On September 11, 2025, a woman named Alexandra logged into social media during her work break and realized her new job was over. An X account with more than 500,000 followers had reposted a screenshot of her Facebook comment about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The post named both Alexandra and her employer. Less than three hours later, her termination email arrived. She had been employed for just two weeks.

Her offense? Commenting “we are quoting him” in response to someone posting Kirk’s own words about accepting “some gun deaths every single year” to protect the Second Amendment.

Five years earlier, in October 2020, students at White Knoll High School in South Carolina created a TikTok video reenacting George Floyd’s death. One student, dressed as a police officer, knelt on another student’s neck while the handcuffed teen shook on the ground. The video circulated widely. The students were suspended but returned to school. No coordinated campaign demanded their permanent expulsion. No government officials called their families. No one lost their job for failing to report them.

These divergent responses—one swift and coordinated, the other scattered and inconsistent—reveal a stark pattern in American public life: whose death merits empathy, whose dignity institutions protect, and who gets to be a martyr rather than a punchline.

When Cruelty Met Indifference

The mockery of George Floyd’s death has been widespread, persistent, and often consequence-free. In November 2021, students at De La Salle High School in Concord, California, were photographed reenacting Floyd’s murder, with one white student smiling as he knelt on another boy while raising a clenched fist—the symbol of Black civil rights solidarity, deployed here as mockery. The school’s president confirmed both students were disciplined but refused to specify the consequences, citing student privacy.

That same year, Halloween costumes depicting Floyd’s death appeared at parties. Adin Ross, a popular streamer, later hosted a Halloween costume contest where a contestant recreated Floyd’s killing. Ross banned the contestant from the contest, but the incident highlighted how Floyd’s death had become fodder for entertainment. TikTok videos with hashtags related to Floyd costumes and reenactments have accumulated millions of views, with content continuing to circulate years later.

Some consequences did materialize. In June 2020, a FedEx worker and a New Jersey corrections officer were caught on video reenacting Floyd’s death during a counter-protest in Franklinville. FedEx fired its employee; the corrections officer was suspended. An LAPD employee who circulated a Valentine’s Day meme showing Floyd’s image with the words “You take my breath away” was recommended for termination in May 2021.

According to Fama.io, which tracks workplace social media incidents, at least a dozen employees across healthcare, law enforcement, and public sectors were fired in 2020 for racist posts related to Floyd’s death or the protests that followed. But these actions were scattered across months, driven by individual employers responding to public pressure, with no coordinated campaign and no government officials demanding systematic accountability.

What makes the Floyd mockery particularly notable is its persistence. As of 2025, TikTok searches still surface content related to Floyd costumes and reenactments. Products referencing his death have been marketed on platforms like Amazon and Alibaba. The cruelty hasn’t ended—it has simply become part of the background noise.

And then came the reversal. In September 2025, FBI Director Kash Patel fired approximately 20 agents who had been photographed kneeling during the 2020 Floyd protests in Washington, D.C. The agents said they knelt as a de-escalation tactic while facing angry crowds with limited personnel. “This wasn’t politics — it was survival,” one former agent told Reuters. The terminations came five years after the fact, under an administration that would soon demonstrate very different priorities when one of its own fell.

Nine Days of Reckoning

When Charlie Kirk was murdered on September 10, 2025, while speaking at Utah Valley University, the response was immediate, organized, and backed by the highest levels of government.

Within hours, Vice President JD Vance appeared on Kirk’s own podcast to issue a directive: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out and, hell, call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility.”

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy publicly demanded that United Airlines not just suspend but fire employees who had posted about Kirk’s death. “There’s no room for political violence in America and anyone applauding it will face the consequences,” Duffy wrote on X. “ESPECIALLY those we count on to ensure the safety of the flying public.”

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller went further, vowing to use law enforcement to pursue Americans who mocked Kirk. “The power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you have broken the law to take away your freedom,” Miller declared.

Between September 10 and September 19, according to NPR’s investigation, a single X account with over 500,000 followers—followed by Elon Musk himself—targeted at least 150 people for their speech about Kirk. NPR verified outcomes in 13 cases; in 12 of them, employers fired their employees. Ten were terminated, while just two employers—a state legislator and a pet store owner—stood by their staff.

