As if Americans’ trust in corporate media weren’t eroded enough, Axios set out to further destroy what’s left of it by suggesting that firing the people who cheered on Charlie Kirk’s assassination is of the same magnitude as school shootings and other acts of violence.
The egregious comparison, which made its debut in Mike Allen’s AM newsletter, suggests that the tens of thousands of people who were caught cheering and mocking Kirk’s murder didn’t deserve the “unprecedented online hunt … to name, shame and contact” their employers that ensued.
Axios is not alone in pretending that statements such as “1 down. Now get the rest of these fools” don’t deserve attention and accountability. NBC News also lamented any punishment by whitewashing comments celebrating Kirk’s death and calling for more violence against Christian conservatives as “sharing opinions.” The Atlantic even went so far as to claim that “for conservatives, cancel culture is in.”
Except that it’s not, because firing someone for dancing on the grave of a 31-year-old man who had his life with his wife and two kids stripped away from him because he was a Christian and a conservative is not cancel culture.
Anyone who claims companies’ decision to fire employees for celebrating murder is cancel culture is either stupid or superbly dishonest. Your cousin who spent all weekend firing off his mouth on Facebook might fall into that first category, but corporate media outlets such as Axios and The Atlantic (which are undoubtedly staffed by leftists who have benefited from the left’s vice grip on cancellation) certainly belong to the second.
We know this because the smear campaigns against conservatives like Kirk are fueled and often led by corporate media.
How many times have these publications printed lies simply to see someone they don’t care for suffer? Time and time again, they have proven that they want Christians and conservatives blackballed by Big Tech, blacklisted by advertisers, behind bars, and pushed out of politics and the public square for good.
Cancel culture is, by nature, a political weapon wielded mostly by the left. The very design of it hinges on the fact that, for a long time, the blue party, their allies in the corporate media, and the institutions that partner with them have controlled the culture war armory that even makes cancel culture possible.
Accountability might appear to yield the same end results as cancel culture, but the means for those ends require a moral, principled foundation that cancel culture lacks. Celebrating the brutal murder of a civilian is, by all definitions, lacking in both morality and principles.
The decision by so many to dance on Kirk’s grave was not an inherently political choice; it was a moral one, and the deserved consequences are not cancel culture. The reason the immorality on display from so many teachers, doctors, and others especially hit home was because their vitriol was aimed at a man known for his moral courage.
Over the next few weeks, you’re going to read essays from talking heads and statements from cowardly senators waxing poetic about the importance of preserving the public square for all, even if you don’t like what those “all” have to say.
Let me be clear: This “fight” is not about the First Amendment. Free speech alone is simply not enough of a rationale to justify the moral crackdown the current moment requires. Accountability is absolutely necessary. Any attempt to call it cancel culture, however, is a diversion.
Kirk himself was a champion of consequences for people who publicly called for the murder of their political opponents. In fact, when a Boston University employee put a target on six Department of Government Efficiency employees, Kirk demanded that the higher education institution lose “ALL federal grants and funding” if it didn’t immediately terminate the man in question.
It’s important to note that firing — or in some cases, mere suspension — is one of the least consequential outcomes a person can receive after publicly wishing death on someone they dislike. Threats that extend beyond civilians, such as Kirk, to those such as Vice President J.D. Vance could even carry the penalty of a felony and federal prison time.
Americans have certainly been sacked for far less than cheering an assassination and calling for more.
Countless people who worked in hospitals, classrooms, emergency services, and other fields were let go in 2020 for comments such as accurately emphasizing that all lives have inherent value, which were deemed “racist.” A Virginia cop of nearly two decades even got the boot from his department after donating $25 to Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund.
Fines, jail time, and more for the people who vandalized, rioted, looted, and burned American cities for months that same year would have been accountability. Democrats, however, hampered justice when they spent those months not only encouraging the violence, but also bailing out the criminals causing it.
True justice demands something far more than the firing of those who claim Kirk deserved to die. As Vance noted in his closing segment of Monday’s Charlie Kirk Show, unity is only possible with “people who acknowledge that political violence is unacceptable and when we work to dismantle the institutions that promote violence and terrorism in our own country.”
Until then, conservatives should not be deterred by corporate media “cancel culture” straw men from demanding that employers hold their employees accountable for their morally reprehensible actions. No matter what Axios, NBC News, or The Atlantic say, it’s the right thing to do.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
