Media commentators are struggling to deal honestly with Charlie Kirk’s words and deeds
Following the murder of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk last Wednesday, non-MAGA commentators who have felt compelled to weigh in have struggled to find the right balance between expressing their loathing for what Kirk stood for without making it seem like they were celebrating his death.
It shouldn’t be too hard. Here’s how the historian Heather Cox Richardson put it in her widely read newsletter:
Condemnation of the shooting was widespread. Perhaps eager to distance themselves from accusations that anyone who does not support MAGA endorses political violence, commenters portrayed Kirk as someone embracing the reasoned debate central to democracy, although he became famous by establishing a database designed to dox professors who expressed opinions he disliked so they would be silenced (I am included on this list).
Indeed, she wrote about her inclusion on Kirk’s Professor Watchlist shortly after it was established in 2016, saying, “I am dangerous not to America but to the people soon to be in charge of it, people like the youngster who wrote this list.” She closed with this: “No, I will not shut up. America is still worth fighting for.”
What happened to Kirk was horrible, and the graphic and public manner of his killing has elevated it to the top of the national discourse. But as Richardson observes, that doesn’t mean we should gloss over Kirk’s actions. The Professor Watchlist targeted some 200 academics, subjecting them to doxxing and putting their safety and that of their families in danger.
For instance, in 2017 CNN reported that George Ciccariello-Maher, a political science professor at Drexel University, had been forced to teach remotely after he received numerous death threats arising from his inclusion on Professor Watchlist. “Threats that involve my child are, of course, the ones that are the most frightening to me,” Ciccariello-Maher said at the time. His offense? A habit of posting dumb and offensive tweets.
Ciccariello-Maher was hardly alone, as CNN noted, “In the past year, more than 100 incidents of targeted harassment against professors have been reported on college campuses, according to the American Association of University Professors.”
Since Kirk’s death, social media have been filled with examples of hateful statements he made, some of which were true, some of which were false or taken out of context. FactCheck.org has gone a good job analyzing a few of these. An alleged slur against Asians turns out to be false, but he really did call the Civil Rights Act “an anti-white weapon,” and he really did mock the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi.
Yet, as Richardson observes, some commentators have “portrayed Kirk as someone embracing the reasoned debate central to democracy,” perhaps because they were afraid of being seen as supporting political violence.
One particularly egregious example was a column by Ezra Klein of The New York Times, who wrote a widely disparaged piece last Thursday headlined “Charlie Kirk Was Practicing Politics the Right Way,” saying: “He was showing up to campuses and talking with anyone who would talk to him. He was one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion.”
Another was an editorial that was published in The Boston Globe (sub. req.) on Friday and that included this:
We all must accept that disagreements — even about fundamental moral and political questions — are normal, especially in a country as large and diverse as the United States. The solution is to do what Kirk did and air those differences. We don’t mean to sugarcoat the way he carried out his activism; Kirk could be bigoted, crude, and insulting. But the point is, his weapon of choice was always words.
Well, no, it wasn’t, as I’ve already discussed. You can’t wrestle with Kirk’s legacy without mentioning that he thought nothing of doxxing people and putting their lives in danger.
Klein and the Globe’s editorial board may have reacted too quickly; if they’d waited a few more days, they might have come up with something more nuanced. Another commentator who should have thought before he spoke was Matthew Dowd, an old George W. Bush hand who’s an outspoken critic of Donald Trump.
Dowd was fired by MSNBC last week in the immediate aftermath of the shooting when he said on air: “Hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions…. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then saying these awful words and then not expect awful actions to take place.”
Dowd’s reaction was understandable, and he blurted it out in the moment while on live TV, which is always hazardous. And no, he did not commit a fireable offense. But it was also not the sort of statement that was appropriate in the moments that followed Kirk’s shooting. Dowd apologized, which was the right thing to do, and he later blamed his firing on a “Right Wing media mob,” which was also accurate. MSNBC should bring him back.
I’ll close with a comment that addressed the moment in exactly the right way. It was in a newsletter from The Free Press, the conservative-ish opinion outlet founded by the celebrity provocateur Bari Weiss, who’s much in the news these days because of reports that she may be put in charge of CBS News. Here’s how it begins (the boldface type is theirs, not mine):
Murder and political violence are wrong and must be condemned. Full stop. In Utah. In Colorado. In Minnesota. In Illinois. In Washington, D.C. Everywhere. Nothing anyone says justifies them being killed. At Free Press, we condemn the murder of Charlie Kirk — and all violence — in the strongest terms possible.
We must also condemn those — starting with the president — who are exploiting violence and tragedy to repress and endanger their political opponents or to excuse their own violence and threats. We condemn government officials using acts of political violence to legitimize the militarization of our communities and the further erosion of human and civil rights.
Being horrified by Charlie Kirk’s murder doesn’t preclude us from also being horrified that he used his megaphone to spread hate and excuse violence, including the murder of protesters.
I have not seen anything better, and I’m impressed to see it from a news organization from which I might have expected prevarication of some sort. By the way, the reference to Kirk’s excusing the murder of protesters may have something to do with supportive statements that Kirk made about Kyle Rittenhouse, who really did kill protesters, claiming it was in self-defense. Rittenhouse was acquitted of criminal charges.
I am as frustrated as anyone that Charlie Kirk’s murder has been transformed into a symbol and a cause while other political assassinations (such as that of Minnesota legislator Melissa Hortman earlier this year), school shootings and mass gun violence barely rate a mention. But Kirk was an icon of the MAGA right, and I’m worried about how this is going to play out.
Be easy on yourselves, everyone.