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

I agree. Kimmel merely pointed out Trump's own sociopathic behaviour and uncaring response, switching the subject to his ballroom in the same breath as Kirk's death.

What Kimmel said about Kirk is bad because of free speech, but what Kirk said is fine because of free speech?

Ooooo I've been waiting to say this.

Ahem...

'Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences'

Did I do it right? So satisfying, I can see why some enjoyed it so much the last few years.

I think people under estimate just how fucking angry people are about having to bite their lips for a decade, lest THEY be outed and it is all just pouring out now.

👏 Yes they bloody are ANGRY.

Which is exactly what far right commentators like Nick Fuentes (who considered CK to be a moderate and was highly censorious of him in life) have also criticised Trump for - an inappropriate response to CK's death.

I can't get on board at all with the attitude 'oh, the left are just getting a taste of their own medicine - now they know how it feels'. I abhor how women's right to express concerns about their own safety have been shut down for years. But I want to see an end to cancel culture and #bekind, NOT to subject the left to the same. Surely disagreement and debate is the way forward - not cancelling everyone across all political spectrums and beliefs from being able to speak freely?

Oh yeh that one. I agree with pp some have been using this for years and it’s come back to bite.

It does seem that it was a man from the far left, but doesn’t change the statistic that the majority of politically motivated killers are done from people from from the far right. That is now conveniently ignored by the right. For example, the last politically motivated killings were done by a far right wing man who killed 4 people in two separate locations . One was a Democratic member of govt from Minnesota and her husband. What did Trump say about those political murders at the time?

Trump and his administration, and every right wing podcaster out there, have conveniently ignored that fact. And laid blame on the left wing loudly and often, causing further division. America is a mess. A Frightening time.

There seems to be a specific effort by some posters to collate two issues.

It is beyond shit that a number of people (mainly women), in both the UK and US, have lost their jobs because they stated that men cannot become women, and that women deserve single sex spaces and sports.

But that doesn’t make it any less worrying at all that Trump and the Republican Party can have TV hosts taken off air for being anti-Trump. Celebrating this as ‘revenge’ or ‘what they deserve’ is to ignore the chilling and rapid move towards totalitarianism in the USA by the current administration.

It seems like a very cynical ploy to use a women’s rights argument (on a largely-feminist website) to suggest that this is something women should want. It absolutely is not.

I certainly didn't hear Kimmel say anything bad about Kirk.

He said plenty of negative stuff about Trump, which is what Trump cares about and wants to shut down. Kirk's murder is just a convenient vehicle to enable him to do that.

But I want to see an end to cancel culture and #bekind, NOT to subject the left to the same. Surely disagreement and debate is the way forward - not cancelling everyone across all political spectrums and beliefs from being able to speak freely?

It’s cute you think they’ll change. I don’t believe that for a moment

I can’t get my head round the obsession over Charlie Kirk, and the way people are falling over themselves to criticise anyone who has dared to state what kind of person he was.

Why, exactly, does pointing out that Charlie Kirk was a horrible person equate to celebrating his death? Where on MN has anyone said they’re glad he’s dead? Oh wait, they haven’t.

By that standard, we shouldn’t be criticising Jimmy Saville. I mean he was never actually found guilty of anything was he? And now he’s dead we should be recognising the good he did, otherwise you’re clearly celebrating his death. No? Didn’t think so.

I detest cancel culture of all types, but virtue signalling is worse.

I don't know what you're talking about or who I'm supposed to think will change or what is 'cute'.

I'm talking about what I would like to see happen, rather than the totalitarian state the right in the US is currently marching towards in the wake of this murder. If the right think the left are bad in shutting down free speech, then joining them in doing the very same must be equally bad.

I agree, This site has gone nuts (only recently I think) with aggressively right wing people. So has my Facebook feed. I don’t know anyone in real life who thinks like this, in such a black and white way. I can’t help thinking that it’s psy-ops.

Yep totally.

And the amount of sympathy for Charlie Kirk clearly shows posters up as what they are.

I agree.

Trump and his cronies want to take away women’s rights. Why is any woman ignoring that.

What are psy-ops?

Sadly true

This. I'm astonished at the tone of this thread.

This is the president of the United States as dictator, now quelling any criticism.
These are very dark times.

There have long been gender critical feminists on mumsnet. But this hikacking by the right wing trying to prove common ground with gender critical feminists whilst pushing Trump lines is new and clearly deliberate. And straight out of the same playbook as the rest of the Trump administration desire to control media including social media

The left had a few years in power and could have done so much good but no they pandered to their noisy extreme wing. They ushered in cancel culture and pissed off the silent majority leaving us wide open to the right. And now look.

It's only an attack on freedom of speech if its the government doing it, which is what appears to be happening in the US.

Cancel culture by public pressure has always been a thing - sometimes you agree with it, sometimes you don't - but it is concerning when its the state applying the pressure.

Its particularly shocking when the rationale doesn't seem to be about public policy, but advancing the President's personal vendettas.

Are you literally comparing Kirk to a pedophile? Is this where you’re at right now?

I don't agree with heroising CK after his death. But at the same time, I don't think you can really draw a comparison between CK (who I didn't agree with or align with) and JS.

CK, as far as we know, was not a criminal and was murdered whilst exercising his democratic right to free speech (a right which Trump now seems to be wholesale dismantling in the wake of his murder). His exercising of 'free speech' didn't involve calling for the denial of anyone else's right to free speech (unlike Trump and far rightists), far less advocating violence or murder against anyone he disagreed with.

Jimmy Saville was an unrepentant serial child abuser who escaped punishment unto death. The fact he wasn't convicted was due to the suppression of his crimes during his lifetime - we all know what he did.

Irrespective of how much I disagreed with many/most of Kirk's beliefs, it increasingly appears he was killed for expressing gender critical views. By that token, many if not most of the posters on the MN feminist board would have met with the same fate had they had the same misfortune to come within 200 metres of Tyler Robinson in an open air space.

Kimmel was politicizing the death of Charlie Kirk by saying the killer was Maga, family members of the killer have said he was left wing. Both sides, left and right are as bad as each other for the blame game and cancel culture. In the past 10 years or so the left has had the upper hand but it has swung back to the right.