“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” Voltaire said. But not really. Stephen G. Tallentyre wrote it in his 1906 book about Voltaire, as a paraphrase of his attitude toward free speech. Actually, that’s not true either: “Tallentyre” was a pseudonym. “He” was really a she: Evelyn Beatrice Hall.
That this most famous quotation about standing up for free expression with integrity turns out to be fake is perfect. As we grapple with the gruesome public assassination of 31-year-old right-wing ranter Charlie Kirk, Americans say they support free speech. Some of them even believe it. The truth is, the only freedom of speech most Americans support is the speech they agree with.
Shortly after Kirk was gunned down, the President of the United States appeared on Fox News. Ainsley Earhardt asked him: “Because we have radicals on the right as well. We have radicals on the left. People have gotten are watching all of these videos and cheering. Some people are cheering that Charlie was, was killed. How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?”
Earhardt was right. Political violence in the U.S. is a bipartisan sport. Democratic Minnesota State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman were murdered by a right-wing pro-lifer on June 14th. Two Israeli embassy staffers were shot to death in D.C. on May 29th by a liberal who supports Palestine. A right-wing conspiracy nut broke into Nancy Pelosi’s house and assaulted her husband in 2022. The 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was carried out by a right-wing anti-Semite.
Overall, though, rightists are a lot more murdery than leftists. From 1994 to 2020, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) tracked domestic terrorist attacks and plots. Right-wingers accounted for the vast majority (57%). Left-wingers were a much smaller share (25%).
Why don’t those numbers add up to 100%? Many attacks against political figures, like last year’s assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, are not acts of political violence. They are carried out by people motivated by a desire for notoriety or mental illness, or whose politics are impossible to define.
Trump, of course, lies about this.
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” he told Earhardt. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime…Worried about the border. They’re saying, We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street,” Trump said. (In other words, they’re reasonable.)
“The radicals on the left are the problem,” Trump continued, “and they’re vicious and they’re horrible and they’re politically savvy, although they want men and women sports, they want transgender for everyone, they want open borders.”
In the same way that the Israeli government and supporters of its genocide against the Gazans pretend that the conflict began on October 7th when, out of the blue, the Palestinians broke the peace by attacking Israel, the permanently aggrieved American Right is acting like the Kirk killing was a novel, unexpected atrocity initiated not by a lone gunman, but by tens of millions of liberals, progressives and Democrats who comprise a dastardly unified Left. (As if!) “We have to have steely resolve,” said Steve Bannon. “Charlie Kirk is a casualty of war. We are at war in this country. We are.”
“They are at war with us, whether we want to accept it or not. What are we gonna do about it?” Fox News host Jesse Watters railed.
If it’s a war, the Right is winning. According to the Anti-Defamation League, all 25 extremist-related killings in 2022 were by right-wing murderers. In 2023, all 20 were right-wing. In 2024, all 13 were right-wing (8 by white supremacists, 5 by anti-government extremists). Left-wing violence (e.g., during protests) occurs sporadically and is rarely lethal.
“If they won’t leave us in peace, then our choice is to fight or die,” wrote Elon Musk.
Who is this “they”? The suspect, a 22-year-old from Utah, is one dude.
I’m not a perfect adherent to “Voltaire”/Hall’s standard of supporting free speech that I disagree with. But I have often come to the defense of right-wing cartoonist colleagues when they came under fire. I opposed the doxxing, canceling and firing of right-wing douchebags who attended the Charlottesville and January 6th demonstrations. It’s self-serving: I prefer not to get shot or censored. When you call to shut up your political opponents, you validate those who do the same to you.
People are asking, how can we put the idea that it’s OK to shoot someone because we hate their political opinions behind us?
Honestly, we never will. Violence is baked into American culture and politics going back to the genocide of Native Americans, the importation of slaves and Aaron Burr offing Alexander Hamilton. If we were to make progress, however, we would need to start with better leaders than we have now. We would need calls for understanding rather than retribution. And we would need something we violent, censorious, hypocritical Americans are singularly unwilling to entertain: self-awareness.
(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and John Kiriakou.”)
