Political rhetoric is a powerful force. In democracies, it can propel someone to power or topple them out of it; it can even threaten democracy when wielded with precision and intention. It can justify discrimination and war. Most of all, coupled with enough passion, it can discourage healthy debate and defeat logic and reason.
On September 10, US right-wing political activist, entrepreneur, and co-founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated. The motivation of the alleged assassin, a 22-year-old man from Utah, Tyler Robinson, is still unknown. Eleven days after Kirk’s killing, on September 21, a memorial held in Arizona was attended by President Donald Trump, Vice President J D Vance, and other Republican and right-wing figures, and almost 1,00,000 people.
United States Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, while addressing the crowd, said, “Free speech is the foundation of our democratic republic. We must protect it at all costs because without it, we’ll be lost”. Gabbard’s words on free speech, while true, also speak to only part of the whole story. There is no doubt that this moment highlights the regression of democratic values in America. The killing shook the country and has created fear among the masses, for good reason — it has also sharpened divisions in a polarised US. The sad incident also marks an inflexion point between two very different conversations on free speech in America: One with imagined attacks that strengthen one side’s political standing at the expense of democracy, and one where that democracy is actively receding, in large part, because of that dangerous rhetoric and politics.
Throughout the memorial, and before and after, many public-facing right-wingers, including those in power, have chosen to, as Mehdi Hasan has noted, attribute the murder to an amorphous “they”. At the memorial, Trump, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Gabbard, and other speakers held the “woke”, left-liberal crowd responsible for Kirk’s death, despite there being no conclusive evidence about Robinson’s politics.
The “free speech” party of America has, in the days after Charlie Kirk’s death, come down heavily on his critics. Critics and political opponents were referred to as “enemies” by many state officials, including the President, at the Kirk memorial. Multiple members of the administration, including J D Vance, have asked employers to fire people who are making comments about Kirk that the current government deems inappropriate. (“Call them out, and hell, call their employer”). More concerningly, though, there have been firings and administrative action against government workers at the Secret Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the US Coast Guard.
After comedian and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel commented on the political blame game in the MAGA camp, Brendan Carr, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, made public threats of action against the ABC network if they failed to pull up Kimmel. Less than 24 hours later, the show was taken off the air “indefinitely” (he was reinstated earlier this week). Trump celebrated the development and made threats of revoking the licences of other networks that were unfavourable to him.
But this assault on free speech by the Trump administration is hardly surprising. Even though the name of the game was “free speech”, Trump and allies were always playing for power. Opposition to “wokeness” and “cancel culture”, in large part, helped popularise many right-wingers and elect Trump. Conservative commentators, politicians and influencers framed “cancel culture” as a freedom of speech issue and used it to mobilise American voters into backing Trump.
But at the heart of it is a misreading. First, the right to freedom of speech cannot (or at least should not) be used as a defence against hate speech and rhetoric that encourages violence. The President himself, while acquitted, was impeached by the House of Representatives, for inciting violence and the storming of the Capitol building on January 6 after the last election. But the fundamental point is this: The US constitution prohibits the government from curbing Americans’ right to freedom of speech. The First Amendment reads: “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech…” This is so because the government wields the power to curb this right; private citizens do not.
This has always been a story of political difference — and it constitutes the opposite of authoritarianism. Political difference is an essential part of a well-functioning democracy. Labelling a challenge to a certain ideology or political beliefs as a threat to free speech is a fundamental and deliberate misreading of the right. The Trump-led Republican Party came to power by labelling challenges to conservative beliefs as threats to fundamental rights. Now in power, they are enacting actual curbs on the right to free speech.
Alongside, they have managed to create a dangerous reality. One in which each side of the political spectrum feels under threat from other citizens — and from debate itself. A reality in which the split between the sides is ever widening, and everyone believes the other is acting in bad faith. A reality in which, after a lone gunman killed a popular figure, the conversation is not about gun violence in America and the policy changes the government must consider; instead, citizens stand around pointing fingers at each other. In this reality, there is an America divided more than ever, one in which there are only victims. The only victor is the state, with all the power over people, rhetoric, and policy.
sukhmani.malik@expressindia.com
