On September 10th, conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was fatally shot while speaking at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University. Prior to his death, Kirk was a key player in the Make America Great Again (MAGA) culture war against liberal ideology, broadcasting his agenda via debates against college students and social media personalities. While the right praises Kirk as an honest disseminator of conservatism, the left criticises him for spewing hateful rhetoric (such as likening abortion to the Holocaust and promoting the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory) and for engaging in predatory political discourse in order to farm engagement on social media. His legacy proves to be as divisive as his rhetoric: the left and right alike are trying to discern what the nature of his assassination and the subsequent framing of his legacy will mean for the future of speech in the United States.
While the motivations of the alleged shooter Tyler Robinson are unknown, MAGA has a clear vision: Kirk was engaging in political discourse and gunned down for his opinion. He is a martyr of free speech, an embodiment of conservatism under attack. Ironically for the right, this is not a matter of opinion but of certainty, and they intend for a unanimous conclusion on Kirk as a persecuted figure. Vice President Vance hosted the late commentator’s podcast The Charlie Kirk Show, declaring that “left-wing extremism … is part of the reason why Charlie was killed”, despite Robinson having no confirmed political affiliation. Furthermore, Vance stated that the left “are much likelier to defend and celebrate political violence” and the public has a duty to “call them out, and hell, call their employer”.
And so the employers were called. Kirk’s killing galvanised a political witch hunt across college campuses and social media. Universities such as Clemson have suspended and investigated members of staff for comments they made about Kirk on social media, and social media profiles such as the Charlie Kirk Data Foundation have allegedly compiled a database of social media users who have made comments contrary to the MAGA narrative about Kirk’s passing. This account has amassed a total of approximately 122,200 followers on X, and plans to release the database to the public in the coming weeks.
While criticised as an attack on free speech and therefore a hypocrisy of Kirk’s supposed legacy, this witchhunt remains ideologically consistent with his own database: Kirk’s nonprofit Turning Point USA had a Professor Watchlist, which aimed to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda”, doxxing teachers on the basis of ideological disagreement.
It seems to Kirk and to the larger MAGA movement, his death does not illuminate the right of free speech as essential. It asserts the right of conservative speech.
But the hypocrisy of portraying conservative ideology as uniquely and widely oppressed is more apparent when considering who is actually in power, and who has the tools to materially impose an ideology onto the culture. The Trump administration is in the White House, and Kirk’s death has amplified their attack on mainstream media. But to implement such an attack, Republicans have a power tool at their disposal: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).
On September 17th, ABC confirmed “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” was being indefinitely taken from air. This news came merely hours after the head of the FCC and Trump appointee Brendan Carr criticised Kimmel’s comments on the killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
Kimmel stated that the “MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them” and was trying to “score political points from it”. He additionally likened Donald Trump’s reaction to Kirk’s passing to “how a four year old mourns a goldfish”. In response, Carr stated on right-wing media personality Benny Johnson’s podcast that “these companies [who air Kimmel’s show] can find ways to change conduct to take action on Kimmel or… there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead”.
While Carr can use the bully pulpit in order to intimidate networks into subduing their speech as he did with Kimmel, the FCC has other more material methods they can leverage to limit unfavorable speech. The FCC is an independent government agency that provides TV stations with licenses in order to broadcast over radio, and Sinclair and Nexstar, who pulled Kimmel’s show from the air, are some of America’s largest station owners. Disney, who owns ABC, additionally owns stations. Licenses are held by individual stations, yet threatening their loss can ripple across major networks and force them to react, as ABC suspended Kimmel’s show after Sinclair and Nexstar stated it would halt broadcasting it on their stations. The FCC can also revoke licences under a vague public interest standard, and while seldom used, Trump has toyed with the potential to use the FCC’s licensing power in the wake of Kimmel: “[Networks are] giving me all this bad press, and they’re getting a license. I would think maybe their license should be taken away”. To Trump and Carr, what is best for public interest is what is ideologically consistent with the MAGA movement, and Kimmel’s statements were not.
But Kimmel isn’t the first late night host to face potential cancellation: in July, Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show” was cancelled by Paramount. While Paramount claimed bad ratings as the primary motivation, it was criticized as a political manuveur due to Paramount awaiting approval for a merger before the FCC. According to NPR, “Nexstar, Sinclair and ABC’s corporate owner, the Walt Disney Co., all have major deals pending that require approval by either the FCC or federal antitrust regulators”. Through the use of financial intimidation with its power to revoke licenses or approve mergers, the FCC is effectively able to browbeat major networks into subduing the content it airs into something more Trump friendly.
It is no coincidence that both Colbert and Kimmel have been outspoken critics of the current administration, as Trump is keenly aware of the liberal lean of late night television as a whole. On Truth Social, Trump accused Kimmel of being “yet another arm of the DNC”. To Trump, the late night hosts encapsulate mainstream media’s ideological position. It is sanitised, provides cathartic cheap shots at Trump, and takes no transgressive risks against liberal elites. It is a mouthpiece for the Democratic party, and it is ‘woke’. To many on the left, it is toothless and performative, a frigid opposition that fits comfortably into a status quo with liberal sensibilities. But to Trump, its teeth are razor sharp.
Trump is correct to critique the liberal ideology’s elite, repressive monopoly over mainstream media narratives in a post-cancel culture world, but while the MAGA movement postures as populist, Trump aspires to be authoritarian. He is disingenuous in his mission to defeat ‘wokeness’, as he uses its own censorious toolbook in order to promote his ideology. MAGA is a reactionary force, and it desires ideological hegemony in order to find security. Charlie Kirk’s death was evidence enough of political persecution, thus emboldening the Trump administration to take the reigns of popular media.
Despite liberal anxieties, this domination is far from total. This past Monday, ABC announced “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” would return on Tuesday, while Nexstar and Sinclair have stated they will not air the show on its ABC stations when it returns. Yet the partial return of Kimmel doesn’t reverse the precedent: the FCC demonstrated it can leverage its powers in word and deed in order to subdue unfavorable speech. And though the FCC and Trump posture as champions of free speech in a predominantly woke media climate, policing when certain speech is acceptable is an act of censorship and hypocrisy.
Kimmel didn’t yell fire in a crowded theater. He provided a lukewarm, humorous critique of MAGA’s capitalization of Kirk’s murder, which is not an act of inflammation but of analysis.
Will networks allow the FCC to bludgeon them into censorship for the sake of favor and revenue, or will they stand by their client’s right to speech? If the Trump Administration was honest in their fight for unconditional free speech, promoting ideological plurality would be the goal of the FCC. But their goal doesn’t start with Kirk and end with Kimmel: it is narrative domination.
