In Shakespeare’s Richard III, Queen Elizabeth — whose husband King Edward IV was overthrown and her twins taken to the Tower — asks the older Queen Margaret (widow of the murdered King Henry VI) to “teach me how to curse mine enemies.” The Queen responds that it is easy: “Think that thy babes were sweeter than they were, And he that slew them fouler than he is.”
The lesson: The key to hate is to decouple it entirely from reason and reality. Only then can you hate completely without restraint or regret.
It seems that the left has learned how to hate. Hateful speech is in vogue as Democratic leaders ramp up violent rhetoric and political violence rises. The key is to get voters to hate your opponent so much that they forget how much they dislike you.
The irony is crushing. For years, liberals have sought to criminalize hate speech while expanding the range of viewpoints considered to fall within this category. Democratic leaders, from senators to former presidential candidates, have falsely claimed that hate speech is not protected under the First Amendment.
In “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I write about rage and the uncomfortable fact: “What few today want to admit is that they like it. They like the freedom that it affords, the ability to hate and harass without a sense of responsibility.” Rage is addictive, and it is contagious.
What rage-addicts cannot tolerate are those who cling to residual impulses of decency or humanity. In an age of rage, reason is viewed as a reactionary tendency.
This week, Bravo star and liberal podcast host Jennifer Welch praised footage of a “No Kings” protester celebrating the death of Charlie Kirk, holding her up as an example for all liberals.
In the clip, the elderly woman said, “Charlie Kirk is horrible. Yes. I’m glad he’s not here.” When pressed if she was actually happy that the husband and father of two had been murdered, the woman said “Yes…because he was horrible on the campuses. Horrible person.”
After playing the clip, Welch laughed with joy and declared, “So listen up, Democratic establishment. You can either jump on board with this s—, or we’re coming after you in the same way that we come after MAGA. Period.”
Celebrities like Jamie Lee Curtis certainly got that message. The actress was facing a social and professional meltdown after openly mourning Kirk’s death in a podcast interview. “I disagreed with him on almost every point I ever heard him say,” she said. “But I believe he was a man of faith, and I hope in that moment when he died, that he felt connected to his faith, even though his ideas were abhorrent to me.”
It appeared to be a moment of weakness that briefly overrode wokeness. Curtis quickly found herself persona non grata in Hollywood, as an angry liberal mob began to circle her. Curtis quickly saw the light and effectively retracted her fleeting expression of humanity, claiming it had been “mistranslated.” It is said that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. But that does not apply if you then gouge out your own eye. Now fully and comfortably blinded by her own hand, Curtis is back as a member of good standing in Hollywood.
Internationally, the left has pushed for criminalizing the speech of those with opposing views as hateful and harmful. UNESCO works off a definition of hate speech as including “pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, in other words, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, color, descent, gender or other identity factor.” This includes “scapegoating, stereotyping, stigmatization and the use of derogatory language” based on any “identity factor.”
Countries are also “required to prohibit” speech tied to “conspiracy theories, disinformation and denial and distortion of historical events.”
In the past, some leftists have included political criticism or parodies of their leaders as hate speech. For example, when a rodeo clown, Tuffy Gessling, donned a President Barack Obama mask at the Missouri State Fair as part of a skit years ago, the response was calls for his arrest. The President of the Missouri chapter of the NAACP, Mary Radliff, insisted that it constituted criminal hate speech.
But things have changed. The left has now discovered the thrill of uninhibited hate.
Recently, in Chicago, elementary school teacher Lucy Martinez was shown on video reacting to an image of Kirk by mockingly making a gesture akin to being shot in the neck, mimicking how Kirk had been assassinated.
Another educator, Wilbur Wright College Adult Education Manager Moises Bernal, screamed to a crowd that “ICE agents gotta get shot and wiped out.” Bernal told the crowd, “You gotta grab a gun!” and “We gotta turn around the guns on this fascist system!”
In academia, hateful speech has long been a way to establish one’s bona fides as a faculty member. By attacking and excluding others, you reaffirm your own protected status.
Faculty have thrilled their colleagues and students by talking about “detonating white people,” abolishing white people, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, and supporting the murder of conservative protesters.
Even school board members have referred to taking faculty “to the slaughterhouse” for questioning diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Last week, Democratic strategist James Carville went on a hate-filled rant, to the delight of his podcast audience. He declared that anyone supporting Trump and the Republicans will be treated like collaborators in World War II who were publicly abused and paraded by mobs.
“You know what we do with collaborators?” he said. “I think these corporations [funding White House renovations] — my fantasy dream is that this nightmare ends in 2029 and I think we ought to have radical things. I think they all ought to have their heads shaven, they should be put in orange pajamas and they should be marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and the public should be invited to spit on them.”
Carville later repeated the call that “The universities, the corporations, the law firms, all of these collaborators should be shaved, pajamaed and spit on.”
For years, Democratic leaders have given their base the license for such blind rage by calling Republicans “Nazis” and claiming that democracy will die unless their opponents are stopped.
The effect has been transformative across the party. In the current race for Virginia Attorney General, Democratic nominee Jay Jones admitted to sending text messages expressing the desire to kill a political opponent, “piss on the grave” of a dead Republican, and kill his children, whom he dismissed as “little fascists,” in their mother’s arms.
There was a time when such a candidate would be denounced by those on the ticket from his party and made a nonentity in politics. Instead, the Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee, Abigail Spanberger (who had previously told her supporters to “Let your rage fuel you”), has refused to withdraw her endorsement. Moreover, the race remains close, with most Democratic voters still planning to cast their ballots for him.
It is a lesson many hope will take hold in the midterm elections. Like Queen Elizabeth, these voters have overcome all inhibitions and can now teach others “how to curse.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the bestselling book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
