Political commentator Charlie Kirk spent his life demeaning the very people now told to grieve him, writes John David Card.
THE PAST FEW days, online discourse has been dominated by all manner of glowing obituaries and tributes to the late conservative American political commentator and provocateur Charlie Kirk in the wake of his fatal shooting at a speaking event in Utah.
Political violence may be lamentable, but the onus to mourn Kirk should not be on the vulnerable people he built a career out of demonising.
An opinion piece on the topic can start out with the usual condemnations of all politically-motivated violence and calls for unity that typically accompany coverage of events such as this, but the fact is, Charlie Kirk devoted his entire adult life to championing causes that directly attacked those already the most marginalised and demeaned in society.
No one of note on the political Left is celebrating his murder, or even calling his premature death good in the abstract. But many of us have more than enough reason to feel indifferent about his passing, and alienated by the public celebration of his life and values.
Within hours of the shooting itself and confirmation of Kirk's death, other high-profile commentators and even elected officials in the U.S. and elsewhere were already turning the incident into a rallying cry for "retribution" against the left-wing they perceive as their enemies: U.S. President Donald Trump himself being among those prematurely making political hay out of the incident.
Meanwhile, the response from virtually every elected figure on the other side of the aisle, in America and around the world, was one of sympathy towards Kirk's loved ones and straightforward condemnation of the incident.
Top U.S. Democrats Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries swiftly denounced the shooting. As did former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the United Kingdom's Keir Starmer, France's Emmanuel Macron, and our own Anthony Albanese, among many others. Liberal politicians and commentators around the globe have taken the high road here, choosing to characterise Kirk as simply a passionate and pious man who advocated for what he believed in.
A more honest inventory of Charlie Kirk's life and espoused beliefs would point out that, among other things, he has claimed African-Americans "were better off under slavery", called the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act "a mistake", smeared victims of police homicides as "scumbags", described the presence of Muslims in Europe as "an occupation", and advocated the removal of transgender people from public life.
Kirk spent his entire career trying to push the base of the Republican Party as far Right on as many issues as he could, while attempting to maintain a facade of civility, and he ran cover for people who took it even further.
He wasn't just a political commentator; he actively attempted to radicalise people – primarily young people – toward far-right-wing ideology.
He was a virulent bigot who actively attempted to shape the political landscape into one more hostile to People of Colour, transgender people, immigrants, and the rest of the usual demographics the reactionary Right increasingly blames their shortcomings on. And frankly, decent people don't, or shouldn't, want to normalise the idea that Charlie Kirk was merely a respectable commentator with whom we had a simple difference of opinion.
At best, this insistence on performing political sympathy for the deceased Kirk recklessly valorises the man's lifelong work of enriching himself through sowing political division and promoting a toxic, self-interested, conservative ideology. And at worst, it obfuscates the fact that the reactionary Right is now using this death to further their agenda as best they can. But to even point out now that Kirk's political views were innately harmful to so many is to be accused of tacitly doing apologia for the act of murdering him.
At the time of writing, we don't know who shot the man or what their motive might have been. It very well could have been a disgruntled left-winger who hated Kirk for the views he espoused and who wanted to silence him.
The shooter could just as plausibly turn out to be a disaffected right-winger or former supporter of Kirk's. Or, someone entirely divorced from any political self-description, acting out of a severe deficit of mental stability.
We don't know who did it, but everyone on the Left is seemingly being expected to feel a shared culpability for the act and shamefully disavow it as if we have any personal responsibility for it at all. Unless the shooter(s) involved are apprehended, we won't know their motives. Yet many on the Right have already decided to lay the blame for Kirk's death at the feet of some leftist boogeyman, or the entire Left, which is wholly inappropriate.
More to the point, in the wake of Kirk's death, the man's own prior statements decrying the very concept of empathy and writing off regular incidents of gun violence as being merely the unavoidable cost of living in the U.S. were all seemingly forgotten by his supporters.
A cold, but level-headed, appraisal of Kirk's position on gun violence would suggest he himself believed that shootings like the very one which took his life were simply part of modern American society. It's never been the position of "the Left", or even just the Democratic Party he rallied against, that this was the case, but that's where blame is being directed.
Furthermore, Republicans currently control all three branches of the U.S. Government. They have the Presidency, the House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate — as well as an outright majority of the U.S. Supreme Court and a majority of state governorships.
American Conservatives have all the political power they could ask for, yet the narrative so many of their commentators and pundits are pushing is that they're under attack by liberals and leftists who voice any criticism of them. Even the current director of the FBI, who is currently floundering to catch Kirk's shooter(s), is Trump-appointee Kash Patel.
No liberal lawmaker, let alone any independent left-wing activist, has had any hand in shaping the conditions which led to Kirk's murder. A marginalised everyday person who happens to identify with the Left or who supports the Democrats certainly hasn't and they shouldn't feel any blame or be expected to carry any guilt.
Given the noxious views Kirk spent his life promoting, the real harm these views do, and how bloodthirsty his supporters currently are, it would be very easy for any progressive – especially one who is a member of the groups Kirk's rhetoric most attacked – to feel happy that he won't be promoting those views any more.
But, in this progressive writer's experience, the vast majority of left-wingers are electing to take the higher road here — choosing, instead, to opt for a straightforward acknowledgement of what has happened and reiterating our principled condemnations of violence in general.
What many of us have good cause to find galling, however, is being told we're not doing enough. Not weeping sufficiently for Charlie Kirk. Being "too divisive". Being told we're politicising tragedy when we point out how the intent and actions of the Charlie Kirks of the world harm us.
Progressive political organisers, Indigenous land rights campaigners, LGBTQ+ activists, criminal justice reformers, all of us on the political Left more broadly — we are, by our character, very empathetic to those who are struggling with hardship. But please don't ask us to performatively bow and scrape for the memory of a man who targeted us, got rich doing it and who scoffed at the idea of expressing care for victims of the very same kind of violence which would end his own life.
John David Card is a writer, historian and anarchist activist.
