In 2015, the French comedy magazine Charlie Hebdo was attacked by terrorists and twelve people were murdered. It was the second of three violent attacks on the magazine because they had dared to published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad, an insult to followers of Islam. In the decade prior, South Park had included Muhammad as a member of the Super Friends, with no violence. That episode and any imagery thereafter of Muhammad was censored by Comedy Central. The world had changed.
In the wake of the 2015 attacks, political leaders and journalists marched and stood in solidarity with the magazine, declaring, “I am Charlie Hebdo.” In that brief moment, free speech was sacred and understood to be a right. It didn’t last. Between the rise of Western “woke” and the crackdowns of the COVID era, many of the same leaders who pretended to care about free speech returned to their repressive inclinations of censorship and regulations. Unpopular or critical speech was labeled “hate speech” or “misinformation.”
Like the conservative-driven cancel culture of the past, which claimed satanic influences lingered in board games, movies, music, and comic books, this leftist ideology exposed its insecurities by banning and deplatforming anyone who questioned its policies. People became “problematic.” We were told words were “violent.” They framed it as though a sentence was a bullet, and a paragraph a bomb. The term “hate speech” permeated academic institutions. Corporations and the government imposed their own variations of censorship. The world switched into a binary, and nuance suffered.
Charlie Kirk was a man who would invite others to speak with him, arguing his case in public forums. Often edited in his favor for social media, it was admittedly theatrical and meant to be consumed by those with short attention spans. It was also divisive; his rather conventional nationalist views had become controversial to campus audiences, along with his idea that people should talk. He believed his opponents should have the right to be heard, the right to debate and to communicate. And so should he. It is with a sense of sad poetry that Charlie Kirk was assassinated mid-sentence doing what he believed was a right for all of us. He was murdered for speaking.
Kirk championed war and the bloodshed of innocence so long as it satisfied alleged American geopolitical goals. In that, he was no different to countless other nationalists. Perhaps in time, he could have matured his worldview.
It does not matter whether you agreed with Charlie Kirk and his methods. There was a time when the West indulged itself under the belief that free expression was sacred. A university campus, of all places, was where different views could be heard, discussed, and debated. Instead, the West and its academic entities have become a bastion of political repression and an ideology of insecurities, that screams out, “words are violence.”
The Irish investigative journalist Veronica Guerin Turley was murdered by a Dublin-based crime gang in 1996 because of the reporting she had been conducting into local violence. She could have written on softer issues; instead, with dignity and courage she dared to report on the violent criminals that had been ravaging Ireland. Her targeted assassination is similar to the many journalists intentionally killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) since 2023. The genocide in Gaza has witnessed a focused assault on anyone daring to report on what is occurring. Because it is conducted by a government, is killing a journalist suddenly legitimate and any different to what was done to Guerin?
This past August, Anas Al-Sharif was assassinated when the IDF bombed a media tent, with the intent of killing him and other members of the media. For those outside the West, he was as of much note as Charlie Kirk, as far as fame went. His murder, along with numerous others, goes unchecked and reveals a culture of hatred against those who dare to report or express a different opinion. Are the killers of Al-Sharif any better than the person who murdered Kirk?
Would Salman Rushdie be allowed to reside and be as revered as a writer if he had written The Satanic Verses today? In 1988, his book invoked a fatwa with subsequent death threats and attempts on his life. He had to live with the protection of armed security because he wrote words. The United Kingdom of 2025 would not see him as a writer who had been attached to the left. Instead, because his words violated religious dogma, he could be accused of hate speech and may likely be touted as an extreme rightwing agitator for doing it.
Does a person deserve death because they drew a picture? Said words? Should they be imprisoned? It is a cliché to bring up the childhood rhyme, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.” A diddy like that in this modern age would be “problematic” if taught in schools. Children are now learning that their feelings are more important than a person’s right to express a viewpoint. The feelings of those who are denied the right to share words or thoughts are not as important as the easily offended.
Bans on social media, along with increased constraints on it has been imposed by insecure governments that want to control the thoughts of those they rule. They will not tolerate dissent, whether legitimate or extreme. Instead, the impulse to suppress and punish thoughts and speech has been framed in all manners: curtailing misinformation, violent language, and bigotry, or is often the case, anything that may be too graphic or explicit for children. This is no longer the decision of parents and individuals. Instead it’s to be determined by experts and professionals who look down on millions of individuals as subjects to be controlled.
Truthfully, there is no difference between an individual, a criminal gang, terror organization or government when it comes to their violent impulse and actions to suppress free speech. (Other than scale, funding, and the public belief in legitimacy of one over the rest.) The brutal murder of Charlie Kirk has been celebrated online by some of his detractors, in much the same way that Andrew Tate, Bonnie Blue or Greta Thunberg’s public assassination would be cheered by extremes of their critics. The vile mentality that these personalities are not human beings who deserve the right to free expression is what has led to the murder of Charlie Kirk and those who worked in Charlie Hebdo. There is no difference between the IDF’s current assassination campaign of journalists or the street level retaliation of criminal gangs.
Unfortunately, history has too many martyrs of free speech. It has far more arrested by regimes who did not like the words and images created out of the minds of those who had the courage to do so. It is cowardly to deny another person their thoughts and the right to express ideas, to create art, to report on events. Use words to disagree, to develop a better argument, to discuss, to debate, or just ignore. Embrace the civility of discourse and discussion. The peace of communication.
More than ever we should declare, “I am Charlie Hebdo.” And, “We are all Charlie Kirk, too.”
