Will Saletan: Charlie Kirk's Rules of Free Speech

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/charlie-kirk-rules-of-free-speech?utm_medium=The+Bulwark

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Drawing lines around protected speech can be tricky. But in this case, there’s a clear standard any honest Republican could accept: Nobody should be pursued or punished by the government for saying the kinds of things Kirk himself said. Here’s a list.

1. Blaming a murder victim for his own death.

Kirk persistently claimed that George Floyd, who was killed by a police officer on video, actually died of a drug overdose. Even after Kirk’s allegations were debunked, and even after the officer was convicted of murder, Kirk repeated his story, most recently last week. If Kirk was a hero, as the administration contends, then clearly it would be wrong to use the power of the state against someone who, like Kirk, blames a murder on the victim. And that free-speech protection should extend to anyone who accuses Kirk of causing his own assassination.

2. Fomenting ethnic, racial, or religious animosity.

In May 2023, Kirk told his followers that a certain kind of crime was “happening all the time in urban America: Prowling blacks go around for fun to go target white people. That’s a fact. It’s happening more and more.”

Six months later, he charged that (1) “Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” (2) “Some of the largest financiers of left-wing anti-white causes have been Jewish Americans,” and (3) “Tucker Carlson is completely correct by saying this, that the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors.”

It’s easy to see how such statements could lead an unstable person to commit violence against blacks or Jews, though that wasn’t Kirk’s intent. If it’s wrong to prosecute him for saying such things, it would by the same token be wrong to prosecute someone who, in the same manner, fuels animosity against whites, Christians, or conservatives.

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[CrispyQ]

1. Also...

I read a comment on FB that the left cannot be such influential evil & snowflakes at the same time.

We need a clever way to state that.