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"I don't support the things that led to Charlie Kirk's death. But Charlie Kirk did." [1]
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Date: 2025-09-12
Electoral-vote.com has an excellent piece today about Kirks’ Murder. I strongly recommend reading the whole thing. Better than anything else I’ve read or seen in the past few days, it breaks down law enforcement’s missteps, the right-wing reaction, the non-right-wing reaction, symbolic and cultural responses, broader implications and potential targets, and political violence trends and long-term impact and social fallout from Charlie Kirk’s murder.
Here, I’d like to focus on their non-MAGA reaction section:
And we think we have a pretty good grasp on what the majority of non-MAGA types are thinking. To start, they are overwhelmingly against the use of this kind of violence in this context, they find the killing abhorrent, and they believe that it did not advance anyone's cause—liberal or conservative, MAGA or non-MAGA. They also, nearly universally, lament that there's now a young widow out there, along with two young kids who will grow up without a father.
This characterization is both true and cannot be said enough. Moreover, one of our better human impulses is to not speak ill of the dead. So too is celebrating a recently deceased’s life. ( We’ve all been to funerals.)
But, politics, of course, changes the matter entirley, because taking advantage of and weaponizing those impulses are older than mass politics itself. The right is moving quickly to whitewash and lionize Kirk to the point of non-recognition of who he really was and what he really stood for. And the mainstream media largely out of decorum is allowing that to happen. I expect pushback, but by then, the narrative will have set. The right is really good at that.
At the same time—and we're not going to sugar-coat this because the man just died—the public Charlie Kirk (we know nothing about the private person) was generally a reprehensible figure who said a lot of very hurtful and very hateful things.
THIS. And it is quite necessary, considering the gibbering and dangerous rhetoric coming from the likes of Steve Bannon, Laura Loomer, Alex Jones, Matt Walsh, Jesse Watters, and all other extremists who are now part of the mainstream “conservative” ecosystem. Some diaries here and many comments in those diaries have done a good job of showing the reprehensible, hurtful and hateful things Kirk said and stood for. Good on us!
He also did a great deal to create the context that allowed for his death. There were many occasions where he embraced violence against one's opponents, such as when he cheered the man who assaulted Paul Pelosi (a.k.a., Mr. Nancy Pelosi). We have made the observation before that the problem with a leader who says "violence is OK" and "the rule of law doesn't matter" is that those things can and will eventually turn against them.
Again, THIS. It cannot be said enough. Kirk embraced violence: he promoted violence, he was perfectly fine with violence as a tool against fellow Americans he didn’t agree with.
Meanwhile, as we pointed out yesterday, Kirk was all-in on very permissive gun laws, up to and including his observation that a few shooting deaths are an acceptable price to pay for protecting the Second Amendment.
Much has been rightfully said about that on this site. It seems that at this point many Americans don’t know this. We really ought to keep hammering that point, as many here and Kos did in his diary from yesterday.
As a result of all of this, a huge portion of the non-MAGA types (at least, the non-MAGA types who have an opinion) have taken a pretty nuanced position where they lament the killing, but are unwilling to simply ignore Kirk's part in it.
I believe “lament the killing, but are unwilling to simply ignore Kirk's part in it” is an accurate assessment of what most of us on the left think. If not, forget feelings: it is the best way to frame it politically. Which, because of who Kirk was and how the right is tying to lionize him, is the critical issue at this moment.
And that is not even considering what Trump may be up to…
The cleanest and simplest expression of this perspective that we saw goes like this: "I don't support the things that led to Charlie Kirk's death. But Charlie Kirk did."
"I don't support the things that led to Charlie Kirk's death. But Charlie Kirk did." I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’ve already used that line three times this morning with some MAGA-leaning people I know, and it stops them cold.
For the record, I generally avoid political debates with MAGA types—the conversation usually turns into a Gish Gallop of the latest memes and sound bites, which to me isn’t a discussion at all. My approach is to listen as long as I can stand it, then pivot or deflect.
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[1] Url:
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