The late Charlie Kirk advocated for free speech on his popular podcast and in debates against college kids.
But a week after the conservative political pundit was gunned down during one of those debates at a Utah college, numerous people have lost their jobs and been doxxed for exercising that same First Amendment right.
The highest profile example so far is Karen Attiah, a well-known Washington Post opinion columnist, who said on Monday that she was fired by the paper over social media posts she shared about Kirk’s assassination.
Attiah ― the paper’s last Black opinion columnist ― denounced Kirk’s murder, but also posted and reposted several opinions “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns,” she explained on Substack.
The Post said her social media comments were “unacceptable,” “gross misconduct” and endangered “the physical safety of colleagues,” Attiah wrote. A spokesperson for the Post declined to comment “on personnel matters,” but the paper’s termination letter to her quotes one of her posts that said, “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is….not the same as violence.”
