With Calls for Retribution Over Kirk, Some See Rise of a ‘Woke Right’

 

With Calls for Retribution Over Kirk, Some See Rise of a ‘Woke Right’

 

Conservatives have pressed for consequences for those who make negative comments about Charlie Kirk. But a few on the right say they worry about limits on speech.

 

Jeremy W. Peters

By Jeremy W. Peters

Sept. 19, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/19/us/charlie-kirk-free-speech-republicans.html

 

The anguished calls for retribution have intensified in the week since Charlie Kirk’s assassination, with prominent conservatives waging a campaign to encourage public shaming, firings and the threat of prosecution for those who speak ill of him.

 

Yet, a few influential supporters of Mr. Kirk are now warning that attacks from the right on political expression could tarnish the legacy of the combative right-wing activist, who was seen as a champion of free speech by his legions of followers.

 

Tucker Carlson, the conservative writer and podcaster, told listeners this week that Mr. Kirk never would have wanted his death to be used as a pretext for a crackdown on speech.

 

“You hope that a year from now the turmoil we’re seeing in the aftermath of his murder won’t be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country,” said Mr. Carlson, who himself was dropped from Fox News in 2023 after revelations that he had made a comment implying white superiority in a text message.

 

“If that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that. Ever,” Mr. Carlson added.

 

His words of caution were the latest indication that a small but growing group of media and political figures on the right have been troubled by recent calls to punish and prosecute those who malign Mr. Kirk.

 

Some of that concern has emerged in media with considerable clout in the conservative movement and intensified after many conservatives cheered the decision by ABC late Wednesday to indefinitely pull Jimmy Kimmel’s late night show. That came just hours after the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, suggested that the agency might take action against ABC because Mr. Kimmel had implied that the man accused of killing Mr. Kirk was a right-wing Trump supporter. Utah officials have said the man had a leftist ideology.  

 

Ben Shapiro, who has one of the highest rated podcasts in the country, told listeners that while he was no fan of Mr. Kimmel, he did not like the idea of the F.C.C. threatening broadcasters over content that the agency deems false. “Why? Because one day the shoe will be on the other foot,” Mr. Shapiro said on Thursday.

 

If the situation were reversed, and the F.C.C. under a Democratic president went after a host like Mr. Carlson or Sean Hannity of Fox News, Mr. Shapiro asked, “Would the right be OK with that or would they be claiming, quite properly, that is massive regulatory overreach, unprecedented in scope?”

 

Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, on Friday compared Mr. Carr’s comments to a mob shakedown. “That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it,’” the senator said on an episode of his podcast.

 

Even among the conservatives who have voiced concerns, there are limits to how self-critical they appear willing to be, considering how shaken Mr. Kirk’s assassination has left many of them. Many see little use in pointing the finger now at anyone but liberals who are disparaging and disrespectful about Mr. Kirk’s death. And few of them  have defended Mr. Kimmel, who has made President Trump and his followers the butt of his jokes for years.

 

Conservative opposition helped thwart other attempts from the right this week to punish people for their words. A congressional measure to censure Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, for comments about Mr. Kirk that Republicans said were “reprehensible” failed after four Republicans voted against it, citing concerns about free speech. And after backlash from influential conservative commentators, including Matt Walsh and Erick Erickson, Attorney General Pam Bondi walked back comments she had made in an interview vowing to “absolutely target” protesters engaging in “hate speech.”     

 

The speed and fury with which powerful allies of Mr. Kirk have reacted to attacks on his legacy has drawn sharp criticism from other political corners.

 

Critics of the conservative movement have said that the Trump administration and its allies in the media are exploiting Mr. Kirk’s death to wage a campaign of repression. They have begun drawing an unflattering comparison to other recent efforts to police political discourse, pointing out that the right’s response fits a familiar pattern.

 

The right, they assert, has gone “woke.”

 

Jonathan Rauch, a scholar at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution who has said that the progressive left hurt its own causes with unreasonable purity tests in recent years, has written that he now sees a “woke right” emerging as well. He said the conservative campaign to punish people who have spoken negatively of Mr. Kirk — in some cases by celebrating his death and in others by pointing to his comments that insulted Black, gay and Muslim people — parallels earlier efforts to silence right-wing speech on college campuses.

 

“What they’ve learned from the left,” Mr. Rauch said, “is that if you can control what people say, if you can make them afraid of being canceled, you can make the minority view look like the majority view.”

 

Mr. Rauch said he saw the crackdown from the right as part of a deliberate attempt to distort the facts around events like what precipitated Mr. Kimmel’s cancellation so they can dominate the public discourse. “They also have this deeper view that ultimately the truth is whatever story wins,” he said, adding, “And that allows them to be singularly ruthless.”

 

But many conservatives dismiss the suggestion that anything like a “woke right” is emerging among them. They bristle at the idea that they are behaving like the left-wing activists they have scorned as “snowflakes.”

 

“I don’t think cancel culture applies here,” said Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican who wrote a book in which he described a “prevailing safety culture” that is coddling and irrational. He said that he did not see anything unreasonable about the overall defense of Mr. Kirk from the right. Defending a husband who left behind two children and a wife, Mr. Crenshaw said, “That’s a little bit different than ‘canceling’ someone for glorifying the assassination of a family man.”

 

The term “woke right” had been circulating in online political commentary for months before Mr. Kirk’s assassination. It suggests — in terms that most conservatives find repellent — a legal and rhetorical framework that mirrors the unforgiving tactics that critics say the left used to make academic theories about social justice mainstream.

 

James A. Lindsay, a writer who spoke at several events for Mr. Kirk’s organization Turning Point USA and became popular in right-wing circles for pillorying wokeness, started using “woke right” several years ago as he saw some conservatives grow more rigid in their beliefs. He has described it as an effort by some activists on the right to use “moral shaming, purity tests and social media pile-ons to enforce loyalty.”

 

Mr. Lindsay said he believed the right was heading down a self-destructive path if it continues to demand a pound of flesh for slights against Mr. Kirk, whom he considered a friend. “I understand that this thing we call the culture war is very important to settle, and that there is a side that needs to win this,” he said.

 

“But on the other hand,” he added, “how you win matters."

 

Rod Dreher, another conservative writer who has embraced the “woke right” criticism, wrote before the Kirk assassination in The Free Press that he was troubled by what he saw as the totalitarian tendencies of a repressive right, just as he was troubled by a repressive left.

 

Mr. Dreher, who has mainly praised the response from conservatives to Mr. Kirk’s assassination, said this week that the risk of overreach is real.

 

“Mostly I love this,” Mr. Dreher wrote on Substack. “But I remember that I felt exactly this way after 9/11, and that unrestrained anger led me to back bad, stupid things. Rage blinds.”

 

Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House strategist who advised Mr. Trump and who hosts a pro-Trump podcast, did not dispute that some of the aggressive approaches the right is using are similar to what he and other conservatives attacked the left for doing.

 

He said the tactics were still justified.

 

“This is an inflection point,” Mr. Bannon said. “And we aim to win, not unite.”

 

Michael Gold and Reggie Ugwu contributed reporting.

 

Jeremy W. Peters is a Times reporter who covers debates over free expression and how they impact higher education and other vital American institutions.