Acolytes of the far-right activist urged employers to fire his critics. Now those who were terminated are suing and claiming their right to free speech

Julie Strebe, a 55-year-old sheriff’s deputy in the small Bible belt town of Salem, Missouri, was on a date with her husband at a Buffalo Wild Wings when her husband slid his phone across the table. On Facebook, people were demanding Strebe’s immediate termination, calling her a “wacko” with “extreme mental health issues”.

It was the afternoon of 13 September 2025, just a few days after Charlie Kirk had been killed by a sniper’s bullet on a college campus. Shortly after his assassination, Strebe had posted on her personal Facebook page: “Empathy is not owed to oppressors.” In comments underneath, she did not mince words. She called Kirk a racist, a sexist, an antisemite and the kind of person who wants to see gay people, like her own son, stoned to death. “I don’t feel bad,” she says, months later, speaking from her home. “I refuse to feel bad for this man, and the hateful things he stood for.”

. . .

By November of 2025, a Reuters investigation estimated that 600 people had been terminated, disciplined, investigated, suspended or otherwise admonished for their Kirk posts, likening the reaction to an ideological purge.

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  • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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    1 day ago

    Short of pumping mustard gas into a conservative rally and baring the doors there’s not much you can do. It’s easy to say that you should do something another to actually propose a solution.

    Mind you stronger labor laws could help but even then it’d only do so much unless you outright crippled the business or entity responsible for the actions taken.

    • bstix@feddit.dk
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      1 day ago

      So… mustard gas or labour laws are the only options?

      Have you tried poking them with a stick?

      • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Dude I’m from SoCal and am descended from the worst people so thusly I have two modes, legalism and make Imperial Japan seem pacifistic by comparison. The mustard gas is simply the fastest way to do it and something I think I could get others to help with, degloving and crucifying a stadium worth of people would be tedious work that no one would want to do.