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In the days following Charlie Kirk's murder, has seen a wave of employers being contacted regarding off-color remarks made by employees on social media about his passing. The debate is, does this constitute cancel culture, but by the right instead of the typical left? Some have argued that it is not the same thing, due to the disparaging comments being immediate, vs old comments dredged up in an attempt to cancel someone. There is a big difference between someone desecrating Charlie Kirk in an overt manner right after his passing, compared to a social media post made 10+ years ago against living targets that could be deemed as racist only under the most uncharitable light.
My take is, contacting an employer with the intent of getting someone fired for something not work-related or fired in the public interest as a 'concerned citizen', by definition, is cancel culture. Sure, one can argue that this is a different degree of cancelation, but it's the same principle. Someone posting a vile comment on his social media celebrating someone's death doesn’t necessarily affect his ability to do his job, like making sandwiches or whatever. Sure, if said individual confessed on social media to spitting in customers' sandwiches or making disparaging remarks about customers, go ahead and get his ass fired to protect the customers if no one else. But this is not like that. Consumers and other employees are not negatively affected by an employee holding a grudge against a dead podcaster.
To turn the tables, imagine if George Soros died and many of those same people wrote "good riddance" on their social media accounts, should this be grounds for cancelation? By the above logic, yes if you want to be morally consistent.
relevant tweet https://x.com/politicalmath/status/1967066826590028174
It may be cancel culture but honestly, I don't really care. Ultimately if it had been some left-wing pundit that had been assassinated like Contrapoints or Destiny or Hasan, and right-wingers were getting fired for celebrating, I don't believe for a second hardly any lefties would be sticking up for them and really, nor would I. I didn't make a stink when that guy got fired for outing himself as a literal fascist on Jubilee, I'm not going to make a stink when people get fired for supporting political assassinations of pundits they dislike. I'm perfectly fine with a norm of "don't celebrate assassinations of mainstream political pundits" existing, or not existing, it just needs to be applied symmetrically to left and right.
I absolutely would be against people facing legal consequences for it, but to my knowledge that hasn't happened thus far. I suppose I don't agree with the calls to deport non-US citizens who have celebrated the assassination, and I don't think people should be fired for making jokes or just saying they don't care, either. Nor should they be if someone dies in an accident or of natural causes, and they say he/she had it coming. But supporting outright murder of a pundit because you didn't like their mainstream, milquetoast political opinions goes much further than that in my view, and it's really not that unreasonable for somebody to get you fired over it. That's what it comes down to for me, the real transgression isn't "I don't have sympathy for him" or even "I'm happy he's dead" but "I think it's good he was murdered for saying things I disagree with."
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