For approximately five minutes, it looked like the big threat to free expression in the United States, a country that so prides itself on the stuff, was the horrific mid-debate assassination of right-wing commentator and organizer Charlie Kirk. A 31-year-old man was shot and killed on a university campus where a few thousand of his supporters gathered to watch him speak. That sort of thing has been known to have a chilling effect on free expression.

And so it has, but not in the way one might have anticipated. Or, perhaps, in exactly that way.

We are not witnessing a mass silencing of people who share Kirk’s conservative opinions and are now cowering for fear of crossing paths with the wrong politically radicalized loser. (Though this is a politically-across-the-board rational fear in America on account of all the guns.) Rather, it’s precisely the people who didn’t and don’t venerate Kirk and all that he stood for who are being urged, not violently but not gently, either, to hush.

The Trump administration has decided to go all-in on a battle against Kirk’s detractors broadly defined. This is not just about whichever relative handful of people were actively cheering on political violence. It is not merely at-will employers making perhaps short-sighted decisions based on employees’ bad-taste social media posts. It was—is—systemic, coming from on high.

Foreigners may now lose their legal status in the U.S. for having posted about Kirk. Vice President JD Vance put out a call to Americans to snitch on employees who did bad-in-Vance’s-view posts about Kirk’s death. U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi announced an anti-hate-speech crusade that suggested an unfamiliarity with or disregard for the First Amendment, which is not precisely what one wants in someone in that role. President Trump himself is also, of course, joining the crackdown against anti-Kirk-ism. Ordinary people are getting fired, sometimes by association, and countless more under the chilling threat of the same.

There were a slew of anxious jokes circulating, about how people who fail to properly mourn the handsome, recently deceased heartthrob actor Robert Redford would be in trouble with the government.

Canadian commentator David Frum made a much-circulating remark, “It’s not about ‘cancel culture’ because it’s not about ‘culture.’ It’s about a threat of legal retaliation........

© Canadian Jewish News