The terminations swept across industries. MSNBC fired political analyst Matthew Dowd. The Washington Post terminated columnist Karen Attiah. PHNX Sports parted ways with Phoenix Suns beat writer Gerald Bourguet. The Carolina Panthers fired communications coordinator Charlie Rock. Nasdaq, United Airlines, Office Depot, and a Michigan restaurant called Giuseppe’s Cucina Rustica all dismissed employees. ABC suspended production of Jimmy Kimmel Live after Kimmel suggested that MAGA figures were exploiting Kirk’s death for political gain.

In education, the purge was even more extensive. According to Texas Governor Greg Abbott, nearly 300 teachers in his state alone were under investigation. A Ball State University staff member was fired for posting that Kirk’s death was “a reflection of the violence, fear and hatred he sowed.” An Iowa art teacher lost his job for writing “1 Nazi down.” A South Carolina teacher assistant was terminated for posting Kirk’s own quote about accepting gun deaths to protect the Second Amendment, then adding her own commentary.

All three have filed federal lawsuits alleging First Amendment violations.

The speed was unprecedented. Alexandra, the cybersecurity worker mentioned at the article’s opening, was fired within eight hours. She had written a single Facebook comment—”we are quoting him. If you big mad you mad at him”—in a friends-only thread. Within minutes, the comment was screenshot, reposted to X with her name and employer, and she was “left for the wolves,” as her former Facebook friend wrote before blocking her.

“I knew that they were going to fire me because of the pressure by the mob,” Alexandra told NPR, describing what she called “state-sponsored censorship.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi even threatened to prosecute the fired Office Depot employee, escalating a workplace termination into a potential criminal matter.

Power, Martyrdom, and Who Gets Dignity

The disparity in these responses cannot be explained by the nature of the deaths themselves—both were acts of violence that shocked the nation. The difference lies in who died and what power they held in life.

George Floyd was a 46-year-old Black man killed by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while Floyd pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. Floyd was unarmed, in custody, and helpless. His death was an act of state violence against a civilian with no institutional power.

Charlie Kirk was the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, a conservative organization with a multimillion-dollar budget and extensive political reach. He was a media figure with his own radio show, regular appearances on major networks, and speaking slots at the Republican National Convention and CPAC. He had direct access to presidential administrations and had built a nationwide movement.

When Kirk died, he was immediately elevated to martyrdom. Tucker Carlson compared his killing to the death of Jesus Christ. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued multiple video statements denying conspiracy theories about Israeli involvement in Kirk’s killing. President Trump announced plans to award Kirk a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom. A September 19 poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center found that 73% of Republicans and 54% of Democrats attributed Kirk’s death to “extreme political rhetoric,” framing his killing as a symptom of national crisis.

The city of Westminster, California, declared October 14 as “Charlie Kirk Day.” Vigils organized primarily by Turning Point USA took place across the country. Major news networks saw their audiences surge by 65-72% in the days following his death, entering “breaking news mode” with rolling coverage.

No similar institutional response followed Floyd’s death. There were protests—massive, sustained protests that demanded justice and police accountability. But there was no presidential announcement of posthumous honors. No foreign leaders issued statements. No one compared Floyd to Christ. Instead, his death became a culture-war battlefield, with some defending the officers, others questioning Floyd’s character, and still others—as documented above—turning his final moments into Halloween costumes and TikTok content.

The First Amendment’s Unequal Protection

Will Creeley, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), told PBS NewsHour that the pattern was disturbingly familiar. “Every time we go through some kind of cultural national tragedy, where somebody is killed, whether that’s George Floyd, Barbara Bush, Queen Elizabeth, whenever we lose a public figure, there are folks who will say, good, I’m glad they’re gone. And this outrage cycle begins. And folks get fired.”

But the Kirk response was different in scale and coordination. “I remember all this happening after the tragic murder of George Floyd,” Creeley noted. “There was a lot of nervousness about — quote, unquote — ‘cancel culture’ or making sure that, if you didn’t have the right view about Floyd’s death, you couldn’t hold a position at a public university or a private employer. Now we’re seeing calls from the vice president for folks to call their employers if somebody, one of their colleagues has the wrong view.”

The First Amendment protects speech, including offensive speech. Legal scholars across the political spectrum confirmed this. Republican Senator Ted Cruz stated, “The First Amendment absolutely protects speech… It absolutely protects hate speech. It protects vile speech. It protects horrible speech.” UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh noted that celebrating a death, while distasteful, is constitutionally protected.

