Conservatives absolutely love free speech—but only when it applies to them. In the past few months, they have feigned outrage about several prominent right-wingers like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos being disinvited to college campuses amid protests by those they’ve labeled as “snowflakes” who don’t want their bigoted ideas anywhere near them. They are quick to call liberals intolerant, but their rhetoric often blurs the line between free speech and hate speech and has incited security concerns. Yet they vehemently advocate for those on the right to say what they want, when they want to. And this right does not extend to those on the opposite side of the ideological spectrum. 

Take for instance, Professor Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, who gave the commencement speech last month at Hampshire College. Fox News decided to air part of her speech, in which she described Trump as a “racist, sexist, megalomaniac.” This is hardly the worst thing that Trump has been called over the last two years. And its not at all untrue. But the hypocrites at Fox definitely didn’t defend Taylor’s right to free speech—in fact, just the opposite. So much so that she has been forced to cancel her book tour and subsequent speaking engagements at other universities.

After the report on her “Anti-POTUS tirade” aired, Taylor said she has received more than 50 hateful and threatening emails — some of which were issued with such specificity that she canceled portions of a tour to promote her new book, “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation.”

“Shortly after the Fox story and video were published, my work email was inundated with vile and violent statements. I have been repeatedly called ‘n****r,’ ‘b*tch,’ ‘c*nt,’ ‘dyke,’ ‘she-male,’ and ‘coon’ — a clear reminder that racial violence is closely aligned with gender and sexual violence,” Taylor said. “I have been threatened with lynching and having the bullet from a .44 Magnum put in my head.”

This is not coincidental. Donald Trump and Fox News have been behind some of the most hideous, vitriolic, and violent rhetoric against women and people of color in recent years. Their disgusting hate speech has incited all kinds of violence and, as a result, there has been a rise in hate crimes since the 2016 presidential election that the Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed the “Trump Effect.” So it makes sense that Taylor would fear for her safety. And she understands the Fox story for what it appears to be: an effort to intimidate and silence the administration’s critics.