You don’t have to say nice things
You don't have to say nice things about Charlie Kirk just because he’s dead. You can condemn political violence in all its forms – and you should. You can wish his family well. You can express your sincere condolences to all families of all victims of all political violence. You can even overlook, if you believe it’s worth it, the fact that he spent nearly all of his young adult life selling for profit the hatred of racial and sexual minorities, liberalism and the Democrats generally. You can choose to do these things in full confidence that you have lived up to your obligation as a decent human being. But otherwise, you don’t have to say nice things in order to prove to someone – whoever that is – that you are not glad he’s dead. You don’t have to prove anything.
Live by the sword …
It would be appropriate to suggest that Kirk could be a victim of the kind of politics that he sold, just as it was appropriate to suggest that the Marlboro Men were victims of the kind of products that they sold. (All five men died of smoking-related diseases). Kirk embraced political violence as a “remedy.” He bussed his followers to the J6 insurrection. He once said: “We need to have a Nuremberg-style trial for every gender-affirming clinic doctor.” It is in no way an endorsement of political violence to suggest that Kirk saw the consequences of his choices, just as it was not an endorsement of, say, lung cancer to suggest that the Marlboro Men saw the consequences of theirs.
In 2023, Kirk famously said annual gun deaths are a “rational” price for our society to pay in exchange for its liberties. “We should not have a utopian view [of gun violence],” he said. “We will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. That’s drivel. But I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth it to have the cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational.”
So it’s not only appropriate to suggest that Charlie Kirk died by the sword that he lived by, it’s deeply moral, as it affirms the belief that no one but the individual can be held responsible for the choices of that individual. (The shooter, it should go without saying, will be held responsible for his.) I would even say it’s deeply conservative to say so.
I took that to be Matthew Dowd’s intention when he said, in reaction to news of Kirk’s death, that “hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which then lead to hateful actions.” Dowd’s comments were downright bland to those who know Kirk’s work, as historian Seth Cotlar does. He noted this week that “when a conservative gun enthusiast tried to assassinate Trump, Kirk immediately tried to fan the flames of division by blaming it on ‘them,’ by which he meant … everything on ‘the left.’”
Though bland by conservative standards, it was too much for MSNBC. The network sacked Dowd before saying that he “made comments that were inappropriate, insensitive, and unacceptable. There is no place for violence in America, political or otherwise,” as if he were endorsing violence. By contrast, consider this moment during a recent Fox broadcast in which the cohost suggests “involuntary lethal injection” as a remedy for homelessness. “Just kill them,” said Brian Kilmeade.
On Charlie Kirk’s “assassination”
This week, the Associated Press said Charlie Kirk was “assassinated” Wednesday on a college campus in Utah, where he was evidently shot through the neck. That characterization, however, is not neutral. It conveys the president’s preferred view of his death, as an example of America becoming a “killing field” that requires the remedies of a strongman, like murdering the homeless, per Trump’s fave TV show.
But Kirk was not assassinated. He was murdered.
Yes, he was a prominent figure. Yes, he was very important to the Republican Party. But he wasn’t running for high office, he wasn’t leading a mass movement and he was not democratically elected. If anything, he had a high perch, because billionaires gave it to him.
Melissa Hortman was assassinated, however. She was a Democratic legislator and the former speaker of the state House who led the enactment of sweeping progressive reforms in Minnesota. In June, she was assassinated by an anti-vaccine terrorist named Vance Boelter.
Boelter killed three others, including Hortman’s husband. But he was not assassinated. Neither were the other two, though two of the three were also lawmakers. They were murdered. Hortwan was a former speaker. For that reason, her murder rises to the level of assassination.
This is not just semantics.
By elevating Kirk’s murder to the level of an assassination, he’s turned into a moral figure who appears to transcend politics, such that we are forced to either praise him – or at least say nice things about him – or remain silent for fear of being seen as endorsing political violence.
That is, of course, one of the goals of authoritarian politics – to censor, silence and suppress the opposition by any means. Kirk was key to that. He presented himself and his organization as champions of free speech on college campuses while also keeping lists, complete with pictures, of professors and students who said and wrote things he didn’t like in order to encourage people to monitor and harass them.
Kirk’s bad faith wouldn’t have been so bad for freedom and democracy if highly visible liberals had not also accepted as true the lies he told. Sadly, that continues to be the case, even in death. This week, the Times’ Erza Klein wrote that he practiced politics “the right way” by “showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.”
Yes, demagogues can be very persuasive, and you’d think a liberal like Ezra Klein would have said so plainly – if he were not more smitten with his reputation for reasonableness than he is focused on actual politics. For that, we must turn to a rightwing writer, Richard Hanania, who explained how “rightists justify calls for repression and violence.” In doing so, he explained the very tactic Kirk worked hard to perfect.