ‘the Left’ by engaging in cancel culture seems likely to reinforce the narrative that right-wingers never really cared about free speech and were just invoking the principle opportunistically. As a consequence, it seems likely to reinvigorate the Left’s own censorious tendencies. ‘See, they don’t care, so why should we stop getting people fired for racism and transphobia?’ is a powerful argument.

The second justification right-wing campaigners have offered is that, yes, cancel culture is bad but this isn’t cancel culture—because reasons.

Again, I’m not convinced. Different people find different things offensive and there is no objective definition of ‘offensive’ speech. Yes, publicly celebrating someone’s death is a pretty deranged thing to do, but so is going out of your way to get someone fired over something they said.  

This is not to say that all of the cancellations we’ve heard about were unjustified. At least one teacher allegedly showed a video of the assassination to an elementary school class and was subsequently suspended by the school. Which seems entirely reasonable: snuff films are not appropriate for children. But generally speaking, people should be free to express opinions—even distasteful ones—without fear of losing their jobs.

The Right has spent much of the last decade railing against cancel culture, and was arguably winning the debate. As recently as February, Vance rightly lectured European leaders over their dismal record on free speech. It is a mistake to abandon that position now.