Several people fired after clampdown on speech over Charlie Kirk shooting
156 comments
·September 13, 2025AnEro
reliabilityguy
> All that said,
So, basically, what you are saying is "it is bad to celebrate the death of people, but...".
So, you have to choose what to be: a person who is fine with political violence, or someone who is against any sort of political violence.
Simulacra
What we need is for politicians to not keep labeling their opposition with violent rhetoric. Everything from punch a Nazi, to death to communism, we've got to get the violent rhetoric out of politics. Too many unstable people.
seanmcdirmid
Both sides have their nut cases. And you can’t actually restrict nut case speech with our current constitution at least, you can’t even prevent them from being elected.
lostlogin
How do you apply what you’re saying?
Apply it to current US politicians. Who is doing this, how do you stop them?
analognoise
Didn’t the President of the United States say he didn’t care about bringing the people together, and has wished violence upon people who don’t support him politically?
Where do you think this comes from, and, rather than arm ourselves with similarly martial language, we should be expected simply to lie flat?
Ridiculous.
yepitwas
I was borderline, almost, kinda, 10% rethinking whether I was actually wrong to label MAGA fascists.
Then Kilmeade (multi-decade Fox News host) just casually dropped “we should lethal inject homeless people who refuse help” a day or two ago, and his co-hosts didn’t even miss a beat.
I mean, that’s literal Nazi shit. They say literal Nazi shit, this isn’t isolated. What do you call it? WTF. Elon sieg-heils twice at the inauguration and they don’t disown him. What is it going to take before we get folks who still think calling them fascists is the problem, actually, to blame the party that twice elected a guy president who told his supporters they could shoot his opponent if she won?
throw0101a
> Then Kilmeade (multi-decade Fox News host) just casually dropped “we should lethal inject homeless people who refuse help” a day or two ago, and his co-hosts didn’t even miss a beat.
See:
* https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-friends/fox-news-host-menta...
jackstraw42
"...or you know, involuntary lethal injections. Just kill em." -Brian Kilmeade, Fox and Friends
somenameforme
The most disconcerting thing about this murder is that it seems like the killer was relatively normal beyond being excessively involved in online politics. In many of these things there's fairly obvious symptoms of major mental illness, or at the minimum it's some guy who's basically way down out in life. This was a young seemingly smart guy who just decided to throw his life away, and murder somebody else, probably as a result of spending way too much time in online circle jerks.
mapontosevenths
Kirk earned a living by intentionally inciting rage. The dividends of rage are violence, sadly.
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OutOfHere
That completely misrepresents the situation because the deceased was very active offline. It wasn't merely an online matter. Calling someone mentally ill simply because you don't agree with their reasoning is the definition of insanity. For the most part, unless they have a diagnosis of schizophrenia, people know what they're doing. As for the deceased, he had been minting millions of dollars with his hate speech.
OutOfHere
[flagged]
dinfinity
Yes. Yes, it is a tragic event. Apart from it being simply morally utterly reprehensible, it is an extremely primitive and counter-productive way to fight against ideas and the messengers of those ideas.
Again, morally reprehensible and it doesn't fucking work. It only shows 'the other side is just as bad/worse', turns the messenger into a martyr, and galvanizes support.
OutOfHere
What is actually tragic is that spreading lies, as he did, and the liar-in-chief has been doing for decades, works exceedingly well. Do you have a solution for that? People have no critical thinking skills, and believe anything if they hear it repeatedly when uttered with confidence! Our schools are a business that are focused on maximizing tax revenue for themselves while minimizing education and critical thought.
softwaredoug
If there’s anything that this horrific event has taught me it’s to step away from social media political rabbit holes. These places amplify and feed upon themselves, and can lead you to a dark place where you’d glorify this kind of death.
After all this is exactly how to shooter himself ended up thinking he had to assassinate Kirk.
boothby
> If there’s anything that this horrific event has taught me it’s to step away from social media political rabbit holes.
This presents a conundrum to somebody wanting to stay abreast of current events. The president of the US is always-online to the point that not posting to twitter for a few hours sparks rumors that he's died. And if you look back a few decades in American history, assassination of politicians and activists happened long before the advent of social media.
throw0101a
> The president of the US is always-online to the point that not posting to twitter for a few hours sparks rumors that he's died.
