This is going to be a relatively short article. If you want the few facts that are known on this case, there are plenty of outlets to find that information. You don’t need us for that but we had some thoughts to share.
Neither of us really knew Charlie Kirk at all. I was somewhat aware of his existence; I’d seen a few random videos but it’s not the kind of content either of us typically consumes.
Regardless of what you thought of his opinions, and we certainly disagreed with him on plenty of his apparent beliefs, differences of opinion are not a justification for murder.
There is a rot, a sickness within our culture, to have so many publicly celebrating these murders. The murder of a man who travelled around college campuses to talk and film videos; the murder of a man who ran an American health insurance company.
This rot is not a partisan issue. I’ve seen all variety of political persuasions celebrate the deaths of people whom they hold in contempt for no good reason.
I’ve also seen this contempt accelerate drastically in my lifetime. Respect for the dead - and for each other - is a fundamental, foundational building block of human societies.
In fact, it’s so fundamental, it’s actually often used as the yardstick of when human civilization began. As we alluded to in our coverage of Luigi Mangione, these kinds of extra judicial killings are not a sustainable path for a society to follow.
And you know, it’s funny. Since I didn’t really know much about him, after he was shot, I pulled up his X account to see what kind of posts he was making.
Wouldn’t you know it, his very last post was about Iryna Zarutska, who we just published an article about. Charlie Kirk’s last post was encouraging people to remember Iryna, and to advocate to change the exact problem we cited in our article on Iryna:
Dangerous lunatics essentially being allowed to terrorize the public with seeming impunity, somehow getting endless slaps on the wrist for serious crimes.
After spending my evening into the wee hours watching videos of Kirk debate an endless stream of college students, most of whom were fools, I have to say…
I don’t get it. I didn’t hear anything I thought even remotely justified murdering someone. If you’re someone who advocates for this kind of society degrading violence, I have to ask, if his ideas were so bad and yours are so great, why aren’t your words enough to do the job?
And if you believe you would survive the kind of world that the killings you support would bring, we would like to encourage you to spend a few minutes in front of a mirror, looking yourself in eye.
This was really beautiful. Thank you for posting this :)