Reacting to Charlie Kirk’s Death
- jlk399
- Sep 16
- 14 min read
Hi friend,
Today I’m going to talk about Charlie Kirk’s murder, and it’s gonna be a long one… so buckle up.
Specifically, I want to talk about the alarming trend I’ve been seeing take place in the public discourse around this story online, in which everyone’s emotions and reactions have been heavily judged, pathologized, and picked apart, through the nuance-free lens of “morality.”
Before we begin, let me say that I know this is a super heavy and loaded topic, and I totally understand if you want to skip this one, but (hopefully) this email won’t be unnecessarily triggering, because I just want to shine a light on the discourse, so I won’t be going into any of the violent details.
You probably already know that Charlie Kirk, a highly visible right-wing media personality, was shot and killed at a speaking event last week. He was known for his extreme conservative and Christian nationalist views, as well as for publicly “debating” young people across party lines on hot-button issues like gun reform, immigration, and abortion.
If you weren’t or aren’t familiar with Kirk’s dangerous political views, I think it’s important to start by laying out a selection here, because people’s polarized reactions to his death are based heavily on the things he stood for. (Feel free to skip to the end of the list if you’re already familiar with his views!)
In no particular order, here’s a sampling of his political views and quotes:
He defended his extreme opposition to affirmative action and DEI with racist views, stereotypes, and bigotry, often citing false statistics about people of color when it comes to violent crimes, and attacking civil rights leaders and history:
He called certain Black women (Michelle Obama, Joy Reid, Sheila Jackson Lee, etc.) “affirmative action picks,” and said that [Black women] don’t “have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to be taken somewhat seriously.”
“If I see a black pilot, I’m gonna be like, boy, I hope he’s qualified.”
“MLK was awful. … We made a huge mistake when we passed the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s.”
“Happening all the time in urban America, prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people, that’s a fact.”
“Clarence Thomas was a far better black role model to celebrate than Martin Luther King. Period. End of story. This guy is not worthy of a national holiday.”
He believed in the “great replacement theory” of race (which is a false, white nationalist conspiracy theory that claims a powerful, secretive elite is deliberately replacing white populations with non-white immigrants), saying “The ‘Great Replacement’ is not a theory, it’s a reality,” and that that certain immigration policies and Democratic platforms aim at “diminishing and decreasing white demographics in America.”
He defended his extremely regressive views about gender and gender roles with misogynistic statements and stereotypes, debunked gender essentialist views, and false statistics… and actively encouraged girls and women to reject feminism and conform to traditional gender roles:
He said women in their 30s are already past their prime, saying “You’re in your early 30s, I’m sorry; you’re not as attractive in the dating pool as you were in your early 20s.”
He (falsely) claimed that women are “the most depressed group in the history of the species” and “the most miserable they’ve ever been,” and said this was because feminism made them pursue careers instead of becoming wives and mothers.
Speaking about Taylor Swift’s engagement, Kirk said she should “reject feminism” and “submit to your husband, Taylor. You’re not in charge.”
He was extremely opposed to both abortion rights and women having access to birth control:
At an event he said “every single one of you need to make sure that your loved ones are not on birth control,” because it “really screws up female brains” and “makes young women ‘very angry and bitter.’”
When a student asked “if your 10 year old daughter was raped, would you force her to give birth to that child?” he responded “yes, the baby would be delivered.”
He compared the fight for abortion rights to the atrocities that happened at Auschwitz, and when asked “so you are comparing abortion to the Holocaust?” he replied, “Absolutely, I am. In fact, it is worse. It’s worse.”
He used his extremely homophobic and transphobic views to disparage and villainize queer people, and propagate the (false) idea that queer people are mentally ill, violent, and dangerous:
He called transgender people an “abomination” and said “transgenderism and gender 'fluidity' are lies that hurt people and abuse kids."
He mockingly called the LGBTQ+ community the "alphabet mafia,” and said "it’s not just about two dudes being able to get married… the movement ‘want[s] to corrupt your children.’"
On a podcast, he called being gay an "error" and likened the LGBTQ+ pride movement to “encouraging drug addicts.”
