On September 10th, 2025, Charlie Kirk was murdered, and the world stopped spinning. Now more than a full week after his death, I’m sure you do not need me to repeat what you have doubtlessly heard countless times by now: that his assignation was a tragedy and a disaster that has only done harm to those opposed to the project Kirk pushed in his life. There is even less to say about his killer, whose background and views give us little to talk about. As I said after the near-miss assassination attempt against Trump last year, it has been abundantly clear for quite some time that people have been willing to kill and be killed over politics in America. It’s incredibly bleak, but it is not novel.
What has been novel is the way in which the American right has reacted to Kirk’s death. For more than a week, both the nation and the world has watched as a professional YouTuber has been publicly grieved as if as if he were a head of state. A five-day national mourning period was declared. A presidential address straight from the Oval Office was delivered in his memory. Commemorations, condolences, and standing ovations have been given in his memory by foreign governments around the world. We’ve even gotten to the point where October 14th, his birthday, is on track to be officially designated the Charlie Kirk National Day of Remembrance by the U.S. Congress. As far as those in power are concerned, it is far more than just one individual tragedy. Instead, it is a truly historic moment of national trauma—one that forever legitimizes Kirk and his beliefs and delegitimizes his vaguely-defined opponents on the “left.”
But what if you don’t want to follow this script? What if you do not want to celebrate either the death or the life of Charlie Kirk? What if you find it hypocritical and suspicious that a party that has long ignored and even celebrated acts of political violence is now demanding that everyone stop what they are doing to honor the memory of an intensely partisan propagandist? That’s when the recriminations start. Since September 10th, the American right has engaged in a full-blown suppression campaign against anyone unfortunate enough to comment on Kirk’s death in a manner they deem unacceptable. Dozens have been fired over comments made on social media; tens of thousands more have seen their information leaked online in a massive database. Shortly after endorsing this mass doxing effort, the Trump administration leveraged the power of the state to coerce ABC into cancelling Jimmy fucking Kimmel for the crime of simply analyzing the right’s reaction to the shooting. It’s the most flagrant federal assault on free expression since the Wilson administration, and it’s occurring entirely over hurt feelings.
The hypocrisy on display here is so evident that it goes without saying. It’s also only part and parcel for the American conservative movement, which has been fundamentally opposed to free expression since its conception. From Richard Nixon’s illegal intelligence operations against left-wing political groups to George W. Bush’s PATRIOT Act to Trump 2.0’s ongoing efforts to deport legal residents over op-ed pieces, every single right-wing administration in the country’s modern history has used the power of the state to suppress dissent.
Yet it would not be entirely accurate to frame what is going on right now as simple continuity with a long history of right-wing illiberalism. In the past, White House-led assaults on free speech were either publicly justified as extreme measures for the sake of national security or simply done in secret. What we have seen over the past week, by contrast, has been loud, proud, and justified only by platitudes about the need to promote “civility” and stop “hate speech.” There is not even a pretension that it is about anything other than restricting expression to what those at the top deem to be culturally and politically correct. It is so brazen, so blatant, so wrapped up in pure emotion, that it has made me warm to a concept that I had previously dismissed out of hand: the idea of a “Woke Right.”
As it has been utilized so far, this term has been worse than useless. Applied near-exclusively by conservative writers who are slightly more self aware than their peers, it is fundamentally a form of cope: an effort to present all that is whiny, annoying, and destructive about Trumpist conservatism as a foreign import from their always-vile opponents on the progressive left. Although presented as a biting critique, its real function is to absolve the right by presenting its flaws as having originated from—and, thus, the responsibility of—its enemies. The object is less to identify and provide solutions for a problem than it is to create one more opening to make a jab at liberals, this time for allegedly being the architects of their own demise.
As is often the case with self-serving narratives, this story is wrong. The truth is that “wokeness,” as defined as an intolerant, aggressive, and state-driven agenda of cultural conformity, did not exist until the right created it.
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