The Increase in Political Violence is Threatening Freedom of Speech as We Know it

The assassination of Charlie Kirk coincides with the large spike in political violence over the last year. Over 520 terrorist plots and attacks targeted a spectrum of communities, whether they were against Jewish people, ICE officers, the LGBTQ+ community, or peaceful protesters. This piece is not to praise the views of Kirk, but to condemn the direction American politics is moving towards. His shocking death raises the question: is anyone truly safe to express themselves in today’s political climate, or has the First Amendment become a facade?

Kirk was an alt-right personality who was famous for and frequently engaged in political discourse and debate. He traveled across the nation and throughout the world, debating with college students as part of his nonprofit organization Turning Point USA. Kirk was a prominent figure in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, and he hoped to increase Gen Z voter turnout through engaging in college debates. He expressed conservative views on a wide variety of topics, such as abortion, which he called worse than the Holocaust; LGBTQ+ rights, claiming the community “want[s] to corrupt your children; and gender roles, believing women should stay at home and have children instead of having any meaningful career. His murder was not simply an act of violence, but an attack on free expression. Kirk himself stated on X that freedom of speech, regardless of if it’s interpreted as “ugly” or “evil,” should be protected under the First Amendment. His death has torn open a hole that is shedding light onto the sheer number of people who celebrate murder simply because of conflicting views. They believe that because his opinions were so negative, he does not deserve to be mourned. His work and ideologies may have been controversial to many, but regardless of what he believed, everyone has the right to freedom of speech. No one, regardless of ideology, should face violence for their words. As Voltaire famously said: “I may disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

The increasing political tensions, polarization, and blurring of what’s right and what’s wrong is an issue that has time and time again resulted in many unnecessary deaths. Look to the McCarthy era, when anti-Soviet paranoia censored and removed anything associated with being communist. Government employees, artists, academics, politicians, and unionists were targeted with little more than unsubstantiated evidence, and there are a number of examples of people being unofficially blacklisted, having their careers ruined, and even being jailed for suspected espionage. Industries would call unionists communists for wanting basic working rights, banana companies convinced American presidents to support coups d’état against South American governments because they gave unused land back to peasants, and the government illegally burglarized, planted bugs, read letters, and wiretapped in the name of rooting out communism. Another example is the Civil Rights Movement, where activists were targeted with countless assassinations and bombings. From the perspective of many in the government and society, being anti-Jim Crow suddenly meant becoming communist; the federal government began targeting many civil rights activists, discrediting movements and illegally surveilling them. During that time, censorship was used as a fast pass to remove anything the government did not like. Unfortunately, this practice has translated over to the modern age as most politicians refrain from talking about “taboo” topics such as wealth redistribution, labor unions, or free healthcare and college out of fear of being labelled a communist or socialist. 

Recently, there seems to be an almost opposite effect of censorship, with hundreds of people facing consequences for speaking negatively about Charlie Kirk. For example, Jimmy Kimmel’s show was briefly suspended by ABC after he criticized the Trump administration’s handling of Kirk’s death. This censorship does nothing to address the backlash against Kirk; it instead amplifies the conflict and divides America further. When people believe their voices are being silenced, it results in an erosion of civil discourse and puts us onto the path of extremism. American democracy requires a marketplace of ideas, where the inclusion of all opinions, even controversial ones, is essential. Once we begin nitpicking what information is “beneficial” and what is “harmful,” we lose that which was so requisite and special.
What are the implications of this new age of political violence? Fanaticism is at an all-time high. In the not-so-new age of the internet, social media and corporate industries spin the narrative of what people see and believe, dragging them into deeper rabbit holes they would have otherwise never joined. Political members would have to hide behind bulletproof glass instead of engaging with the people, a metaphor for the loss of a valuable component of American democracy. If political members and civilians cannot speak their minds without fearing for their lives, then freedom of speech has truly died. 

We, the country defined upon freedom, must stop forcefully expurgating the views of the “other side,” and instead sit down and converse with each other peacefully. Even though the efficacy of debates has eroded over the past few years, and many don’t grasp the policies of the politicians they’re voting for, public and civil discourse is still tantamount to creating a safe space for everyone. Understanding what they’ll do and advocate for in office, and what that means for you as the voter, is crucial to being impartial and educated from the source. Laws to fairly moderate social media platforms, in order to prevent the push of a specific agenda and to mitigate extremist content, should be advocated for and passed. We should encourage educational awareness from multiple perspectives instead of the one-sided input we currently see in order to prevent driving people into extremist tendencies. The path towards maintaining our democracy requires the acceptance of different beliefs and the right of life to be upheld. We should not accept censorship and propaganda as real, or demonization and fear as a replacement for learning. Instead, we should foster respect towards people with differing views, be willing to say “I don’t know,” and criticize ideas, not people.