The Washington Post has fired opinion columnist Karen Attiah after a series of controversial social media posts she made in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Attiah confirmed the dismissal in a Substack essay Monday. The paper called her remards “unacceptable social media posts.” The posts came in the wake of the killing of Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA.
One of Attiah’s posts on Bluesky read: “Part of what keeps America so violent is the insistence that people perform care, empty goodness and absolution for white men who espouse hatred and violence.”
Another read: “Refusing to tear my clothes and smear ashes on my face in performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence is… not the same as violence.”
The Washington Post accused her Bluesky posts of being “unacceptable,” “gross misconduct,” and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues.
Attiah’s Response
In her Substack piece, Attiah forcefully rejected the charges.
“They rushed to fire me without even a conversation,” she wrote. “This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.”
She said the reason for her firing was “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.”
Context of Kirk’s Murder
Kirk, a high-profile conservative commentator, was fatally shot last week. A 22-year-old Utah native named Tyler Robinson has been arrested and is due in court Tuesday.
In her essay, Attiah said she expressed “sadness and fear for America” after the shooting. She also noted that the country routinely shrugs off political violence. One of her widely shared posts read: “For everyone saying political violence has no place in this country… Remember two Democratic legislators were shot in Minnesota just this year. And America shrugged and moved on.”
She added that her comments were “descriptive, supported by data, and nothing new or false.”
Broader Debate
The firing marks the latest controversy for Attiah. In 2021, she faced backlash after tweeting that white women were “lucky” Black people were “just calling them Karens and not calling for revenge.”
Attiah claimed she only referenced Kirk directly once by quoting one of his past controversial remarks about Black women.
She framed her dismissal as part of a wider problem: “What happened to me is part of a broader purge of Black voices from academia, business, government, and media — a historical pattern as dangerous as it is shameful.”
