Ah, yes. The brave defenders of free speech. The warriors against cancel culture. The self-styled martyrs of the “say what you want, snowflake” movement. They’ve spent years assuring us that America needs to be a safe space—for their offensive jokes, for their racist uncle’s Facebook rants, for their senator’s homophobic tweets typed at 3 a.m. But the second anyone says something true about Charlie Kirk after his assassination, suddenly these gladiators of liberty turn into Victorian fainting ladies clutching their pearls.
Because here’s the thing: if this had been any other shooting—say, at a school, at a grocery store, at a parade—the right would have issued the standard kit of responses. Thoughts and prayers. A few perfunctory interviews about “mental health.” Maybe a Fox News chyron blaming rap music. Then back to business as usual: blocking gun reform, selling AR-15 lapel pins, and promising donors that freedom means never having to pass background checks.
But because Charlie Kirk was one of their own—because the bullets this time punctured the aura of their culture-war empire—they suddenly care about how words are used. Suddenly, it’s not enough to mourn. We must canonize. We must sanitize. We must pretend Charlie Kirk wasn’t a man who spent his career turning vulnerable people into punching bags for clout. To even mention his history of racism, misogyny, and queerphobia is treated as sacrilege. Cancel him? Never. Criticize him? Unthinkable. Question him after death? How dare you.
Cancel Culture for Thee, Not for Me
The hypocrisy is breathtaking. For years, the right has screamed about “cancel culture” every time a conservative figure faced consequences for saying something horrendous. Lose a book deal for calling immigrants “vermin”? Cancel culture. Get booted off Twitter for promoting insurrection? Cancel culture. Fire a college professor for calling slavery “not that bad”? Cancel culture!
But now? Now they’re demanding firings, boycotts, deplatformings—yes, cancellations—for anyone who dares to say Charlie Kirk was not, in fact, a saint. Journalists who mention his long history of bigotry are smeared as heartless. Activists who point out his role in inflaming political violence are accused of “dancing on a grave.” The same crowd that demanded we “debate everything” now wants a gag order.
And why? Because the free speech absolutists never believed in free speech. They believed in consequence-free speech for themselves. They wanted a monopoly on cruelty, the freedom to mock George Floyd’s death, to laugh at Paul Pelosi’s assault, to shrug off dead children in classrooms. But the second the cruelty boomerangs, the second someone says, “Hey, maybe this man wasn’t a hero,” they reach for the fainting couch.
The Thoughts and Prayers Template
Let’s talk about the script they always trot out. A school shooting happens. The right-wing machine spins up:
- “Now is not the time to politicize tragedy.”
- “This is about mental health, not guns.”
- “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims.”
- “The Second Amendment shall not be infringed.”
And then silence. Until the next one.
But here’s the glaring hypocrisy: Charlie Kirk’s death has been politicized immediately—not by critics, but by his allies. Within minutes, he was transformed into a martyr for their cause. Trump, DeSantis, Cruz, the whole choir of crocodile tears lined up to insist this was proof of a liberal conspiracy, proof that conservative voices are under siege. Suddenly, rhetoric matters. Suddenly, words kill. Suddenly, the culture of dehumanization they’ve been gleefully profiting from is a crisis.
It’s almost as if the only gun violence that matters is the gun violence that touches them.
Gun Violence as Political Currency
Because let’s be honest: they don’t actually care about reducing violence. If they did, Sandy Hook would have been enough. Uvalde would have been enough. The thousand mass shootings in between would have been enough. But no, those tragedies were acceptable losses for the cause of unfettered gun rights. Those bodies were the price of freedom, according to the NRA prayer book.
But the second one of their loudest propagandists is killed? Suddenly, the death isn’t the cost of freedom—it’s the cost of your words. Suddenly, rhetoric must be toned down. Suddenly, we must investigate “left-wing incitement.” It’s not about guns anymore, it’s about the conversation around them.
It’s a grotesque calculus: children’s lives can be collateral damage, but one firebrand’s death is an existential threat to the republic.
Saint Charlie, Patron of Hypocrisy
And so, in real time, the right has been working overtime to beatify Charlie Kirk. Forget his years of vilifying minorities. Forget his campaigns to silence educators, demonize immigrants, strip queer kids of rights. Forget his endless supply of smirking cruelty. No, in death he must be remembered as a noble truth-teller, a casualty of free speech, a saintly victim of a culture war he himself helped inflame.
It’s an insult not just to truth, but to memory. Because the reality is that Kirk thrived on the very dehumanization now being blamed for his death. He monetized outrage, weaponized cruelty, and then was consumed by the very fire he stoked. To acknowledge that isn’t cruelty—it’s accuracy.
The Cult of Selective Sympathy
Here’s what makes it so grotesque: selective sympathy. Conservatives mocked George Floyd until the footage forced silence. They laughed at Paul Pelosi’s fractured skull, spinning conspiracy theories instead of compassion. They shrugged when Gabby Giffords was shot, when Steve Scalise was nearly killed, when dozens of others fell to political violence.
But Charlie Kirk? Now sympathy is sacred. Now compassion is mandatory. Now criticism must be silenced. It’s not that they discovered empathy—it’s that they discovered a political advantage.
Selective sympathy isn’t morality; it’s strategy. And it’s a strategy soaked in hypocrisy.
The Cancel Culture Ouroboros
The irony, of course, is that this whole reaction is cancel culture. They are doing the very thing they claim to despise: demanding silence, punishing dissent, insisting that some truths are too dangerous to say.
But cancel culture has always been a shell game. It was never about protecting free speech. It was about protecting their speech, their cruelty, their right to punch down without consequence. Everyone else? Fair game to muzzle.
And in Charlie Kirk’s death, we see the ouroboros complete itself: the anti-cancel warriors eating their own argument alive.
Summary of Cancel Culture’s MAGA Mask-Off
The right loves to sneer at cancel culture—until it touches them. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the same movement that mocked George Floyd, dismissed school shootings with “thoughts and prayers,” and laughed at Pelosi’s assault is now demanding silence, reverence, and censorship for anyone telling the truth about Kirk’s legacy. They only care about gun violence when it benefits them politically. They only care about rhetoric when it hurts their own. And they only care about free speech when it protects their cruelty—not when it exposes their hypocrisy.