Charlie Kirk Would Not Have Wanted This

“many of Kirk’s most ardent fans are now engaged in one of the largest mass cancellation efforts of all time: Some Republican legislators, MAGA activists, and conservative media figures are assembling watchlists with the explicit aim of silencing, firing, expelling, and perhaps even criminalizing any and all anti-Kirk sentiment.

There is also a big difference between canceling someone for justifying violence against Kirk and canceling someone who merely objects to his views, behavior, and political project. Furthermore, there’s a major difference between canceling someone in a public-facing communications role and canceling someone who is otherwise obscure.

Opposing cancel culture does not mean there should be zero accountability for anyone in a public role. It only means that those of us who denounced the excesses of woke enforcement during the late 2010s should similarly reject a rightwing counterreaction that seeks to unperson anyone who does not hold Kirk in sufficient esteem.

It’s also worth keeping in mind that Kirk disdained cancel culture and loved debate—seriously, he relished the fray more than most, and enjoyed mixing it up with people who obviously disliked him. Launching a vast and unscrupulous campaign to silence everyone who shares an unkind thought about Kirk is a poor way to honor his legacy.”

https://reason.com/2025/09/15/charlie-kirk-would-not-have-wanted-this/

ABC yanks Jimmy Kimmel’s show ‘indefinitely’ after remarks about Charlie Kirk

““The MAGA Gang (is) desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said. “In between the finger-pointing, there was grieving.””

If this is all he said, then this is a political cancellation that goes against everything many on the right used to say they stand for. Kimmel’s statement is not totally accurate, but is hardly beyond the pale.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/17/media/jimmy-kimmel-charlie-kirk-trump-fcc-brendan-carr

People are getting fired for allegedly celebrating Charlie Kirk’s murder. It looks like a coordinated effort

There’s an active organized effort to find, report, and spread widely messages and posts that are perceived as negative toward Charlie Kirk’s death, and then try to get people fired. This makes concerns about cancellation look terribly hypocritical. Many of the people are now being harassed and threatened.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/people-getting-fired-allegedly-celebrating-193945578.html

The Firing of School Choice Advocate Corey DeAngelis Is Classic Cancel Culture

“The trouble began on September 20, when the conservative Substack Current Revolt called attention to his history with the porn industry. Several conservative organizations then rescinded invitations for him to speak, and AFC fired him.
“Corey is no longer at AFC,” a spokesperson for the group told Reason in an email. “We wish him well in his next endeavors, and we remain focused on our mission to expand educational opportunity for families, particularly lower-income families, across the country.”

DeAngelis declined to comment, but he wrote on X: “As an activist for parental rights and school choice, my passion is personal. Just like everyone else, I have made mistakes throughout my life, learned from those mistakes, used that as an opportunity to grow and tried to channel that experience into something positive. I was a victim of poor decisions and poor influences. I have turned that experience into the fuel that fires me to save young people from being put in the same position I was put in and to help parents protect their children. I will never stop fighting for what is right.”‘

What’s happening to DeAngelis is a classic example of cancel culture: He is being punished for a regretted incident from his distant past that has nothing to do with his current job. Conservative organizations may well have morals clauses in their contracts, and they are free to hire and fire at will. But any institution that purports to oppose cancel culture, yet refuses to work with DeAngelis on this basis, is engaged in hypocrisy.”

https://reason.com/2024/10/01/corey-deangelis-school-choice-gay-cancel-culture/

For Many Americans, Cancel Culture Is Self-Inflicted

“”Social pressure to have the ‘right’ opinion is pervasive in America today,” notes Populace, a social-research organization, in a report published this summer. “In recent years, polls have consistently found that most Americans, across all demographics, feel they cannot share their honest opinions in public for fear of offending others or incurring retribution.”

“One important, but underappreciated, consequence of a culture of censorship is that it can lead individuals not only to self-silence, but also publicly misrepresent their own private views (what scholars call preference falsification),””

Russia Is Getting Canceled

“Russia is getting deplatformed from the world. The war in Ukraine is in many ways a traditional military clash involving tanks, missiles, diplomats, and supply lines. But nonstate actors have started taking sides—well, taking one side—in ways that the world hasn’t seen before, with private sector businesses and international organizations responding to Russia’s attack on its neighbor by cutting ties with Moscow, and in some cases sacrificing huge sums of money. Combined with the sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe (and perhaps motivated by them too), this mass exodus of foreign capital is demonstrating how the market can punish even powerful states for dangerous and unjustified behavior.

Shell, General Motors, BP, and other major firms have announced plans to leave Russia. FedEx and Germany-based shipping firm DHL are suspending deliveries to Russia, and Denmark-based Maersk, the world’s largest container shipping company, says it is considering suspending all shipments to Russia.

“Companies are basically saying, ‘We don’t want to be part of this,'” Nick Tsafos, an expert on energy and geopolitics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells The Washington Post. The Post notes that some of these moves are being made despite huge costs: Shell is abandoning several joint projects with Russia-based Gazprom, sacrificing more than $3 billion.

When the Cold War ended, Bloomberg reports, businesses poured into Russia to take advantage of a freshly open market with millions of new customers and the country’s vast natural resources. The past few days have been a stunning reversal of that same rush, with energy companies, major international law firms, and exporters either announcing plans to scale down their operations in Russia or exit the country entirely”