#conservative correctness

Dan Pfeiffer at The Message Box:

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy. It’s a tragedy despite his odious, views toward so many Americans. It’s a tragedy despite the role he played in fomenting a toxic political environment where too many see violence as a viable solution. It’s a tragedy because he left behind a wife and two young kids. And it’s a tragedy because of how Donald Trump and his allies are weaponizing his death.

The fact that Kirk was so well known — particularly among younger Americans who get their news from social media — and that his killing was captured in a horrifying video that spread rapidly online has made his death a national event. Trump and the right are going out of their way to turn Charlie Kirk into a martyr for the MAGA movement. Trump ordered flags to be flown at half-staff — an unprecedented move for a civilian outside elected office. Kirk’s casket was flown home to Arizona on Air Force Two. The Vice President canceled an appearance at a 9/11 memorial ceremony to meet with Kirk’s family in Utah. Trump will attend Kirk’s funeral. The Vice President even hosted Kirk’s podcast yesterday. Nearly every NFL game this past weekend held a moment of silence for Kirk.

In all of these moments, Kirk is being lionized by his supporters and much of the traditional media as a “champion of free speech.” I disagree. In my view, Kirk was a champion of a certain kind of speech. But even if you accept the Right’s characterization, they are now doing the exact opposite of what they claim Kirk stood for. The primary response from the Trump Administration and the MAGA movement has been to use Kirk’s death to justify a massive crackdown on free speech. This is dangerously ironic on multiple levels. What the Right is pushing goes far beyond the “cancel culture” they once decried and borders on modern-day MAGA McCarthyism.

A Government Crackdown

Within hours of Kirk’s assassination, the MAGA Right began claiming that “the Left” was celebrating his death. Their evidence? A handful of random Bluesky posts from people with no role in the Democratic Party or progressive infrastructure. To my knowledge, every elected Democrat and progressive leader who has spoken publicly about Kirk has condemned his killing and called for an end to political violence. The calls for censorship and punishment aren’t coming from random posters online; they are coming from the top ranks of the Republican Party. Congressman Randy Fine declared: Elon Musk amplified Fine’s post, saying, “100%.” [...]

Fomenting a Culture of Fear

The goal isn’t just to punish those who criticized Kirk. It’s to create a culture of fear — one that forces people to think twice before using their voice or platform to speak out against Trump and MAGA. And it’s working. The effort to make examples of Kirk’s critics began with pro-MAGA personalities like LibsofTikTok scouring the internet for anything that could be spun as celebratory and turning those posts over to employers. Several people reportedly lost their jobs. The speed with which employers acted shows the fear of crossing the Trump Administration and the MAGA movement in this hothouse moment.

Many of those fired worked at universities, which should be bastions of free speech. Yet so many institutions of higher learning are now so worried about being targeted by Trump that they are willing to sacrifice employees for expressing personal opinions in their private capacity. Media organizations are also caving. MSNBC immediately fired commentator Matthew Dowd for comments suggesting Kirk bore some responsibility for his own actions. According to Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, she was fired over her social media posts about Kirk. Reading her posts, it’s hard to see what merited firing. But then again, Jeff Bezos has made it clear that his primary goal as owner of the Post is protecting his business interests under the Trump Administration. After years of whining in bad faith about “cancel culture” and accusing Democrats of opposing free speech, the Right’s effort to silence dissent is the height of hypocrisy.

Dan Pfeiffer put it best about the conservative movement’s dishonest charade of “supporting free speech” by rightly stating that the right’s “effort to silence dissent is the height of hypocrisy” in the wake of the shooting death of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Republicans aren’t even pretending to give a sh-t about free speech now

Popular Information (Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby): Republicans celebrate Kirk as free speech champion, demand critics be fired

The Bulwark (Joe Perticone): Republicans Prepare Punishments for Progressives After Charlie Kirk Murder

Jay Kuo at The Status Kuo:

GOP officials are fresh off their disappointment and confusion that Charlie Kirk’s killer came from a conservative, gun-loving Republican family. They are amplifying as-yet-unfounded rumors about Tyler Robinson. But given the FBI’s record so far on misinformation, if not outright disinformation, I am not giving this much credence. As I wrote about over the weekend, there is also plenty of evidence to suggest that Robinson was radicalized as a member of the Groypers, who are political extremists who detest Kirk, but we need to await more evidence. Today, I want to focus on the aftermath of Kirk’s murder and discuss how GOP officials have now turned their anger on anyone publicly critical of him. These officials, and the right-wing accounts that back them and funnel them information, are using their positions to silence speech and cancel those with whom they disagree. Perhaps worse still, they are encouraging their base to do the same, priming the country for the kind of fascist snitching that turns neighbor against neighbor the way Nazi Germany and other authoritarian regimes have done throughout history.

Hegseth horrorshow

Let’s start near the top of this reprehensible behavior. On Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed Pentagon staff to hunt for posts by service members who had mocked Kirk, according to two defense officials who spoke to NBC News. He called on the public to report any posts that could be interpreted as negative about Kirk or unsympathetic about his murder. Several service members were relieved of their jobs. The officials noted that Hegseth’s directive also pertains to others beyond service members who are “associated with the Defense Department.” Hegseth appeared to confirm this in a post online. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell had tweeted, “It is unacceptable for military personnel and Department of War civilians to celebrate or mock the assassination of a fellow American. The Department of War” (yes, he called it that) “has zero tolerance for it.” In response, Hegseth replied, “We are tracking all these very closely—and will address, immediately. Completely unacceptable.”

