Learning from the Left

For much of the last decade, conservatives have endured the onslaught of progressive zealotry in America’s cultural and intellectual life. A stray remark deemed insensitive, a tweet judged offensive, or a speech that challenged fashionable orthodoxy was often enough to bring an individual’s career to a premature and humiliating end. Professors were hounded from universities, journalists were exiled from their platforms, and ordinary workers found themselves suddenly unemployable because of an unguarded opinion. This phenomenon, widely understood as “cancel culture,” was celebrated by the left as a form of accountability, a righteous correction to supposed abuses of speech. Conservatives, meanwhile, were expected to submit to the rules of the game, even when those rules functioned as a weapon of partisan warfare rather than as a neutral mechanism of justice.

The death of Charlie Kirk, however, has changed the terrain. What followed his passing was not the solemn recognition that a prominent political figure had exited the stage, but rather an eruption of celebration from quarters of the left. Academics, teachers, media figures, and even government employees openly gloated, mocking the man and treating his demise as a cause for joy. These were not obscure radicals ranting in dark corners of the internet. They were people who instruct children, influence young adults, and shape the discourse of public life. To the right, the glee with which they greeted Kirk’s death crystallized a truth long suspected: progressives do not regard conservatives as misguided compatriots but as enemies whose destruction, personal and literal, is legitimate.

This realization has spurred a remarkable change. Conservatives, long accused of passivity in cultural conflict, are now retaliating. One of the leading figures in this pushback is activist Scott Pressler. Known for his indefatigable organizing, Pressler has sought tips from the public about teachers and academics who mocked Kirk’s death. When such individuals are identified, he has not hesitated to share their posts, their names, and in some cases, their workplaces. It is the same method progressives perfected: exposure, employer pressure, and reputational destruction, only this time deployed by the right. The results have been dramatic. School districts have investigated teachers who joined in the mockery. Universities have placed professors under review. Government agencies, once quick to discipline conservatives, now find themselves compelled to answer for the actions of employees on the opposite side of the spectrum.

The seriousness of the moment has not been lost on political leaders either. On September 15, J.D. Vance, serving as the host of the Charlie Kirk podcast, declared that the Trump administration would not hesitate to dismantle groups and networks that glorify Kirk’s death or traffic in political violence more broadly. Vance’s remarks underscored a willingness to meet cultural warfare with institutional force. This was not the voice of a movement content to complain about double standards, but of one intent on ensuring that political violence, even in the form of rhetorical celebration, has consequences. Stephen Miller, a close ally of Donald Trump, elaborated further, promising that the government would coordinate with the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to confront and neutralize networks dedicated to such activity. In a striking extension of this posture, the United States government announced that it would cancel visas of foreign nationals who publicly revel in Kirk’s death, signaling that mockery of an American political leader’s passing is grounds for exclusion.

These developments have produced casualties among media figures who once thought themselves immune. Matthew Dowd, a political analyst long associated with establishment commentary, was dismissed by MSNBC after he argued that Kirk’s own rhetoric had contributed to the shooting. To Dowd, the suggestion was a form of analysis. To conservatives, it was indistinguishable from victim-blaming, an attempt to portray Kirk as complicit in his own death. His firing illustrates a reversal of roles, for where conservatives once bore the brunt of career-ending judgments, the arbiters of left-leaning discourse are beginning to pay the costs of their own language.

Karen Attiah, formerly with The Washington Post, faced a similar reckoning. She was dropped by the paper after she reiterated a remark Kirk had once made about black women being incompetent. Kirk’s statement, however controversial in its original context, was distorted by Attiah for the express purpose of ridiculing him. By wrenching it out of context and brandishing it as evidence of misogyny and racism, she attempted to reduce Kirk’s legacy to a caricature. Her dismissal demonstrates that conservatives are no longer willing to permit their opponents to weaponize selective quotations against them while retaining their own privileged positions in the media.

If people are tempted to pity Dowd and Attiah, they should remember the fate of Beni Rae Harmony. Harmony, an anchor at an ABC affiliate, was suspended after posting a tribute to Kirk, a gesture of respect rather than a provocation. She ultimately resigned when it became clear that support for Kirk carried professional risks in an industry hostile to conservative sympathies. The contrast is telling. While Dowd and Attiah mocked or denigrated Kirk and then lost their positions, Harmony was punished for honoring him. That reality undermines any argument that Dowd or Attiah deserve sympathy. If defenders of Kirk are punished in the media while his detractors are only now beginning to face accountability, then the balance has hardly tipped too far in the other direction. The playing field remains uneven, and the consequences borne by Attiah and Dowd are minimal compared to what conservatives have endured for years.

Predictably, these actions have drawn charges of hypocrisy. Critics insist that the right has betrayed its own principles by embracing the very tactics it once condemned. Yet this criticism ignores a central fact. The left never treated cancel culture as a principle of justice but as a strategy of political dominance. By pretending that the suppression of conservative voices was merely accountability, progressives normalized the destruction of livelihoods over ideological differences. For conservatives to abstain from using these same tools would not be noble restraint but unilateral surrender.

The celebration of Charlie Kirk’s death revealed the deep hostility that animates much of the progressive movement. Civility and tolerance are empty slogans when the passing of a political adversary becomes a moment of triumph. What conservatives have grasped is that in such a climate, to insist on purity of method is to accept perpetual defeat. Politics is not a seminar in ethics. It is a contest of power. Those who refuse to recognize this will find themselves silenced, marginalized, and erased.

There should be no pity for the media personalities and academics who are now facing the consequences of their own words. For years they applauded the ruin of conservatives, convinced that the cultural battlefield was theirs to command. Now the ground has shifted. If they find the new rules intolerable, they should reflect on who created them in the first place. Conservatives have simply decided to stop playing by standards that punished only one side.

https://counter-currents.com/2025/09/learning-from-the-left-2