For private employers, however, the calculus is different. Companies can generally terminate employees for speech that harms their reputation or violates workplace policies. But when government officials use their positions to pressure private employers to fire workers, First Amendment concerns arise. Multiple lawsuits filed by terminated public employees cite the Pickering-Connick test, which balances a public employee’s free speech rights against an employer’s interest in workplace efficiency.

The paradox became most visible in cases where people were fired for quoting Kirk’s own words. Kirk had spent years building a media presence on provocative statements. He maintained a list—the “Professor Watchlist”—of academics he believed should be fired for their views. Yet when his own inflammatory rhetoric was quoted back after his death, those doing the quoting lost their jobs while Kirk was lionized.

This wasn’t about protecting speech or civility. It was about protecting power.

What We Choose to See

In 2020, while Floyd reenactment videos circulated and costume mockery spread, the institutional response was fragmented and slow. Individual employers made individual decisions, sometimes facing backlash, sometimes not. There was no White House coordination. No cabinet secretaries threatened prosecution. No systematic campaign with half-million-follower accounts documenting targets. The mockery was treated as offensive but largely tolerable—scattered incidents rather than a crisis demanding immediate, coordinated action.

When the FBI agents who knelt in solidarity with Floyd protesters were finally fired in September 2025, the same month as Kirk’s death, the message became unmistakable: supporting Floyd’s memory was grounds for termination, but criticizing Kirk was grounds for systematic purging.

The contrast illuminates a painful truth about American institutions. When a Black man is killed by police, his death can become entertainment, his final words mocked on Halloween. When a white political figure with institutional power is killed, the full weight of government mobilizes to punish anyone who speaks ill of him, even if they’re merely quoting his own words.

This is not an accident. It is the product of racialized empathy, in which American society has been conditioned to feel less sympathy for Black victims of violence. Research on implicit bias has long documented this pattern: Black victims are more likely to be blamed for their own deaths, to have their character questioned, to be treated as less deserving of mourning.

George Floyd’s death sparked a necessary reckoning with police brutality and systemic racism. But that reckoning was incomplete. The mockery continued. The costumes appeared. The memes circulated. And five years later, agents who showed solidarity were fired while Kirk’s critics faced an organized purge.

The distance between these two responses is the distance between who American institutions protect and who they abandon. It is the distance between martyr and punchline, dignity and mockery, power and powerlessness. And it reveals a truth many would prefer to ignore: in America, whose life mattered is still determined by whose power matters.

When the government coordinates the firing of 150 people in nine days for criticizing a political figure, while scattered mockery of a Black man’s death continues for years with inconsistent consequences, we are not witnessing a free speech crisis. We are witnessing the continuation of systemic racism, cloaked in the language of civility and martyrdom, enforcing a hierarchy as old as the nation itself.

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Sources Cited

1. NPR. “She posted about Charlie Kirk’s death. Within eight hours, she was fired.” October 11, 2025.
2. NBC News. “South Carolina high school students accused of mocking George Floyd’s death in video.” November 4, 2021.
3. Mercury News. “Racist caricatures at East Bay high schools: Two boys re-enact George Floyd murder in Concord.” October 28, 2021.
4. ABC News. “New Jersey corrections officer suspended after being filmed mocking George Floyd’s death.” June 12, 2020.
5. ABC7 Los Angeles. “LAPD chief seeks to fire employee who posted image mocking George Floyd.” May 19, 2021.
6. Fama.io. “People are Getting Fired for Racist Comments about George Floyd Protests.” June 17, 2025.
7. Reuters and Associated Press. “FBI fires agents photographed kneeling during 2020 racial justice protest.” September 27, 2025.
8. CBS News. “Workers fired, placed on leave for Charlie Kirk comments after assassination.” September 17, 2025.
9. Fox Business. “Companies across US fire workers who mocked Charlie Kirk shooting death.” September 15, 2025.
10. PBS NewsHour. “Firings over callous remarks on Kirk’s killing spark debate on limits of free speech.” September 16, 2025.
11. NBC News. “Educators fired for posting about Charlie Kirk’s death sue to get their jobs back.” September 24, 2025.
12. The Hill. “Voters blame rhetoric for Charlie Kirk’s death: NBC poll.” November 2025.
13. Wikipedia. “Assassination of Charlie Kirk.” Accessed December 2025.
14. Wikipedia. “Reprisals against commentators on the Charlie Kirk assassination.” Accessed December 2025.
15. Syracuse Law Review. “The Assassination of Charlie Kirk: A Complicated Battle for Free Speech.” September 25, 2025.