The Left Poses a Triple Threat to Free Speech
Jimmy Kimmel's return to the nation's airwaves is proof of just how unseriously left-wing violence is taken by the liberal media.
If Johnny Carson had gone on air after the murder of John F. Kennedy and said, "We hit some new lows this weekend with the Democratic gang trying to characterize this kid who killed President Kennedy as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it," what would his network have done?
Kimmel is a hater and a purveyor of disinformation, but he's able to get away with saying that about "the MAGA gang" because his bosses approve of the lie.
Indeed, liberals have spent the days since Charlie Kirk's murder insisting that the real danger to free speech comes not from left-wing killers' bullets but from Republican officials.
A few outlets, such as Vox.com and Politico.com, have even suggested America is in the grip of a new "Red Scare" — as if Kirk's slaying and the countless assaults Antifa mobs have carried out on campuses and in America's cities are things that need to be exaggerated.
On the contrary: the violence speaks for itself, and its systematic character is easy to see.
Most hard-left activists may not be planning murders — though just how many are doing so is something law enforcement must investigate vigorously.
For years, the FBI focused on right-wing extremism while violence from the other side has escalated.
Even when it stops short of murder, however, the intimidation campaign waged by the left relies on violence and the threat of violence.
It has three components:
First there are those in the liberal elite who downplay violence in the name of any cause they deem righteous — remember CNN describing a George Floyd-related riot in 2020 as "fiery but mostly peaceful"? — while labeling Donald Trump, the MAGA movement and conservatives as fascists, threats to democracy and outright Nazis.
Few of the columnists and pundits who employ this rhetoric dare to complete the thought, of course: if Trump really is Hitler, if Republican government means the end of democracy, then what follows?
On Facebook pages for "Occupy Democrats" (with 10 million followers) and "U.S. Democratic Socialists" (1.6 million followers), the message gets clearer: "Dear America: Whatever you wish the Germans had done in the 1930s, it's time to do that now."
Wouldn't assassinating Hitler or other important Nazis be justified?
The second level of the intimidation apparatus consists of people who translate the violent rhetoric into violent action, demonstrating it's OK to punch a Nazi, when a Nazi is whoever an Antifa activist — or sophisticated liberal pundit — says is a Nazi.
Other labels, too, authorize left-wing violence: transphobe, racist, settler colonialist.
Activists stirred up by this language menace everyone from the think-tank scholar Charles Murray to the independent gay reporter Andy Ngo.
First Amendment rights to free speech and freedom of the press don't apply wherever antifa and the intolerant left are given free rein.
Intimidation not only takes the form of a mob like the one that inflicted a concussion on Allison Stanger, the Middlebury College professor who was set to moderate a debate with Murray back in 2017.
It also, and more insidiously, takes the form of administrators granting a preemptive veto over campus speech to the left.
Cowardly administrators claim a conservative speaker might draw violent protests, so they insist on heightened security and insurance — which they want the speakers or the student groups that host them to pay for.
If they can't pay this tax imposed by threats of left-wing violence, they can't speak -- thus, effective antifa censorship gets disguised as mere administrative concern for security.
The third component of the strategy to silence voices like Kirk's is the one that took his life.
Just as the incendiary rhetoric of respectable liberals provides a framing and permission structure for all-too-often literally incendiary acts of antifa intimidation, the violent but usually less than lethal mayhem of the activist left sends a signal to bolder radicals.
Why settle for punching a Nazi when you can kill him?
Why cancel one speech when you can cancel the speaker forever?
Tyler Robinson wasn't forced to do what he did by media hype calling Kirk a fascist or by antifa thugs showing it's possible to get away with hurting people -- but he surely wasn't discouraged by it.
Yes, free speech includes freedom for hateful speech.
But free speech can't exist at all without freedom from intimidation by the likes of antifa.
Those who act on liberals' violent rhetoric, whether by harassing speakers or by killing them, must be rooted out and punished.
As for Kimmel and those who talk tough but don't dare lift a finger against "fascism," they should be ashamed — and tuned out for good.
Daniel McCarthy, a recognized expert on conservative thought, is the editor-in-chief of Modern Age: A Conservative Review. He's also a regular contributor to The Spectator's World edition. He has a long association with The American Conservative, a magazine co-founded by Pat Buchanan. Mr. McCarthy's writings appeared in a variety of publications. He has appeared on PBS NewsHour, NPR, the BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, CNN International and other radio and television outlets. Read more of Daniel McCarthy's reports — Here.