Telegraph – The First Amendment doesn’t protect progressives from being sacked for expressing heinous opinions.
If you want to understand the scale of the Left’s hypocrisy over free speech, consider the case of MSNBC host Chris Hayes.
When Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News presenter, left the network, Hayes was predictably unsympathetic.
“He believed he could say anything, no matter how vile, no matter how disgusting, no matter how offensive, no matter how dehumanising or belittling,” said Hayes.
“Over time, [that’s] probably not going to work out well for you”. Carlson might well have the freedom to express his opinions, Hayes appeared to be suggesting, but he couldn’t escape the consequences of doing so.
But now? Jimmy Kimmel, the late-night television presenter, was this week suspended indefinitely by the media giant ABC after he said that Republicans were trying to capitalise on his awful murder. Some would say that meets the textbook definition of “vile… disgusting… [and] offensive” – an opinion which Kimmel has every right to express, but which he should expect consequences for expressing.
Apparently not. Kimmel’s suspension, Hayes said this week, was “the latest chapter in Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign to crack down on free speech, dominate the media, and essentially render the First Amendment meaningless”. Embracing “accountability culture”, as the Left often sanctimoniously mislabels cancel culture, stops short when the aggrieved parties figure among their ostensible political allies.
Since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, scores of Leftists have been shocked to find themselves removed from employment for commentary, social media posts, videos, and other public statements praising Kirk’s murder, suggesting that he deserved it, or even implying that he was killed by Republicans who support constitutional gun rights rather than the radicalised Leftist his accused assassin Tyler Robinson appears to be.
Many employers – especially in such public-facing industries as education, healthcare, journalism, entertainment, and travel and tourism – have no wish to be associated with such evil and hate. One of the first to go was Hayes’s MSNBC colleague, analyst Matthew Dowd, who dourly proclaimed that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions”. The implication seemed to be that Kirk – the victim of a brutal public murder – should be blamed for expressing opinions of which Dowd disapproved.
He was gone a few hours later, not as the result of a civil penalty or criminal prosecution imposed by the supposedly “fascist” actions of an “authoritarian” government, but because even Dowd’s Left-wing employers found his comments “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable”. The Washington Post similarly unloaded columnist Karen Attiah after she posted that she refused to engage in “performative mourning for a white man [who allegedly] espoused violence”.
Expanding the dragnet to doctors, teachers, lawyers, airline pilots, and others who appear to be celebrating the death of a fellow citizen, Vice President JD Vance urged Americans to “call them out, and hell, call their employer[s]”. Vance captured a powerful segment of the current zeitgeist. Who, after all, wants to be treated, taught, represented in court, or flown by a “professional” who says he wants people to die for their political views? Imagine being administered anaesthesia by such a person. And, more importantly, who needs the government to tell them not to accept such people? As the past week has shown, we are quite capable of doing that on our own.
But doesn’t the First Amendment protect free speech, however heinous, provided it does not rise to constitutionally-recognised violent threats or disorderly conduct? Of course it does, as Kirk himself declared in a 2024 social media post, holding that “There’s ugly speech. There’s gross speech. There’s evil speech. And ALL of it is protected by the First Amendment. Keep America free”.
In sharp contrast to the EU or, indeed, Britain, where an estimated 30 people per day are arrested over “offensive” online posts, no American critic of Kirk has been arrested or subject to government-imposed sanctions, nor should they be.
But just as Leftists who publicly exult in murder have the right to express such sentiments, so, too, do private – and in some cases – public employers have a right to choose not to employ them.
If anything, the aftermath of Kirk’s barbaric murder proves that free speech remains robust in America. Kirk’s critics can say whatever they please about his tragic killing, and their employers can disagree to the point of ending their professional association if they have caused great offence.
The truly violent opponents of free speech, in a fitting twist, may well find themselves in well-deserved legal trouble. On Thursday, Trump posted that Antifa, a radical Leftist “anti-fascist” movement – whose members have in many cases physically attacked those with whom they disagree – will now be an officially designated “terrorist organisation”. And not a moment too soon.