Behind The Left’s Moral Condemnation Of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination

Many on the Left have responded to Charlie Kirk’s assassination by condemning political violence. Former President Barack Obama tweeted, “This kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy,” and California Governor Gavin Newsom released a statement claiming, “Honest disagreement makes us stronger; violence only drives us further apart and corrodes the values at the heart of this nation.” While the Right uses Kirk’s death as a tool to strike fear into the hearts of voters vis-à-vis the monstrous Left, the Left has rushed to recover its moral superiority through preaching non-violence. 

Roughly drawing on Walter Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence,” implicit in Newsom’s and Obama’s deployments of the word “violence” is a binary. One type of violence, let us call this “non-political,” can be found within school shootings, striking Venezuelan boats, and the Palestinian genocide. Though this non-political violence can be horrific and illegal, it is defined as such by its ability to be remedied by democratic procedures. Citizens can vote, debate, and protest non-political violence through democratic institutions in order to find recourse. 

Political violence, the second category in our binary, arises from damaging the democratic procedures that the first category requires. Killing a politician can introduce a logic of “might makes right” antithetical to a democratic law and order. While Charlie Kirk was not a legislator, his political influence situates him within this category.

The concept of “non-violence” can only exist within the second definition of violence. To democratically participate is to, intrinsically, take part in violence. The law, at its basis, exists as a violent mechanism to ensure people behave in a certain way. In addition, all citizens fund the politicians who may engage in the first form of violence through taxation. Therefore, when American citizens speak of whether or not we should engage in violence, the question does not pertain to non-political violence since one cannot escape that position.

The Left’s appeal to political non-violence depends on a Hobbesian wager that the law and order within political institutions contain more justice than a life outside the law. In a democracy, this law and order must prove itself to be guided by a particular set of political procedures that require the people’s participation and verification in some shape or form. 

In Newsom’s response, a key feature of democratic recourse is the existence of rational debate. For democracy to properly operate, people have to argue their position to one another to achieve the optimal policy. If someone holds an incorrect position, then someone with a better position can correct them to ensure the most just laws are in place. 

Charlie Kirk’s assassination reveals the fatal flaw of rational discourse. The scene took place with three characters: himself, his interlocutor, and his assassin. The stage was Kirk’s tent at a college campus with the banner “prove me wrong,” signalling his apparent adherence to the democratic, collective deliberation epitomised by his environs, the pinnacle of learning. 

The interlocutor steps up to ask him, “Do you know how many transgender Americans have been mass shooters over the last ten years?” Immediately, the question exists as a democratic recourse. Kirk plays a significant role in perpetuating right-wing non-political violence against transgender people and youth in schools, and the interlocutor seeks to remedy this violence through appealing to a rational conversation. 

Kirk responded, “Too many,” a blatantly false remark. After the interlocutor corrects Kirk on the statistical irrelevance of transgender shooters, he asks, “Do you know how many mass shooters there have been in the last ten years?” Kirk responds with his final words, “Counting or not counting gang violence?” Within this exchange, Kirk’s argument, in bad faith, spreads malicious disinformation and a racist red herring. Both reveal a certain impossibility of discourse disguised as a democratic procedure. 

The assassin’s entry into the drama came as a response to Kirk: if discourse is not possible, then we are already past law and order. The interlocutor’s attempts to reason with Kirk, whose messages play a politically decisive role, were an effort to prevent non-political violence. When Kirk revealed those means as hollow, the distinction between political and non-political violence evaporated, leaving a position where one violent act can be used to counteract other violent acts.

Right-wing extremism does not appear to be disappearing soon. Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes have been garnering massive audiences for political opinions unthinkable ten years ago becoming actualised into policies. Their content accompanied by Trump’s authoritarianism have created a democratic crisis that cannot be resolved by the Left patiently awaiting their turn at political office. 

The Left’s goal, if they want to avoid political violence, is to demonstrate more effective non-violent tactics or how there is an alternative recourse. Both necessitate a practical response to ground their critique of violence in the well-being of the people rather than the security of the political elite. If political non-violence is the path forward, proponents must create it rather than preach it.

Image: Flickr/Gage Skidmore

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