Trump was not publicly seen for four days.
Hard to believe that there were zero opportunities for some kind of public interaction, even with cabinet members or civil service / WH staff folks. POTUS just 'disappearing' for several days is a bit odd.
It didn't help that they tried to provide 'proof of life' by posting golfing photos… that were taken a week before.
softwaredoug
I’m not sure there’s much use to “staying abreast of current events” for most people. Media (social/traditional) focuses on amping up your anxiety and putting your side against there’s. Rather than a balanced view of the details. Alarmist headlines and hand wringing tweets are engineered to anger and outrage you. It’s very hard to keep up with news while keeping your rational brain engaged.
If something truly momentous happens about it, you’ll hear about it.
If something happens that impacts you, you’ll find out when it happens and then you’ll get informed if there’s anything you can do about it.
boothby
> If something truly momentous happens about it, you’ll hear about it.
From who? And where are they getting their information?
It bears mentioning that you're presently participating in a political conversation on social media.
forinti
Howard Stern noted once how people who disliked him spent more time listening to him than those who liked him.
Kirk seemed to have invested heavily in aggravating people in order to make an audience. It seemed so obvious to me that I don't understand why those who disliked him would waste their time trying to debate him.
lostlogin
His rallies didn’t seem to be full of people who didn’t like him.
fallinghawks
I got flagged here on HN for stating (right as the news was breaking) that the shooter could just as likely be right wing as left, and nothing was known right now. Literally facts, and people downvoted them. (I'll probably get downvoted again for this lol)
zahlman
> I got flagged here on HN for stating (right as the news was breaking) that the shooter could just as likely be right wing as left
I don't think you should have been flagged for such an observation in general, but assigning a prior of equal probability strikes me as frankly absurd. It would be much harder for someone on the same ideological "side" to have a motivation to murder. False flags really aren't that common, in general. This is the same kind of conspiratorial thinking behind Alex Jones' "crisis actors".
Also, your comment was off-topic to the sub-thread. People were discussing whether Kirk would be seen as a martyr. The ideology of the shooter has quite little to do with that.
> (I'll probably get downvoted again for this lol)
Commentary like this is inherently obnoxious, and tends towards self-fulfilling prophecy.
yepitwas
> It would be much harder for someone on the same ideological "side" to have a motivation to murder.
Is the likelihood lower or higher if it already happened (at least) once last year?
Is it lower or higher if you’re aware of the hostile dynamics between TPU and at least one popular very much violence-encouraging even-farther-right influencer? Nb this group has opposed Trump for being too timidly white supremacist. Would that shift your guess at the odds?
Safe bet if you’ve been paying attention to this stuff for a few decades was about equal odds right or left winger, and maybe somewhat higher right, if the target’s a right winger (almost certainly the attacker is, if relevantly affiliated, right-affiliated if the target’s a Democrat or otherwise left) or else (in either case of political affiliation of the target) there’s fair odds of apolitical notoriety-seeking or straight up lunacy without a strong political motivation.
[edit] nb I’m not saying 100% that the guy won’t turn out to be coming from the left, but I think if you’re playing the odds on something like this and go “must be a leftist” you’ve misread the situation in this country.
cyanydeez
Far as reporting goes, theres two tracks. Either he was upset with charlie not being far right enough, or somehow he was influences by the far left.
There is an objective way to understand the fuzzy logic problem media provides, but that leads to one type of politic.
The problem is rational thinking is whats under attack. Particularly when it leads to future predictions. Thats the danger because you can create a self fulfilling prophecy.
The far right in every country is trying to spread isolationism to reduce the capacity of society to benefit the most people because economic slavery is the only way oligarchy survives.
wkat4242
> Either he was upset with charlie not being far right enough, or somehow he was influences by the far left.
I don't think you can get much further right than he was though. When I hear of all the stuff he was saying. I don't think even Trump has ever said some of that stuff. Like that women should be secondary to men.
Apparently he also said that "a few deaths a year are a small price to pay for access to weapons". I wonder if he still felt that way knowing what was coming. I don't have the source link to hand though. News goes so fast now and I don't archive everything.
