I don’t know about all of you, but I’ve had Charlie Kirk on my mind pretty much non-stop since word dropped that he’d been shot. I’ve seen the video of it and was unable to turn away. I was locked up in shock, just watching it over and over again because, despite the fact that he was already gone when I saw it, I still couldn’t believe this was happening.
This is America, where we’re supposed to be free to speak. Kirk had no actual authority to do anything. He could just speak, mobilize people who agreed with him, and urge them to vote a certain way.
He couldn’t do anything that the rest of the nation couldn’t do. He was just better at it than most.
And now he’s dead. As of this writing, we still don’t know exactly what the motive is, though it’s very unlikely it’s anything but politically motivated. Still, it happened and, according to one expert, it’s probably not going to be the last time.
Serrano: What were your initial thoughts after Charlie Kirk’s fatal shooting?
Perliger: It was a bit unusual that the attack was not against an elected official. Rarely have we seen political assassinations that are aimed at the nonprofit political landscape. Usually those people are not deemed important enough.
Secondly, and it’s something I see a lot in my research, political assassinations come in waves. We see that not only in the United States but other countries. I’ve looked at political assassinations in many democracies, and one of the things I see in a fairly consistent manner is that political assassinations create a process of escalation that encourages others on the extreme political spectrum to feel the need to retaliate. And that is my main concern. That this process creates legitimization and acceptance, that it provides the sense that this is an acceptable form of political action. This will not end here.
…
Any last thoughts?
As part of my work, I track the most extremist online social media accounts, and what we see right now is a strong sense that this assassination is being celebrated by parts of the left. And that has created an escalation of language from those in the extreme right social media ecosystem. There is much more willingness to discuss issues of retaliation, an actual civil war.
And that’s my biggest worry. If you look at social media, what we see is that both sides embrace this kind of rhetoric that really concerns me. More than ever, I’ve seen calls for retaliation and a strong sense that the other side is unwilling to show any sympathy to what happened. Emotions are running very high, and I’m very worried about what may happen in the next few weeks.
Honestly, he should be worried.
On Thursday, Cam wrote a piece that is, in part, a call for calm. He asked me to read it before it went live. My take, as I told him, was that he was being more magnanimous than I. I respect what he said, and he’s probably right, but I’m not interested personally in playing nice anymore. Charlie Kirk was nice. He may have had opinions others found disgusting, but he was willing to talk to anyone respectfully about them.
And he was killed.
Right now, a lot of people are like me. They’re angry, and they’re done being nice and reasonable about political differences.
Others are far more worked up than I am, and seeing so many celebrate Kirk’s murder, just as they did with UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder, only makes it worse. These are the same people whose only issue with the first assassination attempt on President Trump wasn’t that someone was using violence, or even that an innocent man was killed instead of Trump, only that the bullet wasn’t a few inches to the right.
When you’ve got that going on, it’s hard to ramp down anything, even if most people really do feel awful about what happened.
Sooner or later, you’re going to reach a breaking point where people just don’t care anymore.
The next civil war this nation experiences won’t be uniformed armies marching in formation. It won’t be geographic regions banding together to create new political unions. It’ll be this. It’ll be assassinations, car bombs, and fighting in our streets.
And I can’t help but feel like we’re closer to that point than ever before. Why? Because Charlie was the guy willing to talk, and they killed him for it.
Unless things de-escalate quick, fast, and in a hurry, I fear we’re going to see this happen again. And again. And again.
Maybe I’ll settle down as the rest of the nation does, but right now, I’m a symptom of what’s happening in a lot of ways. I’m not going to cross that line, mind you. My sense of right and wrong is still clear. However, someone will, and God help us.
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