ABC has taken Jimmy Kimmel off the air for making hateful comments about the recent murder of Charlie Kirk. Does that constitute an attack on free speech, as some of his supporters are alleging?
No. That is called accountability. Kimmel is perfectly free to spew his left-wing atrocities, but ABC is also free to decide that such vitriol is not good for ratings — and to send him packing.
Americans are debating free speech. Good. It is important that our dedication to this essential right is not compromised by politics or lost in the heat of the moment. Of course, that’s not to say the current discourse is politics-free. Far from it.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was furious about the axing of Kimmel, posting on X: “Trump silencing free speech stifles our democracy.” While it is true that Brendan Carr, FCC head, voiced disgust over Kimmel’s comments and vaguely threatened FCC retaliation, he did not actually intervene. Instead, he exhorted the broadcast companies “to take action on Kimmel, or there is going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” His comments do not, according to many, run afoul of the First Amendment.
The same cannot be said for the censorship of dissident voices by former President Joe Biden’s White House during the pandemic. Social media platforms were secretly ordered to cancel and deplatform those opposed to the government’s intrusive vaccine mandates and school closures. That heavy-handed censorship came to light thanks to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the subsequent release of the so-called Twitter files. It was later confirmed directly by Meta head Jeff Zuckerberg.
The revelation did not seem to bother Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who was noticeably mute on the Twittergate scandal but who, like Warren, is angry about Kimmel’s ouster. The New York senator posted on X: “America is meant to be a bastion of free speech. Everybody across the political spectrum should be speaking out to stop what’s happening to Jimmy Kimmel. This is about protecting democracy.”
He’s even touting legislation he’s cooked up called the Free Speech Protection Act that would, ironically, ban federal coercion on social media platforms — exactly the misdeed perpetrated by the Biden Whie House.
But let’s look back to 2023, when Schumer demanded that Fox News take Tucker Carlson off the air, claiming the right-wing media personality had “slimed the truth.” So, free speech for me but not for thee.
Hillary Clinton, in a revealing interview on CNN, said: “If social media doesn’t moderate content, then we lose total control.” And there you have the real reason liberals do not tolerate free speech.
These are dangerous times. Support for free expression has declined among young people, an increasing number of whom believe controversial speech can be dangerous and that it is acceptable to use violence to shut down hate speech.
They should look to Europe, where free speech actually is under attack. The recent arrest in London of an Irish comedy writer who posted snide remarks about “a trans-identified male” online has kicked off a heated conversation in that country about trying to control speech. J.K. Rowling, the renowned Harry Potter author who has famously been “canceled” because of her anti-transgender views, called the police action “totalitarianism.”
In another recent case, a Brit named Lucy Conolly was sentenced to 31 months in prison for a tweet about migrants that was deemed racist and inflammatory. The harsh sentencing, recently upheld by the courts, has many decrying the state’s crackdown on speech, calling it tyrannical and describing Connolly as a “political prisoner.”
The U.K. is not alone. Last spring, the editor of Deutschland Kurier, a publication with close ties to Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany, received a seven-month suspended sentence for “abuse, slander or defamation against persons in political life.” His crime? He had concocted and posted a photo of Germany’s Interior Minister holding up a sign that read: “I Hate Freedom of Opinion.” He was found guilty of violating a law that protects political figures from criticism.
By these standards, nearly everyone in the U.S. might be in trouble.
In the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination, Attorney General Pam Bondi, furious that some on the left were celebrating the young conservative’s death, threatened to go after those spewing what she called “hate speech.”
In a podcast with Katie Miller, the conservative wife of White House aide Stephen Miller, Bondi said, “There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society [for hate speech].” Further, she vowed she and her colleagues “will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech.”
Critics on both the left and the right took to social media to point out that there is no “hate speech” exception in the Constitution; as such, any prosecution of people saying unpopular or even hateful things would be unconstitutional. It has long been the standard in the U.S. that you are free to spew disgusting and unpopular opinions. As dreadful as it is to hear someone trash our country or public figures, their right to do so is protected by the First Amendment.
In response to Bondi’s threat, the team at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonpartisan group on whose advisory council I sit, wrote why “carving out a ‘hate speech’ exception to the First Amendment is so dangerous.” It grants the government the power not only to decide what constitutes hateful speech, but to punish it. And that dual empowerment inevitably facilitates attacks on the right to dissent, criticize and hold accountable whoever is in power. Nothing is more antithetical to what America stands for than enabling federal speech police.
Free speech helps guarantee free people. Kirk, unlike his adversaries, advocated for that freedom. His protection of speech that we might all abhor is exactly right: “Hate speech does not exist legally in America,” he said. “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.”
Those are words to live by and to govern by.
Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim and Company.