Personally I'd never heard of the guy but I'm not in the US (and very glad about that right now, the country seems to be tearing itself apart)
PS Also I'm not trying to defend the far right, I'm very left (especially by US standards which doesn't really have a 'left' compared to Europe, liberalism here is a moderate right-wing thing). But murder is definitely not ok in my book, of course. I would grin when I see a tesla dealership graffiti'd or a "swasticar" or "from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds" poster at a bus stop. but that's about as far as it goes. You don't touch people ever. Or really destroy stuff of value.
3np
> I don't think you can get much further right than he was though.
Groypers.
shadowgovt
You'll want to look into the "groypers," who are the group the alleged shooter may have been most closely affiliated with. They and Kirk's Turning Point USA had a falling out over TPU's unwillingness to be as ultra-nationalist, isolationist, or white supremacist as the groypers are. They assert that Kirk's brand of conservatism was carrying a kind of stolen valor over claiming they got Trump elected when the groypers would argue they were the ones most instrumental in cementing Trump's support among traditionally disenfranchised white nationalism.
It's too early to know, but it may be the case that this shooting was the right-wing equivalent of Stalin having Lenin removed as an ivory-tower elite obstacle to "true communism."
estimator7292
While yes, echo chambers certainly exacerbated the issue, the main problem is very simple. The american public is becoming so desperate that the only options left are increasingly violent. Our government is shutting down peaceful means of protest with incredible violence, and historically this only ends one way: revolt.
The assassinations will continue until morale improves, basically.
criddell
> the only options left
There are lots of options left. The big one would be to vote and to help others vote. In 2024, only 42% of young people cast a ballot.
OutOfHere
What is the point of voting when gerrymandering decides the outcome? We don't have a functional voting system by any stretch of the imagination. If we did, gerrymandering wouldn't be a thing, and we'd be using ranked-choice or range-voting. So many of the right-wing states have banned these superior voting methods because they're so afraid the ones in power will lose immediately. Granted, it's true that Trump won the popular vote in 2024, but note that voting rights have unfairly been denied to many citizens, especially in right-wing states, so was it really an honest win?
frugalmail
what "peaceful means of protest" has the government shut down exactly?
lostlogin
Cutting university funding if they don’t block protests. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqly0zrnnv3o
jeremyjh
The ones at many Ivy League schools.
platevoltage
Literally every Israel protest.
melling
Stephen King made the mistake of chiming in on X then having to apologize.
I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting so I don’t want to support his beliefs or dismiss them but I think we need to promote freedom of speech/expression. People say things we disagree with, things that are truly horrible, etc. At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
zahlman
> I never heard of Mr Kirk until the shooting
Just for the record, his Youtube channel has about 4.5M subscribers. But the lack of a dot after "Mr" suggests to me that you might be from the UK, so...
> At least in the United States, we should be a bit more tolerant when we disagree.
Ah, never mind.
shadowgovt
The things is... The things said do have consequences. Stochastic terrorism is real. Say people deserve to die (or are expendable) long enough and loud enough and someone ends up convinced.
Kirk literally died in the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime. He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
It seems that what many are reeling from in this moment is the consequences of speech like this had never blown back to harm someone they identified with, who looked and acted enough like them to engage all their empathy.
zahlman
> Say people deserve to die (or are expendable)
> the act of making the case that mass shootings aren't statistically meaningful because most violence is black-on-black gang crime
These are not even remotely the same thing.
> He didn't get to finish his thought because someone turned him into one of those bloodless statistics.
Killing someone with a gunshot to the neck is absolutely not "bloodless".
bilvar
You mean the Stochastic terrorism perpetrated on Charlie Kirk by the media relentlessly brandishing him a Nazi?
melling
Who’s the media? I don’t follow a lot of news and I didn’t know Mr Kirk until last week.
People are in these media bubbles where they’re amped up all the time. Each side does a lot of name calling.
Each group boils it down to us vs them.
shadowgovt
Who is "the media" in this context? MSNBC just let someone go for even suggesting Kirk deserved what happened. If anything, it seems at least mainstream media is very conservative about the labels it assigns to political speakers.
boredhedgehog
I wonder what Kirk would have thought about these firings.
