MAGA Republicans become the very 'snowflakes' they rage against: historian

President Donald Trump with Turning Point USA's Erika Kirk in Glendale, Arizona on September 21, 2025 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

During Barack Obama's presidency, many right-wing pundits railed against liberal and progressive "snowflakes" on college campuses who, they argued, were demanding "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" instead of having the courage to engage conservatives and libertarians in a rigorous debate. But according to historian/author Jonathan Zimmerman, many MAGA Republicans are now acting like the "snowflakes" they once condemned.

Zimmerman, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, doesn't let the left off the hook in a biting op-ed for the Philadelphia Inquirer. The scholar's "big takeaway" from an annual report by the Philly-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) is that "we're hypocrites. All of us. On campus, and off of it."

But Zimmerman details a pattern in which MAGA Republicans who condemn "cancel culture" are practicing it themselves.

"Witness the response to the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk last fall," Zimmerman argues. "After complaining for years about 'cancel culture' in American higher education, GOP politicians led the drive to fire or suspend professors and students who said the wrong thing about Kirk. Meanwhile, left-leaning academics who had supported speech codes prohibiting 'violent' speech insisted that comments praising the violence against Kirk must be protected. They were correct about that: Nobody should have been penalized for what they said about him. But there was no acknowledgment — none — that we had erred in trying to censor others."

The Penn scholar continues, "Instead, as the FIRE report demonstrates, the censorship continued. Dozens of schools blocked conservative students from establishing chapters of Turning Point USA, the organization Kirk founded. And where chapters already existed, we tried to shut them down."

Zimmerman cites Turning Point USA as an example of a right-wing group that has condemned "snowflakes" at times and acted like "snowflakes" themselves other times.

"At Rutgers, for example, more than 7000 people signed a petition asking the university to disband its TPUSA chapter because it made people feel unsafe," Zimmerman explains. "'It is imperative that we take decisive action to restore security and the feeling on inclusivity to the campus,' the petition declared. Meanwhile, the Rutgers TPUSA chapter issued its own petition calling on the university to fire a history professor because of his alleged ties to Antifa. Why? You guessed it: People felt unsafe. 'Having a prominent leader of the Antifa movement on campus is a threat to conservative students,' the petition claimed."

The Penn historian continues, "Remember when right-wingers denounced liberal 'snowflakes' on campus? Now, everyone is a snowflake, just like we're all (Groucho) Marxists. If you don't like someone's opinion, just say it threatens your safety. It will work."

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