He called for a nationwide ban on gender-affirming care for transgender people, and called for the imprisonment of doctors who perform gender-affirming care, as well as demanding "Nuremberg-style" trials for them.
He was extremely against gun control, calling gun violence an acceptable “price” to pay for access to guns, and often tried to scapegoat gun violence onto transgender people and people of color:
When speaking about the need to reduce mass shootings, he used a racist stereotype about the kind of person most likely to commit gun violence and citing the debunked idea that we need more people with guns to protect us from shooters, saying “you could significantly reduce [these crimes] through having more fathers in the home,” and by “having more armed guards in front of schools.”
I know that was a lot to take in, and my apologies if you were already familiar with his views, but it’s incredibly relevant to what I want to talk about today, which is… how people are reacting to his death.
Ever since this story broke, people have been expressing a huge range of emotions to learning about it, including everything from heartbreaking grief and empathy to gleeful celebration, and everything in between.
The fact that there’s been such a vast gap between the two ends of this spectrum of emotional reactions clearly has people fucking rattled. There’s a lot of genuine confusion on both sides, with some people asking “how could you celebrate violence and death?” and others asking “how could you empathize with and mourn for someone so evil?”
But the discourse didn’t just stop with confusion; it’s turned into a full-on parade of moral policing, pathologizing, and hate-fueled rhetoric, with people seeming to feel like their reaction is the only correct reaction, and anyone who feels differently is a bad person.
I find that both very alarming, and very telling about where we’ve gotten to as a society.
Over the last 5 to 10 years, as the political and media landscape has caused us to become more divided, people have become increasingly radicalized into their respective worldviews, which has made it incredibly difficult for us to relate to, understand, respect, and empathize with people on the other side of the aisle.
This makes sense, because both sides feel like their lives and freedoms are under attack right now, though in different ways, on different topics, and with vastly different levels of validity (IMO).
But given the way our brains are designed, it’s just a fact that curiosity, compassion, and nuance go right out the window when we believe we’re fighting to survive.
Survival mode shifts us into headspace where everything is black-and-white, and people’s nuance and humanity disappears. It shifts us into a headspace where there are only good guys and bad guys; safe people and unsafe people. It also makes us hypervigilant, highly sensitive to subtle clues that someone might be unsafe/bad, and super quick to jump to assumptions and conclusions.
Survival mode essentially puts us all into the mindset of “you’re either with me or against me,” so it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that people seem to be increasingly jumping to moral judgment and pathologization of others who they perceive as being “against them.”
In the public discourse around Charlie Kirk’s death, I’ve seen the most extreme example of this yet.
While there is obviously a lot more nuance to this conversation, and people’s reactions are happening all across the spectrum, I’ve witnessed two main arguments emerging from both ends, which essentially boil down to:
If you don’t feel empathy and grief about it, you’re a bad person. After all, all human life is sacred and violence is never ok, so even if you disagreed with his views, a “good person” should feel compassion, sorrow, and disgust about this tragedy. If your political views keep you from feeling grief and empathy, you’ve lost your humanity and are evil and dangerous.
If you do feel empathy and grief about it, you’re a bad person.This man committed his life to hurting and oppressing marginalized people, so compassion and sorrow for him is the same as saying you support that harm and oppression. If you feel grief or empathy about the death of someone who was evil and dangerous, then you yourself must be evil and dangerous.
I want to make a quick note here on the issue of “condoning” or “condemning” violence before we move on, because I think it goes to the heart of a lot of the moral outrage around this.
Essentially, there are some people out there who are actively celebrating, supporting, condoning, or expressing positive feelings about this particular act of violence, which many other people find to be incredibly inappropriate, disrespectful, or dangerous. And that makes sense, of course, because it’s scary to think that we live in a world where people are actively supporting and condoning gun violence.
Personally I do not support violence and I wouldn’t celebrate it or express myself that way, but in this particular case, I think it’s important to keep in mind why some people do and are.
It comes down to the fact that Kirk was an adamant and outspoken defender and supporter of “gun rights” who mocked people for wanting gun control, and said that he thought that some people dying due to gun violence was a fair and appropriate trade in order to protect our right to bear arms. So while many of us don’t condone or excuse gun violence, Charlie Kirk did.
