By Jonathan S. Tobin
(JNS) — It turns out that Charlie Kirk was one of those seminal figures in our culture and politics whose impact will be greater in death than in life. In the two weeks since his assassination at Utah Valley University, the magnitude of the reaction to his passing likely surprised many of his political opponents as well as some of his admirers.
The enormous outpouring of emotion on the political right in response to his shocking murder was matched only by the vitriol hurled at his memory coming from some on the left.
That, in turn, fueled a backlash on the left that has cost some people, such as Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, their jobs. It also put a hold on ABC late-night comedy show host Jimmy Kimmel, who was taken off the air for a week. These two individuals, along with many others, were guilty not only of insensitivity but of using their prominent perches to spread misinformation about Kirk and the assassination. Their fate and the way others who posted their contempt for Kirk on social media have been singled out for opprobrium has created a second backlash — this time coming from the left, complaining about the way that the wave of grief for Kirk has called into question the free speech rights of his opponents.
Tolerance for antisemitism
Even as the battle for Kirk’s legacy has become the centerpiece of a renewed and even more bitter edition of the same culture war that has been dividing right and left in the last decade, one aspect of this controversy seems to be exacerbating another ongoing crisis. The debate about what Kirk thought and who killed him — and why — has also become a new inflection point in the surge of antisemitism that has been spreading across the United States since the Hamas-led Palestinian attacks on Israeli.
Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson pivoted immediately after the murder to claim that Kirk, a steadfast friend and defender of Israel, was souring on the Jewish state, as well as on the brink of joining him and other antisemites in their opposition to the war on Hamas. As other extremists on the internet were floating conspiracy theories about Israel being behind Kirk’s murder, the even more extreme Jew-hater Candace Owens has been spreading claims that prominent Jews were seeking to “blackmail” the activist over his alleged anti-Israel tendencies.
Carlson was given a prominent speaking slot, alongside Kirk’s widow, Erika, President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other members of the administration at the massive memorial service for Kirk at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. That he was there at all, let alone using his time to vaguely invoke deicide charges against Jews, was disturbing. But it also spoke volumes about the troubling fact that Carlson has managed to maintain his status as a legitimate conservative thought leader, as well as the way tolerance for his antisemitism may become part of the complicated legacy of Kirk’s free-speech absolutism.
The furor over ABC’s suspension of the “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” show has been a remarkable, yet illuminating, example of the hypocritical nature of most discussions about free speech.
Kimmel was guilty of a gobsmacking example of misinformation when he declared during an opening monologue on Sept. 15 that Kirk’s killer was a fellow MAGA conservative activist. By then, it was already clear that the assassin was someone on the political left who was likely influenced by Kirk’s opposition to gender ideology, in addition to the activist’s criticism of the transgender movement’s political and social impact on society.
That appalling comment sparked anger from a broad range of Americans and threats from affiliates to drop the Kimmel show from their ABC stations. ABC acted quickly to shut his show down rather than be forced to defend Kimmel and lose revenue when local stations refused to air it.
Comments from Trump and Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, in which they seemed to be demanding that Kimmel be fired, led some to the not entirely unreasonable conclusion that what was happening was the result of government pressure to censor views the administration opposed.
Kimmel’s fate was an example of what happens when an entertainer creates a political mess that his employers want no part of. But thanks to Trump and Carr, he instead became, along with fellow late-night comedy show host Stephen Colbert, whose show was canceled by CBS due to chronically bad ratings and epic financial losses, a martyr to free speech.
Late-night politics
This is as absurd as it is hypocritical.
For the last decade or more, all of the late-night comedy shows have hewed to a consistently partisan line in which the genre’s former nonpartisan approach to humor was replaced by rigid adherence to liberal ideology. For years, all of them have become daily in-kind contributions to the Democratic Party. The result is that they have become consistently unfunny, coupled with declining viewership ratings.
