Today marks one year since Charlie Kirk was assassinated.
A husband. A father. A political activist who built an enormous following, particularly among young conservatives, by going onto college campuses and doing something that we’re constantly told America needs more of: He argued with people.
You could disagree with Charlie. Plenty of people did. That was rather the point.
But one year after his murder, I listened Tuesday to people on social media preparing to celebrate the anniversary.
They’ve given it names.
“Kirkiversary.”
“Kirkmas.”
“Kirk’s-giving.”
One woman joked about whether people would spend “Kirk’s-giving” with friends or family. Another talked about people celebrating the anniversary and recalled how, after Kirk was killed, people messaged her to remind her that he had a family.
Her response? Get out of my messages.
I sat listening to this stuff wondering when exactly we crossed this line.
Politics has always been ugly. Americans have hated politicians and political movements since the country was founded. We’ve called each other terrible names. We’ve fought. We’ve protested. We’ve occasionally behaved disgracefully.
But celebrating the murder of somebody because you hated his politics is something different.
You don’t have to like Charlie Kirk to understand that. You don’t have to agree with him about guns, abortion, immigration, Donald Trump or anything else.
He was assassinated.
There used to be a very simple American response to something like that: This is wrong. Not “this is wrong, but…”
Not “what about the things he said?”
Not “where was your outrage when…?”
Wrong.
One of the people we played immediately began explaining why sympathy for Kirk was somehow hypocritical because terrible things happen elsewhere in the world. She brought up Palestinians. ICE. School shootings. Abortion. As though compassion were a checking account and we might run out.
As though saying the assassination of Charlie Kirk was evil somehow prevents you from caring about a dead child somewhere else. It doesn’t.
What disturbed me most wasn’t even the hatred. Hatred is unfortunately very human.
It was the joy. The giggling. The cute little holiday names. Turning the anniversary of a man’s murder into an Internet party.
And it fits something increasingly ugly that I’ve been hearing all week. Immediately after those clips, we played another woman declaring, “We’re not killing enough of the men.”
Think about how casually that sentence can now be spoken into a camera and uploaded for the world.
We have become very comfortable dehumanizing people once we’ve assigned them to the proper category. Once the label goes on, apparently some people believe ordinary rules of human decency can come off. That’s dangerous.
I spent years with Rush Limbaugh, and I watched people say absolutely vicious things about him. Rush could dish it out, too. Political argument isn’t supposed to be a tea party. But argument was the point.
You turn on the microphone. You make your case. You persuade people. You make them laugh. You make them angry. They call you an idiot. Then they get their microphone and try to prove it.
That’s politics in a free country.
A bullet isn’t an argument. And murder doesn’t become funny because the victim voted differently than you.
Today people who loved Charlie Kirk will remember him. People who agreed with his politics will remember what he accomplished. His family will remember something much more personal — someone who isn’t coming home.
You don’t have to participate in any of that. You don’t have to praise him. You don’t have to pretend you agreed with him. You don’t even have to like him.
Just don’t celebrate his murder.
I cannot believe that has become something Americans need to be told.
But apparently it has.
— Bo Snerdley