Then someone shot and killed him.
The irony of this isn’t lost on people—that he is now one of the victims of gun violence that he himself would have said was worth being killed, in order to protect people’s access to guns.
Moving on.
If you go back to those two main arguments happening in the discourse right now, you’ll see how black-and-white things have become, and how our need to figure out who is “with us” and who is “against us” has led to the bizarre and dangerous moral policing of human emotions.
Full disclosure here, I didn’t (and don’t) actually feel any type of way about Kirk’s death.
Full disclosure here, I didn’t (and don’t) actually feel any type of way about Kirk’s death.
I find that my life and mental health are significantly improved when I adopt the same lens of moral neutrality that I help my clients find when it comes to body image, which I think helps me hold the situation with more nuance overall. For example:
I thought Kirk was a despicable, disgusting, and dangerous person, and I’m glad he won’t be a position to hurt or oppress people anymore… but I take no pleasure from the fact that he died.
I find the prevalence of gun violence in our country extremely upsetting, and I tend to feel a big wave of grief, empathy, and rage every time I hear about a mass or school shooting (including the one in Colorado that took place the same day he died)... but when I heard about Kirk’s death, no wave showed up.
I don’t think anyone “deserves” to be killed, and I don’t condone gun violence or murder… but given the harm he was doing, I also don’t feel any personal responsibility to reach inside myself to feel empathy for his family, or grief about the fact that he’s gone.
And I think that last point is kind of the whole point, because I don’t believe anyone has a responsibility to feel any particular kind of way about anything.
After all, our emotions aren’t something we choose, and they’re not beholden to any particular kind of logic. So while they sometimes might seem irrational or inappropriate, they are always valid, and they need to be acknowledged, witnessed, and processed… not judged or rejected.
And not only do I advocate for emotional neutrality in general, but also I want to remind you that our emotions are often actually following a valid and important logic of their own!
Think about how many victims of abuse would feel relieved or happy if they found out their abuser was dead, and how many people say they would gladly go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby.
Do these reactions make those people evil and immoral? Of course not.
Many of us have even gone through phases in our healing and recovery process in which we actually fantasized about our abusers being hurt or killed (or hurting/killing them ourselves!), and as a society we all understand that most people wouldn’t feel empathy or grief about the death of someone like Hitler.
This supposed “lack of empathy” doesn’t mean someone is broken, bad, or immoral; it’s a completely normal and valid reaction to being abused or recognizing evil.
And despite what Kirk said about empathy (that it was a "made-up, New Age term" that “does a lot of damage”), I believe empathy is real and important.
I even believe that as humans in society we do all have a responsibility to notice who we do and don’t feel empathy for, and to explore any biases or blocks that are preventing it.
For example, I desperately wish that people like Charlie Kirk would get curious about why it’s so much easier for them to empathize with cisgender people, straight people, white people, and men than it is to empathize with trans people, queer people, people of color, women, or immigrants. (Or say… Palestinians.) Then I wish they would do the work to dismantle the false biases, moral hierarchies, and internalized oppression that make their empathy so conditional.
But while I do see that kind of empathy work as crucial for building a safer and healthier society, I don’t believe anyone has a personal responsibility or obligation to feel compassion or empathy for anyone who was (or is) actively seeking to harm them.
And in this case, Kirk was actively working to harm a whole lot of people.
Plus, getting in touch with our rage and hatred for our perpetrators is often a crucial step in allowing ourselves to feel compassion and forgiveness for ourselves. So not only is this individual experience of “no empathy” normal, it’s also often important to our wellbeing and sense of self in the long run.
Likewise however, I think the presence of empathy is morally neutral too!
At our core, we humans are tender-hearted creatures, and it’s equally natural and normal for someone to respond to the witnessing of violence and death with empathy, compassion, grief, and disgust.
Personally I chose not to watch the actual video footage of the shooting, but I know many people did, and I can imagine how seeing such a thing would bring up all kinds of emotions! As a society we may have become pretty numb to violence in general, but it’s still normal and valid to find something like that incredibly upsetting.
