<\/p>\n
The grief Emily Taylor<\/span> had been holding at bay finally washed over her in January. It had been four months since a lone gunman shot Charlie Kirk in the throat at Utah Valley University, killing the conservative commentator in minutes. That winter \u201cwas the first time in my entire life that I didn\u2019t go back to school,\u201d said the former English professor, holding back tears.<\/p>\n Taylor had resigned<\/a> from her tenured position in December to save her tiny college in South Carolina from a political witch hunt in which lawmakers threatened to pull her school\u2019s funding because she\u2019d written a brief essay acknowledging that before his violent death, Kirk had employed violent rhetoric.<\/p>\n \u201cI was a first-generation college student, and I worked my entire life to be an English professor,\u201d said Taylor, who has spent most of the last year scrolling bare job boards since leaving Presbyterian College. \u201cThe chances that I ever have tenure-track employment again doesn\u2019t seem likely.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s one of the more than 600 people<\/a> who had their lives upended in the wake of Kirk\u2019s assassination, when a free-speech<\/a> crackdown led by the Trump administration<\/a> sought revenge<\/a> on anyone critical<\/a> of the deceased far-right podcaster.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think any other era has had the tools to do the sort of purging that is available now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n A year after Kirk\u2019s killing, The Intercept spoke with five people who lost their jobs in the wake of the Kirk firings and four attorneys representing seven more clients, most of whom are still not back at work after finding themselves ensnared in one of the biggest mass censorship campaigns in modern history.<\/p>\n Their stories represent a chilling sea change\u00a0that has become a hallmark of the second Trump administration: an inversion of the assumption that, for the most part, Americans are protected by their right to free speech. They illustrate what happens when an overzealous online army propped up by some of the most powerful people in the country are given free rein to terrorize their perceived political enemies.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that was really interesting and very destructive about the post-Charlie Kirk purge was how coordinated and manufactured the outrage was,\u201d said Allen Chaney, who serves as legal director of the ACLU of South Carolina and represents both Taylor and fired Clemson University professor Joshua Bregy, who was reinstated<\/a> in January.<\/p>\n While the U.S. has suffered speech crackdowns before \u2014 like in the McCarthy and post-9\/11 eras<\/a> \u2014 the saturation of online life<\/a> seems made to supercharge a backlash. \u201cI don\u2019t think any other era has had the tools to do the sort of purging that is available now,\u201d said Chaney.<\/p>\n Taylor was waiting<\/span> for her children to finish their piano lessons on September 10, 2025, when she heard the news that Kirk was shot while answering a question about a conspiracy theory he perpetuated suggesting there is an epidemic of transgender mass shooters. \u201cCounting or not counting gang violence?\u201d were his final words.<\/p>\n Soon there were murals and memorials. President Donald Trump<\/a> called Kirk \u201cour greatest evangelist for American liberty\u201d to a packed crowd at his memorial service<\/a>. And Vice President JD Vance said anyone perceived to be \u201ccelebrating\u201d Kirk\u2019s murder should be targeted.\u00a0\u201cWhen you see someone celebrating Charlie\u2019s murder, call them out,\u201d Vance said on his podcast<\/a>. \u201cAnd hell, call their employer.\u201d<\/p>\n Online troll accounts and politicians alike took up the cause to begin targeting anyone even mildly critical of Kirk. Lists circulated<\/a> naming people accused of \u201ccelebrating\u201d Kirk\u2019s death, making it easy to harass people en masse. Less sophisticated users could simply search the name \u201cCharlie Kirk\u201d on X and harass anyone who made a negative post. Big accounts like Libs of TikTok doxed<\/a> critics and amplified hate to their millions of followers.<\/p>\n Jimmy Kimmel\u2019s show was temporarily pulled off<\/a> the air by ABC, after the host quipped in a monologue that MAGA was weaponizing Kirk\u2019s death. Washington Post opinion columnist Karen Attiah was fired for pointing out Kirk\u2019s deep anti-Blackness<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kimmel is back on, and Attiah was recently reinstated<\/a> by an arbitrator. But most of the people who were targeted, doxed, fired, and harassed were not public figures.<\/p>\n \u201cMy clients really were not high-income earners; we\u2019re talking about support staff,\u201d said Melody Fowler-Green, an attorney who represents several people fired<\/a> in the wake of the Kirk killing. \u201cA lot of the people who lost their jobs, they are people who are not in positions of power.