Mourn him, but don't let him become a martyr

Charlie Kirk's murder is tragic. The right is already weaponizing it.

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I hated Charlie Kirk, but I also hate that he was killed today. The world will not miss his politics, but his family, including his two toddler children, will mourn him every day of their lives. Having spent the past few years wrestling with the specter of death and the thought of my son growing up without a father, I can only see this as a tragedy. As a human, I can only see murder as a tragedy. Anything else would be hypocritical.

And yet.

It’s tricky and probably ill-advised to try to talk about events like this one in any nuanced way. All gun violence is bad and there can be no exceptions. But you can rue a murder without allowing somebody to become a martyr, at least in the mainstream media; right wing pundits and politicians are already casting him in bronze and declaring civilizational war.

Charlie Kirk was a reactionary demagogue who devoted his life to recruiting young people into a deceitful movement driven by hatred, selfishness, and disregard for the lives of society’s most vulnerable.

He was flippant about the death of schoolchildren, propagated dangerous lies, slandered immigrants, debased and disrespected women, and was remorselessly bigoted up to his final words, which were casually racist and explicitly accused trans people of being mentally ill mass murderers. Charlie Kirk died with hate speech on his lips, no matter how the equally hateful Supreme Court has narrowed the definition of discrimination.

It’s not nice to speak ill of the dead, but telling the truth about such a public figure is critical when there is so much at stake. Conservatives who made jokes about the murder of Democratic elected officials this summer and Republicans who encourage lawless armed militias are now blaming liberals for Kirk’s death and calling for vengeance. Fox News host Jesse Watters declared war on basically anybody who isn’t in his audience.

And then there was Donald Trump’s all-caps address from the Oval Office, during which he blamed the “radical left” for Kirk’s murder and promised to crush dissenters. The hypocrisy was astounding — Trump has viciously demonized opponents and encouraged mass violence from his supporters at every turn — but also par for the course. The problem is that he now has impunity, and the blessing of the Supreme Court, and the goon squad to declare martial law and disappear citizens at his whim.

Of course, Democratic officials and pundits have been very respectful since the shooting, condemning political violence and brushing aside their profound disagreements with Kirk’s political beliefs, no matter how many bad things he said about them. Some Democrats have even gone so far as to honor the guy: Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro ordered flags to fly at half-mast for the rest of the week in Kirk’s memory, following Trump’s order to do the same in federal buildings.

I’m not sure I’d have gone as far as Shapiro (then again, I’m not running for president), but being respectful and calling for peace is really the only response that Democrats can offer right now. Unfortunately, the right’s frothing reaction highlights the fundamental difference between the parties, and after a decade of living in a feedback loop of delusion, they’re long past any rational conversation or the kind of respectful political dialogue that they claim to cherish.

There’s still zero public information about suspects or possible motivations, but reality isn’t the point. The far-right has groomed generations of disaffected men into domestic terrorists, from Ruby Ridge and Oklahoma City up through the recent mass shootings in mosques, synagogues, Black churches, abortion clinics, and grocery stores. A Trump supporter shot two Democratic legislators and their spouses in Minnesota, killing a beloved former majority leader and her husband.

More broadly, the right, including Republican politicians, venerate cosplay militia warriors who line up with guns at polling sites and tried to overthrow the government in 2021, and now the Supreme Court has given a green light to racial profiling and cruel deportations. The only time to take them at their word is when they promise violence, and even if turns out that Charlie Kirk was shot by Donald Trump Jr., the left will be forced to shoulder the blame.

Already, CNN anchors have been excoriating both sides for political violence and NBC News was forced to apologize for Republican Matthew Dowd’s milquetoast remark about the consequences of hate speech. Kirk considered himself a free speech warrior. Any murder is a tragedy, and his family deserves all the room in the world to mourn, but his allies can’t be permitted to use his tragic killing as a means to silence opponents, excuse to bully vulnerable people, or justification for violence.

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