Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated a week ago today, but the shockwaves of his tragedy are still being felt, spurring more and more difficult discussions among Americans.
The latest development involves the world’s richest man and X owner, Elon Musk. In the wake of Kirk’s shooting, popular Twitch streamer John Robert ‘Tectone’ Robertson has posted a compilation to X of his fellow Twitch star, the progressive and self-described socialist Hasan Piker, calling for violence against conservatives on his streams before the assassination took place in Utah.
In the collection of clips, Piker is heard saying things such as ‘Left-wingers, liberals, you need to be f***ing showing your opponents’ guts on there. You need to be gutting them. You need to be shanking these motherf***ers’, ‘Let the streets float in their red capitalist blood’, or ‘If you cared about Medicare and Medicaid fraud, you would kill [Republican Senator from Florida] Rick Scott’.
The most infamous statement Piker has ever made on his stream did not even make it into the compilation. In August 2019, he stated 'America deserved 9/11' during one of his Twitch broadcasts.
In the caption of his tweet, Tectone calls on Twitch to ban Piker from their platform. X owner Musk replied to the post, tagging Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, and casually asking him ‘What’s up here?’
Amazon is the parent company of the streaming platform Twitch, having acquired it in 2014. Twitch CEO Dan Clancy, as Tectone’s video points out, is on record saying that Hasan Piker is one of his favourite streamers on his site. Therefore, Musk is taking the issue to one step above, to the owner of the parent company and one of his few fellow centabillionaires.
Charlie Kirk’s assassination has radically changed the sentiment towards free speech on the right—whether only temporarily or permanently is yet to be seen.
Rallying against ‘cancel culture’ was one of the few universal points of agreement among Donald Trump supporters. They all remember the time of the ‘social justice warriors’ in the mid-2010s, when an off-colour joke on (as it was called then) Twitter could end an otherwise prosperous career. They also remember the absurdity of major social media platforms banning the incumbent President of the United States in early 2021, after the 6 January Capitol riots.
‘Charlie Kirk’s assassination has radically changed the sentiment towards free speech on the right’
And, to be fair, for years, the biggest voices on the right were diligently sticking to that principle, not calling for the termination, the banning of the social media accounts, or the cancellation of the public speaking engagement, even of the furthest left activist.
Now, however, we have X accounts celebrating and keeping count of exactly how many people have lost their jobs over the celebration, or insensitive statements about the killing of Charlie Kirk.
Elon Musk, as he has stated multiple times himself, acquired Twitter for $44 billion in 2022 to ‘save free speech’. To be fair again, keeping to his principles, none of the popular left-wing figures, even ones who have made unsavoury comments about the passing of Kirk, have been banned on his platform thus far.
On the other hand, Musk has expressed sentiments about another progressive political streamer, Steven Kenneth ‘Destiny’ Bonnel, similar to those he shared about Hasan Piker. On 16 September, he posted: ‘Let him say what he wants, but then also pay the price under the law’ in response to another compilation, this time of Destiny seemingly condoning political violence.
It is important to note that within just 14 months, the United States has witnessed both the attempted assassination of a former president and presidential candidate and the actual assassination of one of the most prominent figures supporting the party in power. By ‘witnessed’, we mean this in the literal sense: both attacks unfolded before crowds of thousands, with cameras rolling. While there have also been similarly despicable acts carried out by individuals aligned with the Republican Party or more extreme right-wing movements, none have had this level of public exposure.
No wonder two incidents like those have prompted a change in perspective towards free speech on the right, especially when it comes to speech about political violence.
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