Shut Up, Said the Free Speech Absolutists

America just learned something it should have already known: the MAGA “free speech” warriors, those self-styled defenders of the First Amendment, have one iron-clad rule. Free speech is for them.

For you? Shut the hell up, or they’ll ruin you.

The assassination of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy. No one with a shred of decency celebrates political violence. We should be able to condemn the act itself while also holding the line that, in a free country, tastelessness is not treason.

But the MAGA response isn’t about mourning Kirk; it was about weaponizing grief into a purge. It’s about never letting a political opportunity go to waste.

Within hours, the right-wing outrage machine was hunting down anyone who had the temerity to post something snarky, rude, or unkind about Kirk’s death. College kids, comedians, academics, even a couple of mid-level marketing managers were dragged out in front of the digital firing squad. A cottage industry of crowdsourced websites and snitch lists sprang up overnight, eagerly looking for Wrongspeak and Wrongthink in order to unleash the MAGA mobScreenshots were blasted across X. Hashtags swelled with calls for people to be fired. Local employers got spammed with “Do you condone this???” emails until HR cracked.

The irony? These are the same people who once wept bitter tears when they were “canceled” for dropping racial slurs, Holocaust jokes, shouting “Jews Will Not Replace Us” or posting fantasies about “Second Amendment solutions.” The same people who thought it was hi-ho-hilarious to giggle over the assassinations of Democratic officials in Minnesota or to shitpost memes about Paul Pelosi getting his head beaten in by a MAGA madman with a hammer are suddenly Very Concerned over rhetoric.