Conservatives, who typically disavow cancel culture, are now embracing it.
People who have mocked Charlie Kirk’s death both on and offline have suffered the consequences with firings and, in some cases, have been arrested.
On Monday (Sept. 15), Fox Business reported that several companies, including NASDAQ, Office Depot, the Carolina Panthers and MSNBC fired employees for comments regarding the fatal shooting of Kirk.
MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd for sharing his thoughts on what kind of environment would lead to Kirk dying in the manner he did. Dowd called Kirk a “divisive” figure who pushes “hate speech” during MSNBC’s coverage of the incident.
“Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” Down added. “I think that is the environment we are in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place. And that’s the unfortunate environment we are in."
An employee at a Michigan Office Depot was fired after a viral video showed staff declining to print posters for a Kirk vigil. “It's propaganda, I'm sorry; we don't print that here,” an employee says in the clip.
A Washington Post columnist was reportedly fired from the paper’s Opinions department for remarks she made online about Kirk.
Though Karen Attiah didn’t mention Kirk by name, in one of her messages, she wrote, “part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness, and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence.”
Elsewhere, a TikTok showed a student in Texas being arrested for mocking Kirk’s arrest in public.
On Sept. 10, Kirk was fatally shot during the question-and-answer session of his American Comeback Tour at Utah Valley University. The suspected shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was eventually apprehended.
Since then, speculation has abounded regarding Robinson's political ideologies, with some contending that he was a leftist, and others believing he was a follower of white nationalist Nick Fuentes and his Groyper movement.
Regardless, Conservatives are celebrating the firings on X, while people with left-leaning sensibilities pushed back. Check out some tweets below.