Metonymy is a very active figure of thought in the evolution of language, and particularly of vocabulary. It is a dynamic that shifts the meaning of words by relative contiguity: does a fruit rot? A man becomes "blet" - like a pear - that is to say, rotten. Do we find it justified to eradicate a man's thought? It is therefore legitimate to kill him: metonymy.
The notion of "cancel culture" claims a moral element: we "cancel" people by depriving them of a symbolic space for speaking. The conference, the stage, the class, the amphitheater have paradoxically become places of "cancellation" where we sometimes gather to witness the deconstruction of a personality. legitimation of "cancellation" inevitably leads to the reactivation of the physical meaning of the action of erasure. From the moral dimension, we move by metonymy to the legitimization of physical elimination: it is inevitable! By metonymy, what is justified on the symbolic level becomes legitimate on the physical level by semantic contiguity. And one of the obvious consequences of cancel culture is the drift of the notion of erasure: from symbolic erasure, we move very logically to the physical space. Physical elimination is only a means like any other to achieve an end: the moral purification of society by eliminating the discourses that rot it. But today, it is a fact: this deadly ideology is carried by the weak-minded who cannot convince with arguments.
On September 10, 2025, Charlie Kirk, a young American conservative, was shot and killed during a rally at Utah Valley University as part of his American Comeback Tour. [1]His tragic death is a sign of a climate of ideological violence and persecution targeting dissenting voices from progressive ideology. Some have called him the "first martyr of wokeness." This is obvious to everyone: but if by this we mean the effect of an ideological lynching, precedents nevertheless exist.
A frequently cited case is that of Mike Adams, a criminology professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Known for his conservative public stance and outspoken criticism of feminism and woke politics, he sparked fierce protest campaigns and online petitions calling for his dismissal. After agreeing to an early departure, he was found shot dead in his residence on July 23, 2020. It was immediately ruled a suicide. [2] [3]. This is, however, a typical case of a victim of tragic ideological ostracism, despite what those who believe it is difficult to establish a direct causal relationship between the pressure suffered and his desperate gesture say https://www.thefire.org/news/memoriam-professor-mike-adams-1964-2020.
On a different note, the career of Kathleen Stock, a professor of philosophy at the University of Sussex, illustrates how activist pressure can destroy a career. Known for her critical positions on gender theory and certain trans claims, she has been the target of campaigns by students and activists on her campus, demonstrations, hostile posters, and online threats. In October 2021, she resigned from her post, denouncing an untenable climate and serious threats to her personal safety https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Stock ; [4] In March 2025, the UK regulator, the Office for Students, fined the University of Sussex a record amount of more than half a million pounds for failing to protect academic freedom of expression, establishing that the institution had failed in its obligations. [5]. This is how militant pressure can lead not only to a career break but also to institutional sanctions.
American universities have experienced other situations where accusations and an activism climate have had dramatic consequences. At Dartmouth, for example, Professor David Bucci committed suicide in October 2019 after being named in a class-action lawsuit regarding sexual harassment cases. Although he was not personally accused, and was mainly criticized for having "turned a blind eye," the stress and isolation resulting from the proceedings were cited by his family as determining factors in his suicide. [6]The case illustrates the destructive weight of public accusations.
Other high-profile cases illustrate the violence of media lynching in the context of the #MeToo movement. Parisian chef Taku Sekine committed suicide in September 2020, at the age of 39, after being anonymously accused of sexual harassment on Instagram and in specialized media. His family and friends denounced a "lynching" and a lack of due process, explaining that the chef had fallen into deep distress. [7]In 2019, video game developer Alec Holowka, co-creator of Night in the Woods, took his own life days after public accusations of psychological and sexual abuse. Barred from his professional projects and isolated, he became a symbol of the potentially devastating effects of public denunciation without trial. [8]In 2017, pornographic actress August Ames committed suicide at the age of 23 after receiving thousands of insulting messages on Twitter, accused of discrimination for refusing to work with an actor who had worked in homosexual productions. [9]Finally, Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon, a left-wing figure and supporter of the #MeToo movement in South Korea, committed suicide in July 2020, the day after a sexual harassment complaint filed by his former secretary. [10].
Cases related to transgender issues reveal another facet of the deadly machinery at work today. In 2013, Lucy Meadows, a transgender British schoolteacher, committed suicide after being the target of humiliating articles, notably in the Daily Mail. The coroner, during the inquest, explicitly blamed the press for ridiculing and stigmatizing the teacher, contributing to her actions. [11]The earlier, tragic case of David Reimer illustrates the consequences of ideologically motivated medical experimentation: forcibly reassigned by psychologist John Money and raised as a girl after a medical accident, Reimer rejected this identity and committed suicide in 2004. [12].
