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There’s no denying that before he was a right-wing firebrand, Charlie Kirk was a husband and a father, and a man it’s clear that many people loved. And an awful thing happened on Wednesday: That man was gunned down in public, on camera. The image of him slumped in his chair will live in our political memory for a generation.
People on both sides of the spectrum agree his violent death is part of an unacceptable trend of political violence in America. Earlier this year, Democratic lawmakers were assassinated; last year, the now-sitting president survived two snipers’ attempts on his life.
But the circumstances of Kirk’s killing—an end no one deserves—can’t erase the role he himself played in pushing American political culture toward embracing violence. The Overton window shifted partly by his own hand.
He celebrated when violence came for his enemies. When Paul Pelosi was nearly killed in his own home, the grace this purported holy Christian man could muster amounted to a homophobic snicker, and a request for “some amazing patriot” to “be a midterm hero” and “bail this guy out.” Kirk built his following by rewarding cruelty and training his audience to see violence as entertainment. He claimed to have helped in transporting 80+ buses “full of patriots” to “fight for this president” the morning of Jan. 6 and recently called for “full military occupation” of American cities. He mocked protests over George Floyd’s murder and spread COVID conspiracies. After Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral primary win, Kirk posted: “24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11. Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.”
Kirk also tried to shift the moral math on guns. He said out loud that some gun deaths were necessary for preserving the Second Amendment. After American children were slaughtered in classrooms, you’d expect a father to show empathy. It’s the bare minimum.
When you normalize laughing at or hand-waving away attacks on your opponents, you help create a world where a shocking death itself becomes content. Every killing turns into just another clip to share, another meme to remix, another dopamine hit in the outrage economy. The corrosion works slowly at first, but it makes empathy harder to summon the next time violence happens, and harder still after that. Eventually, it disappears altogether. Yes, you’d have to be a monster to watch Kirk get gunned down and not feel anything. He also had a very active hand in propelling America toward being a nation of unfeeling monsters.
Kirk pushed the idea that people’s identities or political beliefs make them inherently dangerous. He called Muslims like me “incompatible with America.” Just this summer, he released a podcast episode literally titled “Islam: Incompatible With the West.” Days before he was shot, a post circulated quoting him: “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.” I want to be the kind of person who could rise above that and mourn him, but I can’t. I’ve spent my entire life living with the consequences of that kind of rhetoric. And it has real-world consequences: The Council on American–Islamic Relations reported 8,061 complaints of anti-Muslim discrimination in 2023, the highest in its history, up 56 percent from the year before. Federal data shows hate crimes hovering near record highs in 2024. Mosques across the country, facing the threat of arson, shootings, and vandalism, budget for armed guards. It’s been a grim reality since 9/11, and that spiked again after Oct. 7, 2023, when anti-Muslim incidents surged nationwide. When my own kids were born, I worried about choosing names for them that would be the least likely to elicit taunts at school. Kirk contributed to that reality. His cause was making sure my community lived in a permanent state of suspicion.
When news of Kirk’s death broke, irony did its work. On Twitter, TikTok, Discord, wherever people gather to laugh through despair, people memed his death. They mocked a man who built his career telling white Christian Americans that their “enemies”—any minority, essentially—were always plotting in the dark, ready to pounce the minute you let your guard down.
And that’s why it’s hard to take the outrage about this kind of dark humor seriously. Conservatives who once laughed at Paul Pelosi’s fractured skull or made sport of George Floyd’s last breaths suddenly discovered the sanctity of life. Fox News hosts scolded Democrats for their “inhumanity.” Some conservatives urged people to report offensive posts to law enforcement. MAGA influencers claimed the jokes were proof of liberal depravity. Is any of this in good faith? Or just the next round of arena politics, where the only goal is to rack up points by accusing the other side of playing the same game? You can’t condemn violence in one context and celebrate it in another, and act surprised when the rest of us find difficulty in joining you in mourning your martyr.
If jokes about Kirk’s death are dangerous, so were the words he said while alive. Kirk spent years defending policies that tore families apart, cheering on militarized crackdowns, and vilifying entire communities. To pretend his assassination exists in a clean vacuum, divorced from the sanctioned violence he championed, is dishonest.
When Kirk’s targets make dark jokes about his death, it’s the product of years of suppressed rage finally spilling out. After watching families torn apart by the MAGA movement he championed, with the military deployed as a domestic police force in our backyards, and Trump threatening war against American cities, and a national Democratic Party that has proven toothless, it’s understandable they carry a repressed fury. And when a figure who personified that cruelty dies violently, that rage leaks out as internet memes. It doesn’t make it right. But it does make those reactions legible.
Charlie Kirk told Americans their opponents weren’t just wrong but dangerous. He mocked political violence when it served him. He insisted communities like mine were a threat to the nation. And he was very successful. That’s how far the Overton window moved. And now we’re all stuck living in the world he made in his image.
None of that diminishes the pain for his family, who have lost someone they loved. My condolences go out to them.
