By Naomi Lim
Jacob Mchangama, executive director of the Future of Free Speech, told the Washington Examiner he “completely” understood why “people are repulsed” by those celebrating Kirk’s death, but underscored that “there’s a difference between moral condemnation and criminal persecution.”
“What I think is particularly ironic is that this administration has been, and I think rightfully so, critical of European democracies for going after hate speech,” Mchangama said. “That speaks to the incoherence of this and inherent danger in a polarized America that free speech becomes this political prop that each side can use whenever it suits its agenda and then disregard when it doesn’t.”
Mchangama noted that, shortly after his inauguration, Trump signed an order to “restore free speech and ensure that no federal government official would violate the First Amendment.”
“A lot of people on the Right voted for Trump because he promised to sort of do away with at least the cancel culture part of it,” he said. “It unfortunately mirrors cancel culture from the left. We all remember the days when James Bennett had to leave The New York Times for publishing an op-ed by Tom Cotton, and you basically couldn’t say much that questioned the prevailing narrative around racial justice in the country without facing consequences, and lots of people lost their jobs.”
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Jacob Mchangama is the Founder and Executive Director of The Future of Free Speech. He is also a research professor at Vanderbilt University and a Senior Fellow at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).