Bury the ‘Words Are Violence’ Cliché

When news broke of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the reaction of thousands of young Americans online was one of delight. One TikTok user chuckled: “Live by the sword, die by the sword. He did say that gun deaths were an acceptable side effect of gun rights.” On X, someone wrote: “He is a fascist. Spreads hate, racism, bigotry, misinformation, gets shot. Reap what you sow.”

In the minds of these gleeful posters, Kirk deserved to die because of his words—words that allegedly promoted policies resulting in hate, violence, and even death. They think this way because they have forgotten—or have been trained to unlearn—a crucial distinction: Words are not bullets. Words can’t strike a man from 142 yards away, causing a torrent of blood to erupt from his wound, sending him first to the hospital and then to the morgue. Only bullets can do that.

Upholding that distinction is the North Star of everything I do as president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). For years, I’ve warned that equating words with violence erases the bright line liberal societies drew after centuries of bloodshed. The law draws this line with precision. Advocacy, even vile advocacy, remains protected unless it is intended and likely to produce imminent lawless action. That’s the Brandenburg standard, and it exists because the alternative is to let the powerful decide which ideas are allowed.

Or, as the Supreme Court put it in Texas v. Johnson, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” These aren’t lawyerly niceties; they are the safety valves of pluralism. Blur them, and real violence becomes more, not less, likely.