[...]

FEMA fascism

Far-right activist Laura Loomer is known for stirring the pot, even if she had to delete a post that was highly critical of Charlie Kirk that had argued he was anti-Trump and a political opportunist, and even referenced the attempted Trump’s attempted assassination. Here is the relevant part of it, for the record and since she deleted it. Loomer’s panic over her Kirk post may explain her current zeal. She is attempting to prove she was actually a Kirk fan instead of a major critic and has his back now that he is dead. Her actions have direct consequences. Loomer called for the investigation of Army Major General Brett Sylvia, tweeting about his son Gavin, who works for FEMA but was placed on administrative leave. Gavin Sylvia had apparently posted on Instagram that Kirk was a “racist homophobe misogynist” (all true) and took issue with the nation flying its flags at half-mast for Kirk (as many did). Are family members and government employees no longer allowed to question outrageous government actions, such as honoring a bigoted, hate-filled man, without fear of negative professional consequences? Loomer’s tweet—which added the gem of a fact that Gavin Sylvia’s brother is “married to a Muslim” as if that is relevant at all, except to demonstrate her raw animus—resulted directly in FEMA placing the younger Sylvia on administrative leave. Loomer also called for Defense Secretary Hegseth to “review the employment” of Major General Brett Sylvia.

[...]

Congressional contagion

It began when Chaya Raichik, the extremist behind the troll account Libs of Tik Tok, doxxed a teacher in Ellsworth, Wisconsin for posting about Kirk. The teacher wrote that Kirk had “spewed hate” and had said that “deaths are worth it for the Second Amendment.” She then added that she “disagreed with this statement and essentially everything that Kirk stood for” before leveling a tough take: “if you liked what he stood for, then you can’t be upset that he died. He fulfilled his destiny.” These are admittedly harsh words. But they resemble many opinions across the Internet that noted the irony of Kirk being killed at a school by a gun—experiencing one of the very deaths that he argued were a price for the Second Amendment. It’s bad enough that a large right-wing account targeted this particular individuals for her views. But it’s far worse what transpired next. Rep. Derek Van Orden (R-WI), who represents the district where the teacher works, declared he would work “to remove all federal funding” for the “entire city of Ellsworth” including “grants and community directed projects” unless this was “rectified immediately.”

Online outing

As a darker example of where this is all headed, there is reportedly an online, searchable database which claims to list tens of thousands who were critical of Kirk online along with their employers. The right is seeking to leverage armies of online Kirk fans to dox and punish other Americans for their speech critical of Kirk’s well-documented hate. Other online accounts, such as Flyover Conservatives, are targeting opponents of Kirk hoping to get them fired for expressing views similar to what Gavin Sylvia had written. One teacher in Lee’s Summit, Missouri also had the audacity to challenge the flag being flown at half mast for Kirk. “He should never have been shot, but he’s no martyr,” the teacher wrote, expressly condemning the violence. He added, “He’s no hero. He was a racist.”

[...] People like Charlie Kirk stoked division and stirred hatred against minorities, women and the LGBTQ+ while he was alive. We on the tolerant left should not be silenced in any way from pointing this out after he is dead. Those who seek to use their official positions to censor such speech are acting unconstitutionally. And the accounts doxxing and calling for punishment for such speech must be seen for what they are: sponsors of stochastic terror. When the GOP later inevitably tries to claim that it’s actually the party of Free Speech, remember this moment and these receipts. Republican extremists only believe in their own right to threaten, endanger and attack others. But when others dare criticize one of their own for doing exactly this, they leap to silence and intimidate.

The right-wing witch hunt on people making comments on social media that are even a smidge critical of Charlie Kirk to get them fired or suspended from their jobs is overkill and cancel culture on steroids.

See Also:

TPM: Trumpist Right Launches Purge of Anyone Who Dares Criticize Charlie Kirk

This is an oldie, from after the 2016 election, but a goodie.

PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP and his chief strategist Steve Bannon keep confirming an argument I’ve been making for a while: conservatives are just as “politically correct” as they claim liberals and the left are. They’re just as touchy about it, too—in fact, they might even be worse—and they have the capacity to be far more militant about it. This should be cause for great concern.

If this sounds like nonsense, it’s probably because we in the United States have been carefully trained over the past few decades to understand that “political correctness” has a very specific definition. Even though the most robust modern usage of “political correctness” dates to the heyday of the New Left, our contemporary meaning was not worked out by liberals, progressives, or lefties. No, the repurposed “PC” grievances of nineties-era culture warfare were molded by right-wing intellectuals and media blowhards, and projected onto just about anyone considered to be part of the cultural left. Perhaps the greatest failure of anyone who positively identifies themselves with the ranks of the politically correct was to answer to the term in the first place, thereby giving credence to what was set up from the beginning as a damaging stereotype.

To hear the right (especially the so-called alt-right) tell it, political correctness is perhaps the single greatest threat our country faces. It is not just a mild nuisance; it is apparently putting American lives at risk. The conservative rebellion against “political correctness” was one of the most consequential staples of the 2016 election. It was a mainstay of Republicans’ assault on the status quo under the “Obama regime,” but none of the candidates in the Republican primary actually embodied the anti-PC ideal except Donald Trump himself. Trump perpetuated the professional right’s PC mythology by demonstrating to his base what its opposite looks like. But as Trump himself and his followers have made quite clear, the opposite of political correctness is not the complete absence of it, but a mirror image of it—a rigid schema of right-wing orthodoxies that, despite its distinctive ideological coloration, remains political correctness all the same.