There is no exception to the First Amendment for hate speech. There wasn’t when the speech was racist slurs. There isn’t now. The difference this time is that it’s the attorney general of the United States openly asserting that the government will use its power to target and prosecute people for saying mean things.
There were many reasons why this claim that “hate speech” wasn’t protected speech was wrong. It was obviously impossible to define, as one person’s “hate speech” was another person’s fair and justified expression of opinion. But there was also the problem of government, in the hands of the other side, defining hate speech as speech that side found offensive rather than the speech your side found offensive. And now here we are, the right parroting the left’s cries against “hate speech,” only this time targeting the views of the left. Who could have possibly seen this coming?
If there is any doubt as to the seriousness of the Trump administration exploiting Charlie Kirk’s death to attack its political enemies, Stephen Miller cleared it up.
Appearing on Kirk’s podcast on Monday, less than a week after Kirks death, Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, denounced
The organized doxxing campaigns, the organized riots, the organized street violence, the organized campaigns of dehumanization, vilification, posting people’s addresses, combining that with messaging that’s designed to trigger, incite violence in the actual organized cells that carry out and facilitate the violence. It is a vast domestic terror movement.
“With God as my witness,” Miller then declared,
We are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security and throughout this government to identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy these networks and make America safe again for the American people. It will happen, and we will do it in Charlie’s name.
Already people have been fired for expressing their views, ranging from the repulsive cheering Kirk’s murder to condemning political assassination while expressing disapproval of Kirk’s views. While most find the former repugnant, if protected, speech, most would similarly find that there is a significant difference between applauding a death and being critical of the deceased. Not everyone, however.
Trump and his MAGA followers have not just turned Kirk’s murder into a political weapon; they are trying, with some success, to use it to build a national movement to publicly out everyone who criticized Kirk on social media after his death. They are also trying to persuade their employers to fire them.
“A campaign by public officials and others on the right has led just days after the conservative activist’s death to the firing or punishment of teachers, government workers, a TV pundit and the expectation of more dismissals coming,” The Associated Press reported on Sept. 14.
But the scope of the retaliation isn’t limited to individuals who expressed “hate speech” following Kirk’s death, but extends to the “organized” terrorists of the left.
Trump and Miller have claimed that the Ford Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations are financing violence on the left.
“We’re going to look into Soros because I think it’s a RICO case against him and other people because this is more than protests,” Trump told Fox News. “This is real agitation; this is riots on the street — and we’re going to look into that.”
Curiously, it remains unclear why Tyler Robinson assassinated Charlie Kirk, even as many assume it has to be left wing radicalization while others believe it’s a groyper conspiracy. Regardless, Trump immediately blamed the left, all the left, for Robinson’s act and the rest of his administration is rallying around the call to use the murder as a pretext to prosecute its political enemies.
Will the Democratic Party be the next criminal conspiracy in Bondi’s crosshairs? Will any mean words about Trump fall within the new definition of illegal hate speech? Only two days ago, I pondered whether Kirk would be the George Floyd of the right, used as an excuse to wreak social havoc and destruction. The answer appears to be coming far faster, and far more virulent, than expected. And when the attorney general openly espouses prosecuting for hate speech, it means the First Amendment is toast.