That doesn’t excuse efforts by the administration to intimidate its critics. But you don’t have to be a Republican to recognize that the rationale for ABC, NBC and CBS to drop the left-wing ideology and get back into the comedy business hasn’t much to do with anything Trump might say. Instead, it is a function of the fact that they are all businesses that are supposedly interested in appealing to all Americans.
More than that, the same people who are whining about the fate of Kimmel or even Colbert had no sympathy when politics derailed the careers of entertainers who ran afoul of left-wing sensibilities.
In death, Kirk’s appeal seems to have transcended the world of conservative activism. His murder has focused a broad swath of the public on the admirable example of someone who was equally committed to conservative ideas, while also being deeply religious and dedicated to promoting dialogue across the partisan divide.
Hijacking a legacy
That’s why the attempt on the part of Israel-haters to hijack his legacy is so troubling and has the potential to legitimize antisemitic tropes into mainstream conservative thinking.
Carlson clearly understands the stakes involved in controlling how the public thinks about Kirk.
For Carlson, Candace Owens and their acolytes, their embrace of anti-Israel and antisemitic tropes in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks caused them to align themselves in sympathy with the red-green alliance of leftists and Islamists who seek to target Jews on campuses. The way extremists on the left and right come together on antisemitism is nothing new. But it put them in the uncomfortable position of conservatives opposing the Trump administration’s pro-Israel foreign policy, as well as its laudable campaign to rid college campuses of the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion that is the engine of 21st-century Jew-hatred.
That is why it’s so important for them to tie Kirk to their campaign to legitimize the mainstreaming of post-Oct. 7 antisemitism.
Should we believe the claims made in a Carlson podcast the week after the assassination about Kirk undergoing a change of heart about Israel or that he hated Netanyahu?
There’s no reason to trust anything that he or his cronies say about Israel. As legal columnist and podcaster Josh Hammer — a stalwart defender of Israel — has said, he was on the phone with Kirk discussing their mutual support for the Jewish state the night before the assassination on Sept. 10.
We do know that Carlson benefited from Kirk’s instinctive opposition to deplatforming anyone. Although he disagreed with Carlson’s stands on Israel and Holocaust denial, Kirk still gave him the opportunity to speak at TPUSA conferences.
By allowing Carlson to keep his foot in the door, Turning Point USA is giving credence to pro-Hamas talking points.
Opposing letting these ideas be considered debatable, rather than despicable notions that should be confined to the fever swamps of the far right and left, is not a matter of banning free speech. It’s just common sense. Conservatives should not be willing to treat such toxic ideas as legitimate any more than they should accept woke myths about race, intersectionality or settler-colonialism that they know to be false.
Yet that is the position that Carlson is claiming is now both mainstream conservatism and part of a Kirk legacy that should be defended.
Planting a seed of Jew-hatred
His presence on the podium at the Kirk memorial, alongside administration leaders, was appalling in and of itself. But the fact that he used that bully pulpit to invoke the ideas that guys who eat hummus (aka Jews) plotted Jesus’s death the way the contemporary left plotted to silence Charlie planted an insidious seed of Jew-hatred in an otherwise moving tribute.
It isn’t cancel culture to seek to rid the public square of this kind of hate any more than it is wrong to seek to reclaim academia for Western values by expelling woke DEI commissars and mobs of pro-Hamas hate-mongers. Doing so is a defense of the values of the American republic that Charlie Kirk believed in and for which he gave his life.
Defending the antisemitism of Carlson and Owens — and all of their friends and allies on the far right and the far left that agree with them — is not consistent with Kirk’s lifework.
Anyone who cares about honoring the 31-year-old husband, father and activist — and his beliefs — should be outraged at the way Tucker Carlson is trying to hijack his legacy. If he succeeds, it will be more than a boost for pro-Hamas thugs and antisemites on both the left and the right. It will also set back any hopes that the efforts to win back America for Kirk’s conservative faith will ultimately succeed.