Right wing cancel culture at it again.

[Batmanisaplaceinturkey]

This really is a scary time for free speech.

Another example right wing hypocrisy when it comes to free speech:

Jimmy Kimmel Live! suspended indefinitely after host’s Charlie Kirk comments https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/sep/18/jimmy-kimmel-live-suspended-indefinitely-after-hosts-charlie-kirk-comments?CMP=share_btn_url

@Hiphopopotamonster many people on mumsnet bring up the trans issue because they were banned or cancelled from other sites for stating biological facts about women and women's rights so it's quite relevant to these debates around free speech. I was banned from Facebook and pre-Elon Twitter for "violating community guidelines" for posting about the 2018 self-ID consultation. I was told by left wing friends that this was consequence culture, not cancel culture. Thank goodness I never lost my job over it like the many women who have had to fight this through employment tribunals over the last 6 years.

I am a left-wing democrat voting woman so seeing the Right using the same cancel culture methods as the Left have been doing is outrageous, just as it is when the Left does it - but their hypocrisy is no surprise. Why on earth wouldn't they use the weapons to control and limit free speech that the Left has been using merrily for years?

I dont think its correct that the culprit was "found to be right leaning". There was all kinds of speculation of motives, and there were certainly experts who said the bullet case engravings pointed to right wing online culture. But overall the evidence and statements from law enforcement suggest the killer had left-wing views and thought Kirk was full of "hatred".

Yes so then you are not a free speech absolutist. I’m not either but a lot of right wing political discourse is placing free speech absolutism at the very centre of its campaigning, for instance the march at the weekend. So it’s fine to say you believe in free speech but there are consequences to some speech. It’s fine to argue for absolute free speech. It’s not fine to say we should have absolute free speech with no consequences, and then say but oh there are consequences. Unless like the pp above who believes we are in a culture war so essentially anything goes.

I do see the problem with this. He shouldn't have been cancelled and this is getting ridiculous.

People are allowed to air their opinion and disagree with others as long as it is not calling for violence or telling others to shut up. If there is one lesson to be learnt of the murder of Charlie Kirk is that not listening is only going to lead to more troubles.

I sincerely wish ABC hadn't done this. It is wrong.

IF he wasn't celebrating Kirks death, or deliberately misrepresenting his views as many have been, then it is wrong that his show was cancelled.

Its true that many insufferable lefty people wanged on about "freedom of speech doesnt mean freedom from consequences" for years, but that attitude was wrong then and it is wrong now.

Absolutely. And it’s not like only monster the middle class left have created that’s going to be starting to bite them over the next few years.

How is it ‘fact checking’ to say

‘The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it.’

When we don’t yet know the precise motivations of the killer but what we do know points to him being a violent, left leaning trans ally?

He said “The Maga Gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” which, (to me) seems to imply that the murderer was a MAGA type. I don't think there is any evidence for this?

I despise Trump, and I am pro free speech, but I do think this was a dodgy thing to say tbh. Surely it's just political point scoring over the death in the opposite way that Trump is doing it?

Not saying he should be "cancelled", but I do think he should retract that particular comment.

(Edited for my terrible spelling)

This. The absolute obsession makes me wonder what their lives are like.

Culture wars are ridiculous but very profitable. The hypocrisy, downright lies and mental gymnastics on display are breathtaking.

You are definitely NBU.

All this talk of “hypocrisy”. Let’s not forget what actually mobilised the right after a decade of the left enthusiastically wielding CC to destroy anyone they didn’t agree with. Yes it was the public execution of one of their people, a pundit. Not a politician, a pundit/activist. The ultimate in Cancel Culture. Right there in front of his wife and child. For a decade they remained on the moral high ground with regards to CC and finally the heightened, violent rhetoric leads to an actual death, in the most dreadful circumstances, pretty much forcing them to take up the same cudgel. And I do not blame them one bit.

Where was Jimmy Kimmel et al when a woman couldn't get a male free homeless shelter and was having to live in a tent in the USA?

They gave zero fucks when it was 'the other side' that was being cancelled [plus the added rape and death threats and harassment and stalking and on and on and on].

Exactly this. Free speech used to be entrenched on the left.

The great Jewish ACLU lawyer David Goldberger argued for the right of neo-Nazis to assemble, because he believed that if you protected the free speech of the worst of the worst, you protected it for everyone. How the left and the once great ACLU haVE fallen. The ACLU now sides with schools against individual students, teachers and parents. It sides with government against citizens.

Cancel culture is always wrong. When Charlie Kirk debated at Oxford, he challenged their views that it was ok for people to be arrested and jailed for tweets. He asked if they would be ok for police to continue to arrest people as per government policy if the government of the day was lead by Farage. Their previously smug faces were stunned- the idea that there might be swings and roundabouts never had occurred to them.

It completely contradicts what we know about the shooter so far and what their own family has said about him.

Did Kimmel know, or was he in such a bubble
that he so confidently said something so wrong? Neither reflects well on him tbh

But the moment it switches, and a man celebrates the murder of another, and loses a gig. that's when people accept 'cancel culture' exists?

He did not celebrate the murder. He criticised TRUMP. Those two things are not interchangeable.

I hate cancel culture and how it has been used to silence women on the subject of their own rights for years. But I agree with a PP - it's wrong whatever way it goes and the situation in the US following this heinous murder is lurching towards totalitarianism. There have been calls and petitions to take South Park off air because they mocked the victim before his death - CK was on record as loving the episode in which he was caricatured.

It's surely unlikely that such a prominent defender of free speaker would approve of the way his murder is being weaponised to suppress any criticism of the incumbent government?

That was great news to wake up to.

I think your thread title does a disservice to what is actually happening because it invites discourse on “cancel culture” which is not what this is. This is so much scarier. This is not right wing. It is fascism.

Haven't they bloody just.

I saw this and thought free speech until you say something "they" don't like.

Charlie Kirk said some horrendous things and was allowed to carry on saying these things freely.

Sorry didn't mean to quote you op.

But wasn't J D Vance lecturing us about free speech the other day?

This is about money but I'm not surprised to see the right being such hypocrites.

Well no, he was killed for it.

Absobloodylutely.

Isn't it staggering how the whinners come out when in fact it's a taste of their own medicine.

Suck it up sugar.

You’d think the “don’t tread on me” types would be more angry about this.

I absolutely abhor this latest round of conservative Americans gleefully ‘cancelling’ democratic leaning or even just non partisan political commentators. It’s not a matter of saying that it’s the height of hypocrisy to expect the right should have higher standards (they most definitely don’t). It’s a matter of recognising that the American conservatives have led the way on this particular strategy for years and suggesting that they wouldn’t have done so but for the ‘left’s’ cancel culture efforts is convenient but fails to acknowledge this. However, the main issue here is how it’s an ominous time when media outlets cancel programmes on the basis of fear. None of this is good.

There are many, many more of us than you.