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In the aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the institutional Left has had an awakening.
One would think it would be about the ways they contributed to the political climate that led to Kirk’s murder. But that would require too much self-reflection.
No, instead it’s about how the Right is threatening “free speech” and engaging in “cancel culture” by waging a campaign to get anyone who celebrated or otherwise danced on Kirk’s grave fired and run out of polite society.
The inescapability and finality of death are among the few things that unite every person from all walks of life. No matter where you live, how much money you have, or how much influence you have, death will always come. The finality of death is also why it elicits grief. When someone we love dies, we are separated from them and feel a sense of hollow loss.
But that finality is also why there is a temptation to celebrate the deaths of those we despise. When Osama Bin Laden was killed by a SEAL Team Six operation in 2011, for instance, chants of USA rang out at baseball games, and a celebratory crowd congregated outside of Ground Zero and the White House.
But Bin Laden was not killed in cold blood. He was not killed because he supported the political project of the president of the United States. He was killed for orchestrating the cold-blooded murder of thousands of people following a worldwide manhunt that some feared would never end. His death was accountability and justice, and it gave a sense of closure to the thousands of families whose loved ones died in the attacks he orchestrated.
Kirk was murdered for speaking. He was murdered because he had the same beliefs that propelled his friend, the duly elected president of the United States, to a popular vote victory in the last presidential election. And this is what makes the reaction to his death so disturbing. The implicit or perhaps explicit message from those who celebrate the death of this political activist is that anyone who aligns themselves with the half of the country that supports the president is worthy of death in the same way that Bin Laden was.
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In a 2016 post that has taken on a new and prescient significance in the last few days, Kirk wrote, “You can tell a lot about a person by how they react when someone dies.”
I have had numerous friends and acquaintances who have little to no engagement with politics either reach out to me or post publicly on social media about how discouraged and horrified they are to see people they knew for years and considered decent people, express glee or otherwise celebrate the murder of a fellow citizen because of a political disagreement. For many of them, it has raised the entirely reasonable conclusion that if someone would celebrate the death of a complete stranger over politics, why would it be any different for a person they know?
At the same time, a legion of conservative influencers, pundits, and even anonymous internet sleuths have taken it upon themselves to identify anyone who celebrated Kirk’s murder online and pressure their employers to fire them. A website set up to name and shame those who danced on Kirk’s grave has received tens of thousands of submissions.
And, much to the chagrin of the establishment Left, it has been wildly successful. Dr. Matthew Jung, a surgeon who worked at Englewood Health in New Jersey, resigned after a nurse publicly outed him for celebrating Kirk’s murder while at work, out of a rightful concern that someone who celebrates the death of a fellow citizen cannot be trusted to save lives.
Other examples abound. A Carolina Panthers NFL football team employee was fired for celebrating Kirk’s death. Likewise, college administrators have been fired, public school teachers have been suspended or fired, and even members of the military have faced consequences for expressing support for the murder of Kirk. An X thread that celebrates the firings is far from complete, but includes at least 85 cases of people being fired.
Introducing: The Trophy Case
A mega-thread of all of the people Twitter gets fired, updated live as the news comes in. Drop new submissions in the comments below.
— Parker Thayer (@ParkerThayer) September 11, 2025
There’s a temptation to say that this campaign to get people fired for what they say online is textbook cancel culture and hypocritical for conservatives who have decried cancel culture and called for free speech. At the same time, Democrats and the establishment Left have demanded that President Donald Trump and Republicans work to tone down our discourse to stop political violence and unify the nation.
It is at best unbearably naive and at worst willfully ignorant to think that unity similar to what happened after 9/11 is even possible in this current political climate. And the reaction to Kirk’s death proves it.
Unity is only possible when society shares a general sense of acceptable behavior and what is not. The widespread belief that someone “got what they deserved” because of their political views is a direct impediment to unity and can only be answered with harsh consequences.
EDITORIAL: WHAT THE MURDER OF CHARLIE KIRK MEANS
In that sense, stripping anyone who celebrates Kirk’s murder of their job is the least disruptive option. It is an action that not only protects the employer’s reputation by eliminating their association with someone who supports cold-blooded murder, but also contributes to the creation of a climate of accountability. It sends a clear and deliberate message that celebrating the murder of someone else and, in some cases, calling for the murder of others, is not only evil and despicable, but is an action that carries with it consequences.
It should be a bare expectation of civil society that the people who teach our children believe that murder has no place in a stable society. To think otherwise is to believe that teachers can legitimately teach children to support murder if someone’s political beliefs are deemed to be sufficiently wrong.
Likewise, it should be an entirely uncontroversial notion to hold the fundamental principle that someone tasked with saving lives should believe that all life is worth saving. To think otherwise is to assume that doctors and nurses should be allowed to let someone die if they believe their political beliefs are sufficiently wrong.
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These are not opinions that can be tolerated in a free society that expressly relies on order to preserve liberty. To tolerate them is to accelerate the very division that has led to the cycle of violence that led to Kirk’s assassination. If people believe they can and will be killed for their beliefs, they are far more likely to kill their political rivals out of a despairing sense of self-preservation. This is why we say that political violence is so dangerous: it almost always begets more political violence.
Unity is a lofty and laudable goal. If the nation is ever to fully heal and move past what is becoming an increasingly frequent cycle of political violence, it is a necessity. However, unity is only possible if both sides want to achieve it. Elected Democrats may have condemned the murder of Kirk, but a hardly insignificant portion of their base has cheered it to such a degree that those outside of the Beltway bubble have seen it in their own lives. That is not a movement interested in unity. And only severe consequences will change that.