After Charlie Kirk’s killing, the right has weaponized the First Amendment and turned it into a vehicle for anti-Blackness and hate.
September 25, 2025: Debates over the protection of free speech have been raging since before the killing of Charlie Kirk, but the incident has taken the discussion into another realm. Jimmy Kimmel was a high-profile casualty. He was suspended from his show and recently returned to record audiences, even as Sinclair and Nexstar — companies on the political right — refused to air his program on the stations they own.
It has been demanded of Kimmel that he offer a full-throated apology to the family and contribute to Turning Point USA, the organization founded by Kirk, as an act of contrition before he can really be forgiven.
The premise is that short of that, it would be doubtful whether he was actually remorseful. But while the corporate media focused on Jimmy Kimmel and his suspension, other people lost their positions because they exposed the racist things that Kirk, on a regular basis, uttered on his podcast and in public forums. Jimmy Kimmel returned to TV after a brief suspension due to public pressure.
The MAGA/Trump white supremacist agenda was emboldened in their right-wing Onward Christian Soldier march to win new ground and to increase their abilities to conquer the left. Criticism of what Kirk said in life could not be submitted for examination of the words and intent, but according to the political right, to do so was a celebration of the killing of Kirk. This was a calculated stretch, but it worked as corporate America fired workers who felt sorry for his death but questioned his words and their intent.
High-Profile Names and Hidden Casualties
Karen Attiah, the last full-time Black opinion writer and editor of Global Opinions at The Washington Post, was let go in the midst of the Charles Kirk storm. But unlike Kimmel, she did not get her job back. MSNBC analyst Matthew Dowd was also let go.
People know of the high-profile names, but there are many others we do not hear about — educators in high schools and colleges, lawyers, doctors, first responders, people working in a variety of businesses, government workers and other professionals who have been shown the door because employers felt their comments on social media were too raw, not remorseful enough, and had crossed the line as far as free speech was concerned.
Free Speech Weaponized
This is like a monster that has been let out of its cave, where the mantra of advancing free speech is utilized, weaponized and targeted toward “wokeness,” “critical race theory,” diversity, equity and inclusion, college admissions, voting rights, women, LGBTQIA people, and every other group and person who is nonwhite and not in the fold of the MAGA/Trump and white supremacist agenda.
Someone needs to explain to me this new set of rules concerning free speech. This week at Tennessee State University, a MAGA group wearing those offensive red hats breached the safety of that HBCU with signs that said, “DEI should be illegal” and “deport all illegals now.” They called themselves the “Fearless Debaters,” and they claimed that this was their first stop on a tour. They argued they were exercising their First Amendment right. They were escorted off campus by security. But this demonstrates how the right has raised the ante on free speech from something that should be revered, but now is being used in hateful and destructive ways.
A MAGA Litmus Test
The First Amendment is noble and is an expression of a free and open society where debate and discussion are welcomed. But freedom of speech for the political right has little to do with worthy ideas and valued discussion and debate, and it has nothing to do with advancing the dignity of the world or of the human race, but it has everything to do with advancing racist and hateful ideology under the guise of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment is being used as a litmus test to distinguish between those on the right and those on the left. The right interprets freedom of speech as the right to say anything they want, with all the disrespect and hatefulness they can muster. The idea that you can say anything you want, disrespectfully, to anyone you want is what the political right means by freedom of speech. They want to inject the most demeaning, degrading, insulting, and racist speech into the political and public arena. This is what they claim the freedom to do — and they are expressing it with a vengeance after the canonization and deification of Charlie Kirk.
A Dangerous Return to the Past
The political right felt restricted in its ability to speak from the 1980s until recently. During previous decades, racist speech became less acceptable in the public domain. Popular TV shows took on the idea of racist attitudes and speech and comically showed how boorish, foolish, and ill-mannered the practice and people were. All of us know how “Archie Bunker,” in a comedic way, exposed the subject of racism and bigotry weekly. There were other programs and popular shows that took on the theme, and racist speech was exposed for the virus that it is. It became less and less popular to express racist ideology openly.
But that was then, and this is now. We have taken giant steps backwards. When I listen to the political right, I hear the Klansmen screaming that racial mixing will create a mongrel race. What the political right wants to bring back is the speech of old, along with the attitudes and racial restrictions of yesterday.
The conservative Trump/MAGA political right wants to freely and publicly promote ideas and attitudes that were exposed as wrong in the past — and remain just as wrong today. They want to say Black people and women are unqualified for jobs. They want to argue that every Black or Brown person in the workforce represents a white person who should have been hired instead. They want to claim that Black and Brown immigrants will soon outnumber white people unless they are turned away at the border. They want to paint diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives as a threat to qualified white people and a handout to less competent nonwhite workers. And most of all, they want to call me the N-word in as many “free speech” ways as they can.
When Doing Harm Is the Goal
It has been argued that speech is limited in its protections if it creates an imminent danger or causes serious harm. Free speech can be deemed unprotected due to its intent and the danger caused to others by the speech.
For example, it is often cited that you can yell fire in a crowded movie theater, and if there is a fire, the speech is protected. Speech, however, that is not true, such as yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater when there is no fire and causing a stampede and injury to others, is not protected because it was intended to cause harm and resulted in bodily injury. I am a preacher, not a lawyer, but the speech that is being pushed by the political MAGA/Trump white supremacist agenda is intended to cause harm and to inflict mental anguish. The words they use, the ideas disguised as simple free speech, are metastasizing as a cancer and infecting the country. It will be difficult to pull it back.
We have to find a way to retire hate and harmful speech.
Words will lead to violence as we have been witnessing, and it will get worse unless our ideas of speech edify instead of denigrating, and engage in the weightier things of existence. Our freedom of speech should be guided by how we respect and live together as human beings, how we share and protect the bounty of creation, and the many other things of worth and dignity.
Unless the political rhetoric and public discourse become serious and thoughtful, the country’s polarization will persist, and we will become weaker as a nation rather than stronger. The hatred, racist, white supremacy ideology of the present must be put back into the past and made once again boorish and obsolete.
We have to find a way to retire hate and harmful speech to the dirt pits of history, where relics lie buried. Unless we can elevate free speech to a loftier place, we will be doomed and remain polarized and broken as a people and a country.
Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler is the senior advisor at the Fellowship of Reconciliation–USA, director and chief visionary of Faith Strategies, LLC, and pastor emeritus of Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ.