Benji Backer:
Well, I don’t remember saying those things, but I do know that I had my very strong disagreements with him.
And the reality is, I can think something is vile or what someone says is vile, but not think that they deserve to be killed over it. You know, he was a good person deep down. And we had very, very adamant disagreements on a lot of things, including climate change and the environment.
But at the end of the day, I mean, it’s like if Greta — who’s the biggest climate activist in the world, if someone on the right thinks that she’s radical and is telling everyone that fossil fuels need to be shut down and she’s protesting things in a very bold way, similar to how Charlie engaged, that does not mean that, if you disagree with her, she deserves to be hurt.
And I think that that’s the problem that we’re at in society right now. We disagree with somebody, and we almost wish that they had something bad happen to them, and that we have become so inhumane in our disagreements with one another. I have disagreed with Charlie many times in the past, but I have also agreed with him a lot.
And no matter what, it doesn’t really matter. He’s a human that deserves to live. And as a society, we’re manifesting this evil. We’re telling each other that this person’s a Nazi, this person’s an extremist, this person’s a communist, this person’s a socialist. Therefore, they are evil and they must go.
And the more that we do that, the more people are going to get killed. The more that we pit other people as the villain, to the point where we think that we need to end their life, that is when we are losing control of society. And our country is not going down a good path.
I might have had my disagreements with Charlie. I have my disagreements with lots of people. But in a country with free speech and where we actually have the ability to talk with each other about these things, we’re losing all of that by shutting down people we disagree with, by threatening them and by telling them that their opinion is not just vile and inhumane, but we actually think it should kill them.
I mean, that is an absolutely absurd trend that we’re headed on. And I might have disagreed with him, but that does not justify anything even close to what’s happened here.