It’s not “cancel culture” to face up to the consequences of cheering on murder and ideological intimidation in the public square. That’s doubly true if you’re entrusted to teach our children.
This is something the left needs to learn the hard way in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk last month. Thankfully, there’s a group out there doing just that — the 1776 PAC.
In an interview with Fox News on Friday, the PAC’s executive director said that it’s been gathering reports of educators who have openly celebrated Kirk’s killing at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10 — and that they’ve documented “over a hundred” reports thus far.
The announcement comes after progressive outrage in the wake of Kirk’s death when a group of prominent conservative pundits and anonymous web outlets began collecting prominent social media reactions that celebrated or minimized the death of the Turning Point founder.
One of these websites — titled “Charlie’s Murderers” — collected evidence that a number of journalists, medical professionals, and (yes) educators had written heinous things about Kirk’s death.
The outrage, perhaps unsurprisingly, wasn’t directed at those who wrote the heinous things but those who catalogued them, who Wired tarred as “far-right influencers and violent extremists” in an article about the documentation.
Nevertheless, groups like the 1776 PAC — launched in 2021 by conservative activist Ryan James Girdusky — have continued to document just how deep the rot goes — and how it could spread to your children through carriers of the intellectual putrefaction.
“I think that we have kind of just called it accountability,” said 1776 Project PAC Executive Director Stefano Forte.
“We decided to do this because we want to make sure that the next generation of students is not being taught by radicals in the classroom,” he added.
Should all educators who celebrated Kirk’s murder be fired?
“And we have gotten a ton of submissions. We are sifting through all of them. There are still submissions coming in.”
Unlike websites like “Charlie’s Murderers,” Forte said, the group has special expertise in this arena.
“We are one of the only PACs, federal PACs in the country that does this,” he said.
“This is a very niche PAC. We do school board races. We’ve done other races in the past, but our bread and butter is the school board races.
“And the reason why we’re pouring so much money into school board races is because, traditionally, the establishment of the Republican Party has not really made this a priority for themselves. They haven’t really gone after school boards,” Forte added.
And now, they’ll be looking at how the people these school boards countenance are either celebrating or condoning the murder of a conservative activist.
“What this accountability project does for us is it gives parents a well-rounded view of the people that are teaching their kids,” Forte said.
“So it is absolutely pivotal. We do not want to dampen anybody’s free speech. We want to accelerate their free speech, we want to give them an even bigger platform, so people can know what they truly believe,” he added.
“We’ve gotten thousands of them. I believe that about a hundred of them will be valid by the time we’re done sifting through everything … If you are putting your face, your name, you are saying that you believe that the death of Charlie Kirk is something to celebrate about. All we are doing as an organization is saying, ‘Great, we amplify your voice. We’ve given you a megaphone.’”
And that’s the thing: It’s not that they’re being canceled for a belief that should be legitimate in a society that has guardrails. This isn’t a religious or peaceful political tenet being forwarded: It’s calls or apologies for murder. And it’s coming not just from some Instagram randos, but from the men and women who are paid to teach our children.
This isn’t just a witch-hunt in a vacuum looking for a contingent of sick progressive educators that doesn’t exist. One Canadian teacher showed the assassination to students as young as 10, reports indicate, and said he had it coming. In Rhode Island, students called for a teacher to be fired after he went on a TikTok rant saying that Kirk was a “piece of garbage” because of spurious claims about what he allegedly (but didn’t) believe.
And, in Indiana, a school administrator offered advice and protection for educators who’d made problematic statements “to protect your privacy and well-being,” warning them not to attract “scrutiny.”
This is not “cancelation.” That involves ruining people’s lives for perfectly normal and peaceable opinions; celebrating the death of someone for free speech is not normal and antithetical to peace. This is not solution-seekers in search of a non-existent problem; there’s enough documentation that this has happened and that this is likely just the tip of the iceberg.
This is consequence culture, not cancel culture. Get used to it — because after Charlie Kirk’s murder was condoned by trusted professionals, including those who we turn our children over to for the school day, Americans aren’t going back to letting this kind of behavior get memory-holed.
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