When Jimmy Kimmel returned to television on Tuesday evening, the late-night host had sharp words for the conservatives who’d briefly forced him off the air. President Donald Trump had put Disney, which owns ABC and made the call to suspend Kimmel, at risk by making “it very clear he wants to see me and the hundreds of people who work here fired from our jobs,” the comedian said. “Our leader celebrates Americans losing their livelihoods because he can’t take a joke.”

Kimmel had attracted Trump’s ire by suggesting Kirk’s murderer was one of the “MAGA gang,” but previously he was not the most obvious target of the anti-speech right. Once known for co-hosting The Man Show, his late-night persona has always been a bit sedate. As he’s since discovered, the Kirk murder has become a useful pretext for political repression. Kimmel might be the right’s most famous target, but he isn’t alone: Public universities and school districts have fired educators for criticizing Kirk and his work. At least eight servicemembers have been disciplined for comments about the late influencer, and conservative social-media users have targeted “dozens” more across most branches of the military, Task & Purpose reported. Apple TV has postponed The Savant, which stars Jessica Chastain as an undercover researcher focused on right-wing extremism. The Washington Post fired columnist Karen Attiah for Bluesky posts arguing, in part, against “the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence.” Last week, a conservative influencer claimed a Starbucks barista refused to write Kirk’s name on her drink, citing company policy. Amid backlash, Starbucks announced that customers could force workers to write political “names,” but not slogans, on cups.

By punishing Kimmel and others for speech, the right has opened itself up to the accusation of hypocrisy. Conservatives often say they are victims of progressive intolerance, and Trump fashioned himself into their champion. Not long after he returned to power in January, he signed an executive order to restore “freedom of speech” and end “federal censorship,” loosely defined. FCC chair Brendan Carr said he would defend the First Amendment or, as he tweeted in 2024, “We must dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans.” Kimmel must not count. Last week, Carr kicked off the Kimmel suspension by telling the far-right podcaster Benny Johnson that media companies should “change conduct to take action on Kimmel” or “there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” Yet Carr is not a hypocrite, and neither is Trump. They aren’t inconsistent; they simply do not share a basic commitment to free speech with their liberal critics. Instead, they operate within a much older and more restrictive tradition on the right. To a subset of prominent conservative writers and thinkers, free speech has always been a limited concept. There is good speech, which must be privileged, and bad speech, which must be punished.

Conservatives who favor the asymmetric right to free speech do so because it serves a deeper political project. That essential dynamic has played out on the American campus for decades, but it is not limited to the Ivy League; it has censored journalists, ended acting careers,........

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