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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
We can try to imagine a reversal of the scenario. If a pro-immigrant pundit were slain by an illegal immigrant, would conservatives make callous remarks on social media? I think so, yes. I don’t think they would “celebrate” it, but they would definitely make brusque political comments online. I recall reading comments like that after the Mollie Tibbetts story (illegal immigrant killed progressive American girl). We can’t say that it’s different because one side is objectively wrong about things, because polite politics requires that we pretend / believe that this isn’t the case.
But Charlie Kirk’s death is also unusually significant. He was a household name for anyone tuned in to youth politics. He was being groomed for leadership in the conservative movement, so it’s the equivalent of killing a political candidate (you can’t replace someone like Charlie Kirk). His death was unusually public in our uncensored social media environment, and also wildly gruesome. And his show was a symbol of open political discussion, even if only at the surface level. So there’s a sense in which Charlie Kirk’s death is more of an apolitical public tragedy. There’s the political dimension to it, but there’s also the apolitical tragedy dimension. As both parties would be happy to fire anyone who made light of the Boston Marathon Bombing after it happened, it comes down to how Kirk’s assassination ranks up against other objectively sacrosanct public tragedies. I actually don’t like him but I would say it’s something of a sacrosanct public tragedy because of the aforementioned incidental memetic properties of the event.
Wildly gruesome even more so because he got assassinated while talking during a public event. I think only JFK's assassination comes to the same level of shock because JFK got assassinated in a public parade. Meanwhile, others in American history that were assassinated I can think of like MLK Jr, RFK, weren't assassinated in such a public manner.
I looked through the list of assassinations in the US and these are the only ones I could see that I think would qualify as deliberate assassinations in public venues with many on lookers
John F Kennedy on November 22, 1963 - Assassinated in a parade
Malcom X on February 21, 1965 - Shot in front of 400 before beginning his speech
James E Davis on July 23, 2003 - Politician, killed in front of the New York council and dozens of attendees
Alberta King on June 30, 1974 - Mother of MLK, shot while playing the organ during service
Dimebag Darrel on December 8, 2004 - Musician, shot by deranged fan during a performance
I'm sure there's some I missed since I picked this list based on the description on the table, but most assassinations, at least in the US don't take place during public events with many onlookers. Most happen at the victim's home, or it may be in public in a place like a hotel.
I honestly think if he was shot at his home, it wouldn't have been nearly as tragic. This was as public as you can get. It would've been in the same category as the assassination attempt on Trump, except Trump had the fortune to survive that one. I think after Trump having survived multiple assassination attempts, I began to think that assassinations won't actually happen, the attempted assassins are too incompetent, security will get better etc. Clearly, I deluded myself.
I've seen a lot of gore videos on the internet. Stuff with organs showing, beheadings, torture, etc. I had just seen footage of that Ukrainian girl being stabbed on the bus like a week ago. Watching the footage of Kirk being shot was the worst I ever felt. The location, the timing... I don't think anything I've seen compares.
Even without the public nature of the assassination, Kirk is the most significant political figure to be actually murdered (as opposed to just being shot at) since the Days of Rage. Part of the reason why the public response is so controversial is that a lot of people, particularly on the left, don't get why the MAGA right see Charlie Kirk as a much bigger deal than two state legislators and their spouses, and the MAGA right don't get why half the country is treating this like the murder of a controversial podcast bro.
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My guess is that part of it is that you can see the exact moment he's gone.
Most violent videos on the internet are much more vague - the focus shifts, it's partially censored, somebody gets stabbed a couple of times and "the one" wasn't clear, it's a door cam footage of a shooting at a distance, the person gets dumped in an ambulance and goes away and oh god how did they survive that???...
But no with him it's up close, good quality footage, an ugly wound, and clear that he's gone.
On. Then off.
That one moment is existentially hard and one of the big reasons for excess of substance use in healthcare workers.
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