I had never heard of the man before, but now his quotes and fragments of quotes are being weaponized on all fronts, making it hard to see what he actually believed.
platevoltage
You don't need to wonder too hard. He created the "Professor Watchlist". You can imagine what thats for. He also said Medhi Hasan should be deported.
He was not pro-free speech. It is not hard to see what he actually believed. Maybe it is right now with all of the news happening.
boredhedgehog
> He created the "Professor Watchlist". You can imagine what thats for.
According to its About page, it's for documentation only; "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe".
> He also said Medhi Hasan should be deported.
Apparently, Kirk said Hasan's visa should be revoked, as he was unaware of Hasan's citizenship. But Kirk also said in his rant to "get him off TV", which indicates that his instinctual reaction does include silencing people he disagrees with.
platevoltage
> According to its About page, it's for documentation only; "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right of professors to say whatever they believe".
Well that clears things up...
zahlman
> He created the "Professor Watchlist". You can imagine what thats for.
Yes; it's for freely expressing the idea that the people on the list have expressed harmful ideas with their own freedom of speech.
Or, in at least one case (Eric Clanton), that they have committed serious physical violence for ideological reasons.
platevoltage
Please continue. What is the end goal here? To inform students so that at class signup time, they don't pick these professors?
Or is it something else?
layer8
You don’t have to rely on second-hand reporting, there’s no lack of material from the man himself to form an opinion from, like for example: https://www.youtube.com/@RealCharlieKirk/videos
silverquiet
I doubt Kirk believed in anything, but he was happy to say whatever would get him attention and keep his benefactors happy. He wasn't particularly ideologically consistent, though to be fair, Republicans of his time weren't either.
sidibe
We shouldn't care too much on what Kirk thought. Obviously it's horrible he was assassinated, but partisan hacks who make their living dividing people are not people we should try to emulate, even if they're dead. I'm sorry for his family and sorry for violence, but it's worrying how much people are demanding respect for him
lostlogin
Your comment seems critical of him.
So where is the line? What commentary on his death is acceptable and won’t get a person sacked or sanctioned from a government job?
sidibe
I don't know the specifics about most of the firings. I think saying it's good someone was killed is inflammatory and not something people should do and expect no consequences. That MSNBC guy getting fired was ridiculous though. Kirk isn't suddenly due respect and zero criticism because he died.
youniverse
Interview with the guy who was talking to kirk as he got shot: https://youtu.be/18FNK6ZNGuo?si=CcBpH4n1E90817cc
hackable_sand
This is actually the interview medly that turned me off C5
xnx
Is this the cancel culture people got so upset about?
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verdverm
anyone from the administration?
is it limited to people sharing a certain sentiment or common statement?
jmclnx
The only problem I have with this is:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/people-are-calling-o...
No reaction occurred when Melissa Hortman was killed to people doing the same thing as people are doing now with Kirk.
Edit: make things a little bit clearer, AFAIK, no one was fired due to their insensitive comments about her and her husband.
frugalmail
What are you talking about, tons of people were asking for the guy to get investigated and his manifesto to be released.
At least on X/Twitter.
sointeresting
Huh? The link you posted shows that Trump condemned the shooting, calling it "horrific" and saying the shooter will prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. You're equating not flying flags at half mast, despite condemning the violence, to gloating over murder. You're trying to justify the gloating and celebration of violence and it's disgusting.
lostlogin
It is disgusting.
And it’s also free speech to gloat about it. Is it legal to sack someone who is gleeful?
The consensus on Hacker News was that New Zealand made an error blocking and banning the video of the Christchurch mosque shootings.
What’s the right way to handle these scenarios? Kirk was a free speech advocate with strong views on gun violence, further complicating things.
platevoltage
This whole "Kirk was a free speech advocate" nonsense needs to stop. It wasn't true then, and it certainly isn't true now.
sointeresting
The 1st amendment doesn't protect your job, never has.
