If there’s one thing we should all be able to agree on, it’s that no one should be murdered for speaking.
In the aftermath of Charlie “Prove Me Wrong” Kirk’s murder at a Utah campus event, it’s clear that no, we don’t all agree on that.
The bulk of responses to Kirk’s assassination consisted of:
1) Sober condemnations of murder in general, or murder over speech, from most people, and
2) Opportunistic condemnations of “political violence” from the most politically violent creatures on the planet, politicians.
But we also saw significant amounts of celebration among Kirk’s opponents, and baying for the blood of anyone not aligned with Kirk among Kirk’s supporters (some of whom on “the right,” it should be noted, were vehement critics right up until the instant the single shot rang out).
Not good. More and more Americans seem more and more willing lately to countenance the “political violence” that most Americans (including its politician practitioners) still condemn.
Despite this last week’s fevered comparisons of the killing to the killings of JFK, RFK, MLK, and 3,000-plus people on 9/11, Kirk’s life and death, and his killer’s, are likely destined, within a few short years, to become the material of minor footnotes in dry historical texts.
Kirk and his killer are this past week’s, maybe this year’s, Brian Thompson and Luigi Mangione.
Yes, their notoriety will persist for more than the usual short news cycle, with bumps during associated court cases, etc., but none of them were so wildly noteworthy before their tragic interactions that they’ll be universally remembered a decade, let alone a century, hence.
That thought might comfort you.
It shouldn’t.
Last year, about 17,000 Americans were murdered.
How many of their names do you remember?
Do you consider “political violence” a differentiating factor worthy of closer attention than you’d give the victims of street robberies or domestic violence?
If so, ask yourself whether you’ve even heard names given to the 11 people politically murdered by the US government on a boat in the Caribbean on September 2.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve heard Lavoy Finicum’s name mentioned in the nine-year period starting about a month after his political murder by FBI agents in 2016, or Garrett Foster’s name mentioned in the last year, starting shortly after his political murderer was pardoned by Texas governor Greg Abbott.
Charlie Kirk’s name will fade from memory precisely because “political violence” is the not-so-new normal.
Personally, I’d prefer to live in a society where murder is so rare that we can remember every victim’s name whether the motive for the killing was “political” or not — and a society where the victim’s speech is never used as moral justification.
Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.
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