Think of the stories you hear sometimes, of the parents who fought for their children’s murderer to not get the death penalty, or who found peace and relief in forgiving their abuser. The human mind and heart are incredibly complex and nuanced, and it is possible to feel empathy and grief, even for someone you believed was evil.
Of course, not everyone mourning Charlie Kirk thought he was evil or dangerous. Lots of people liked and respected him despite disagreeing with his views, and plenty more straight up shared his beliefs. (Sigh.) Some just feel grief for his family, because they can relate to or empathize with his widow and young children.
It’s worth pointing out here that we as a society have a habit of whitewashing the dead; of focusing only on the good parts of them, while downplaying or ignoring the bad. So to those of us who saw him as contemptible, it makes sense that hearing people say “have some compassion, he was a husband and father!” feels forced or false at best, and triggering or dangerous at worst.
Personally I have found myself having way more of an emotional reaction to people defending and memorializing Charlie Kirk than I did to hearing about his death, because it scares the shit out of me to see how many people respected and agreed with (or were at least willing to overlook) his reprehensible views.
And that’s ok, because—as I say all the time in my work on body neutrality—I know that these feelings don’t mean anything about the kind of person that I am, and don’t have the power to determine whether I am “good” or “bad.”
I don’t have a problem with “speaking ill of the dead” in general for the same reason, and I don’t believe that kind of performative “respect” should ever outweigh people’s right to speak honestly and process what needs processing.
I’ve known some individuals who had to attend the funeral of a family member who abused them, for example, and were discouraged from being honest or authentic by other people who felt strongly that doing so would be disrespectful and inappropriate, and said they should just try to remember, focus on, and celebrate the “good parts.”
To me, this is nothing but gaslighting; telling someone their experience and feelings don’t matter; that they should just “get over it.” Which is both cruel and pointless, because nobody in the history of the world has ever felt differently or “gotten over something” just because other people thought they should.
And that’s the point of this whole blog post.
There is absolutely zero benefit to trying to change or control your own feelings. You probably already know that trying to do so is not only ineffective and unhelpful, but it also actually impedes the important process of metabolizing and releasing those feelings.
So what on earth could be the point of trying to change or control other people’s feelings? (There isn’t one; telling people that they “feel the wrong way” about something is not actually going to make them feel differently, because that’s not how feelings work.)
As far as I can see, the only reasons people are engaging in this kind of “moralizing" rhetoric about other people’s reactions to Kirk’s death are:
To internally reinforce their own moral superiority, and strengthen their identity as a “good person,” for having the “correct” response.
To externally prove or signal their moral superiority to others, to either increase their status and gain validation as a “good person” in other people’s eyes, or to strengthen a feeling of belonging in their particular “in group.” (Or both!)
And while I find both impulses incredibly understandable (given what I said before about our “survival brain”), I also think we need to pause and think about them more critically, and with a hell of a lot more self-awareness, honesty, and nuance.
If you’ve read this far, I want to say thank you, and wrap this us with two final points on “moral neutrality”:
Your emotions about this are valid, no matter what they are.
Whether you’re mourning or celebrating in the wake of Kirk’s death, there is nothing wrong with you. Whether you feel sad, disgusted, numb, apathetic, gleeful, or anything else in between, your emotions are valid. They don’t mean anything about the kind of person you are, your character, or your morality. Your emotions just are, and I encourage you to acknowledge them, hold them with compassion and acceptance, and process them in whatever way you need to.
Your emotions about other people’s emotions are valid too.
Whether other people’s reactions to this death make you feel upset, angry, scared, or anything else, there is nothing wrong with you and your feelings are valid. But remember that while your emotions are out of your control, your actions are not. If you feel the impulse to shame, judge, attack, or disparage other people for responding to this death in ways that you find “wrong” or “bad,” I encourage you to get curious about that impulse and turn inward instead. Explore what’s going on with you (rather than supposing or imagining what’s going on with them), and seek out appropriate places and people with whom to process.
That’s it for today!
Please send this blog post to someone who you think would like it, and reach out to here if you wana share your thoughts on this one.
Sending you all the biggest hug today,
Jessi
That Escorts in Gurgaon keeps coming into my mind, and I just can’t seem to find an escape from her. Her tender hugs and affectionate nature made me feel like the luckiest man alive.