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FridayoLeary
Fascinating how the guardian can spin people celebrating one of the most destabilising acts of evil committed this year into a free speech issue. There's something very wrong with people when they celebrate cold blooded murderers like luigi miagione. Reddit is full of people almost openly gleeful about this and the Guardian chooses to take their side.
scuff3d
"Free speech for me and not for thee..."
BJones12
"Freedom of speech not freedom from consequences"
I saw that a lot online from lefties in previous years. The thing the left doesn't seem to understand is that every new weapon you create will eventually be used against you.
lostlogin
This is a strange take. A right wing firebrand just got shot. How is this an example of an action having consequences against the left?
BJones12
Relating to the topic of the article, lefties rejoicing in Kirk getting shot are getting doxed and losing their jobs. That was a tactic pioneered by the left over the past decade. Now the same tactic is being used against them.
krapp
I suspect the consequences they're referring to are the consequences the right is currently trying to manufacture consent for. Stochastic violence against the transgender community, the government proscribing leftist political orgs as terrorist groups, Trump sending the national guard into blue states to "crack skulls," that sort of thing.
Trump orders all flags in the nation at half mast and Kirk is being treated like a fallen statesman and hero, the State Department claiming it will revoke the visas of any immigrant who speaks negatively of Kirk, the breathless media coverage, Trump ranting about "leftist violence", the right wing's endless calls for violence and war on social media (going entirely unclamped-down upon,) and the narrative being created that Charlie Kirk was a peaceful intellectual scholar and activist of the likes of MLK Jr and Jesus Christ.
It's obvious a stage is being set here. And of course when whatever happens happens, it will be blamed on the left.
scuff3d
A. I'm actually fine with people getting fired for openly celebrating or claiming murder is a good thing.
2. People getting fired for simply pointing out that Kirk is a victim of a system he helped build are getting fired, which is a completely different situation.
3. The Trump admiration openly going after people is infringing on freedom of speech.
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alchemical_piss
[dead]
trelane
It's been amazing to watch the chair occupants change on this subject (free speech) in the last few years. I still remember "freeze peach" and https://xkcd.com/1357/
echelon
Unlimited free speech for everyone, but consequences for saying things that harm or offend.
If you say "Democrats suck", don't expect them to buy your product. If you say "God doesn't exist," don't expect Christians to come to your business. If you say "I hate gays", expect to get fired from your medical clinic job.
Have free speech, but use it wisely.
Having free speech serves to diffuse social tension. It ensures we don't wind up as cattle, like in 1984. Just don't expect that you can praise the death of certain people and expect everyone to love you for it.
Maybe above all you should be kind. Regardless of your politics. Articulate what you don't like with your free speech, but don't be an asshole.
Unfortunately social media encourages fast engagement with little nuance, so we see a sewer instead of a noble land of open thought and debate.
But we shouldn't throw free speech out with the bath water.
frugalmail
Harm in the physical sense, agreed. But "harm" newly defined 2013-2025 mutated into "speech I don't like" by the government.
"Offend" is subjective, and US Citizens should not have punitive governmental consequences as a result.
But private organizations, should be able to make their own decisions on all the above.
reliabilityguy
> Harm in the physical sense, agreed. But "harm" newly defined 2013-2025 mutated into "speech I don't like" by the government.
By the government? I doubt that “speech is violence” comes from the government.
oldpersonintx2
[dead]
frugalmail
That was mostly the case pre 2025.
We all have to fight to undo the Obama Smith-Mundt Modernization Act that allowed the executive branch to create domestic propaganda.
Now this is absolutely a tragic event, and it is horrific it happened. I feel nothing but empathy for his family and wish them nothing but healing and happiness. It is also horrible to celebrate a death especially like this of someone you could justifiably hate. Even down to the most selfish level why give your brain those neural pathways? I wouldn't want that type of person in my workplace or work with them, for sure. All that said, I think that we need to keep in mind that people are also pointing out he was a horrid person in opposition to the angelic remembrances he is receiving and need to be heard; it isn't disrespectful to refuse to misremember who he was. He has vouched for absolutely insane things, not even left/right policies that sound like a Victorian novel villain's takes. Paraphrasing some of his arguments: children should watch live executions, empathy is wrong and newage, gun violence and shootings are worth the freedom of the Second Amendment(in response to a school shooting).