These examples bear disturbing similarities to the death of Charlie Kirk. In all cases, the climate is one of extreme polarization, with individuals becoming the targets of delegitimization or stigmatization campaigns, whether in academia, the media, or digitally. The recurring pattern is one of isolation, destroyed reputations, social pressure, and sometimes death. Kirk's specificity, however, is the physical assassination, which distinguishes it from suicides or forced resignations. If it is judicially established that his killer's motive was ideological, then his case would mark an escalation, moving from symbolic and social harassment to direct violence.
Of course, this requires nuance: in the cases of Adams, Holowka, or Sekine, the mental health problems pre-existed, and it is difficult to attribute sole responsibility to activism or to the accusations. In Kirk's case, the investigation must determine whether the perpetrator's motive is truly linked to wokeness, political hostility, or other personal factors. And let's not be naive: the term "martyr," used by supporters, is performative: it indicates not only what he is, but what his supporters want to make of his memory, namely a symbol of persecuted freedom of expression. But we must take this extreme polarization around "cancel culture" seriously.
Charlie Kirk's death is not an isolated incident, but is part of a series of tragedies linked to contemporary ideological violence. It serves as a reminder that mechanisms of harassment, ostracism, or stigmatization can have extreme consequences, whether in the form of suicides like those of Mike Adams, Taku Sekine, Alec Holowka, or August Ames, assassinations like that of Samuel Paty in an Islamist context, or shattered lives like that of Kathleen Stock. What's new is the shift from symbolic murder to actual murder, which accentuates the perception of a radicalization of ideological conflicts. In this sense, Charlie Kirk is not the first martyr of wokeism, but he is perhaps the one who most visibly focuses the stakes of this contemporary violence, where the battle of ideas can transform into a battle over bodies.
This is why it is necessary to put an end to the semantic processes at work in society today that are deadly. We must stop allowing people to be called "fascists" who are not. The misappropriation of the expression opens the door to the metonymy of "cancel." No, Kirk was not a fascist: he defended the idea of meritocracy, and criticized the deleterious effects of DEI that lead to distrust of an airplane pilot "from a diverse background" by casting suspicion of incompetence over him. This is obvious! But it is the pretext under which the African-American community was turned against him. We must stop giving credence to the idea that verbal violence is an acceptable grievance. Yes, there are words of hate, offensive words, insults, insults... But speech is the remedy for violence. As long as people talk, confront each other, argue, they don't kill each other. When they remain silent, unfortunately, it means the irrevocable decision has been made and they will kill. We must fight everywhere, and unconditionally, for freedom of expression. Otherwise, we open the door to the rampant metonymy of censorship. And accept not only the presence of others in our entourage, but also the expression of their diverse thoughts.
"Verbal violence" is a gigantic misinterpretation. There is no violence in words. Violence, on the contrary, is silence. It is the inevitable storm that advances, deaf to all arguments... and that kills. Threatening death is not killing. Between aggressive words and murder there is a gigantic border, the passage to action. And as long as dialogue persists, even if it is bawling, even if it is screaming, even if it is exultant, then there remains the hope of reconciliation.
One of the things that struck me most when we were working on the tweets of radicalized people was to note that the Merahs or the Kouachis, before taking action and contrary to what we believe, disappear from the networks and remain silent. Their decision is made, they enter into silence. No exuberance, no cry for help: the silence of the decision made. We must therefore be wary of silent people because violence can be in them. Shouts, threats do not precede violence: on the contrary, they are cries for help that seek to scare people away, to rally them, to frighten them... to avoid the feared violence.
People who so readily accept the metaphor of verbal violence are people who are quick to equate the murderer with the nuisance. In a world without violence, we have to put people in prison! We might as well put the people who bother us...
In a violent world, extending the possibility of violence to speech is to justify the unjustifiable. It is to put the victim and his tormentor on the same level: "he asked for it by his constant talking." Socrates? He talked too much... he asked for it with his words of hate. Jesus? With his hate speech, he asked for it. Charlie Kirk? He had "violent words," right? Hate speech? Quite comparable to the violence of the terrorist who killed him! Him or his assassin, "it's the same." Well no: it's not the same. Offending with reasoning is not being violent. But justifying violence, on the other hand, makes you a bastard.
Cancel culture is an ideology of death, a sacrificial ideology that relies on the fantasy of moral purity to justify the fascism of its advance. Built on stupidity and ignorance, it radicalizes young students who too easily accept the idea that anything different from them puts them in danger.