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the people who lost their jobs, they are people who are not in positions of power.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Kimberly Hunt, then a 31-year-old\u00a0HR professional from Scottsdale Arizona, made a short video<\/a> questioning the assertion that Kirk \u201cdidn\u2019t deserve\u201d his fate.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said a few deaths a year are worth it if it meant preserving our God-given right to bear arms. He actively fought against women\u2019s rights. He\u2019s openly Islamophobic, and he spreads anti-trans rhetoric,\u201d Hunt said into the camera, accurately capturing Kirk\u2019s rhetoric. \u201cHow many hate crimes happened because of him? Spare me the empathy because he didn\u2019t believe in it either.\u201d She said she had sympathy for his children but not his wife, Erika, who is now the CEO of his organization<\/a> Turning Point USA.<\/p>\n Hunt said she never listed her job on her social media, but internet sleuths found where she worked, and the phones began to ring off the hook. When her boss asked her to meet, she knew the writing was on the wall. \u201cHe explained that I had put him in a tough position because there were so many phone calls coming into our business that it was disrupting their operations,\u201d she recalled, \u201cAnd that he had to let me go<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The harassment didn\u2019t stop. Hunt said at one point she received a call from her local sheriff that she was said to be on a \u201chit list.\u201d Officers surveilled her home for two weeks.<\/p>\n None of the employers of the people who were fired or placed on leave in this story responded to The Intercept\u2019s requests for comment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Taylor had no<\/span> way of knowing what was to come when she sat down to draft a response to the shooting the morning after, on September 11, 2025. \u201cMy initial reaction to it was just so angry that the students on campus were subject to another school shooting,\u201d said Taylor. \u201cI was also sad that he died because I don\u2019t believe in violence, and I don\u2019t think anybody should be murdered.\u201d<\/p>\n In her essay<\/a>, \u201cDying to Be Men: American Masculinity as Death Cult,\u201d Taylor argues that the type of \u201cviolent discourse espoused by Charlie Kirk, and many and others\u201d ultimately led to his tragic shooting in front of thousands of traumatized students.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry for Charlie Kirk and all the other men like him that have been raised in this America and with these ideals of masculinity,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI\u2019m sorry that he decided to adopt this hateful ideology and to profit from it. And as the mother to a boy and a girl, my heart breaks for the America these children are growing up in. Here\u2019s hoping we can save ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n She sent the piece to an editor at Ms. Magazine, the publication founded by recently deceased feminist leader Gloria Steinem, and within hours it was online. The hate began to roll in.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the things that was really interesting and very destructive about the post-Charlie Kirk purge was how coordinated and manufactured the outrage was.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Republican state Rep. Thomas Beach targeted<\/a> Taylor on social media, and Republican Lt. Gov. Pamela Evette called<\/a> for Taylor to lose her tenure. People began to dox her online.<\/p>\n Presbyterian College had to hire an outside firm to manage crisis communication and student safety. \u201cThey were telling me I needed to get personal security for my home,\u201d said Taylor, \u201cwhich you\u2019ll be surprised to hear I couldn\u2019t afford on a professor salary.\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor said she bought security cameras, and after she received a death threat, the local police began to regularly check house. She called the principal of her children\u2019s school to talk about what to do in case someone tried to harm her kids.<\/p>\n On September 18, 29-year-old Republican state Rep. Luke Rankin, who did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s request for comment, called for the state to pull its funding<\/a> from the small private Christian college. His colleagues co-signed a letter to formalize their threat.<\/p>\n Presbyterian College only has about 1,000 undergraduates. It would be devastated by that kind of hit, said Taylor, who walked away from a job that could support her family and offer future tuition benefits for her children. \u201cI also support my mom. So, walking away was really hard,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I also couldn\u2019t have lived with myself if they had taken away money from students.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
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