Like most people, I’ve been sickened by the reaction of many, most of the intolerant Left, to the murder of Charlie Kirk.
Murder is wrong, and any morally developed person knows it. There is no “But … ” — whether that “But” is followed by “he sometimes said things I believe to be wrong/hateful/” or by “sometimes he was motivated by trolling/owning” or any such reason to brush aside the fact that a man was murdered in cold blood.
Those on the Right (and the many of us who are neither Right nor Left) have properly condemned that display of immorality. I want, though, to focus on the Right and raise a question about its conjoining a self-congratulatory sense of its own moral superiority to its proper exposing of the intolerant Left’s deep incivility.
In an earlier post I wondered: “What if it were a prominent Leftist who had been shot while speaking at a public event?” Some commenters asked for examples. I’m loathe to name a living person in this context.
Yet memory calls up a recent enough, now-deceased figure who was much hated by the intolerant Right not too many years ago. So a thought experiment. Suppose this prominent, provocative, atheist, Leftist had been assassinated — what would the reaction on the Right have been?
I recall well the harsh and nasty rhetoric directed at Hitchens from the Right while he was alive. So, as a thought experiment, we can project the likely range of reactions on the Right, and that projection should lead to some sobering thoughts about how much civilizing work both Left and Right need to do within their own ranks.
Related: Alex Nowrasteh & David Bier on “Politically Motivated Violence is Rare in the United States,” showing the death tolls for Left and Right killers. Here is their “Politically Motivated Terrorist Killers: Data, Sources, and Methodology”
It’s difficult to envision your proposed scenario/thought exercise in terms of making a close analogy to today’s reactions to CKs murder. For one thing, Christopher died a while back, and wasn’t known by the average person—especially since his prominence occurred before social media exploded exponentially, and before Elon got Twitter and opened up space for a range of opinions and expressions.
In my case, I would typically see articles by or about Chris, and clips of him speaking, in normal responsible “Conservative” spaces like National Review. My recollection was that there was spirited pushback when discussing his atheism and antipathy towards religion, and his general Leftist orientation, but it was pretty respectful. And of course, when he emerged as a vocal critic of radical Islam, his views were met with great approval by the Right-o-sphere.
I do remember one telling reaction by the Right. Christopher wrote that, after his terminal diagnosis was revealed, he was astounded by the outpouring of love and prayers offered to him by conservatives. He had expected gloating and “gotcha” reactions and instead was moved to tears by the sincere well-wishes that came his way.
As a conservative, my first thought on this was, “But I really LIKED Christopher Hitchens!” I have two of his books on my shelves and enjoyed them, and always enjoyed his debates and interviews. I was sorry to hear of his death.
So, then I thought — Well, what Leftists DO I hate and how would I react if one of them were murdered? And it turns out that, while I can think of quite a number who I hold in contempt and a few who I think are actually dangerous, it turns out I just don’t HATE any of them, certainly not enough to publicly celebrate their murders.
I am quite capable of bloodthirstiness: I did celebrate the killings of Bin Ladin, al-Zawahiri, al-Baghdadi, al-Raymi, and the executions of Bundy, Dodd, Charles Campbell, McVeigh, and a few others and I was seriously displeased when the nine vicious murderers on my state’s death row were spared by the pitiful Leftist crew that form the majority of our state supreme court. If Kirk’s killer is executed, I’ll be relieved that Kirk’s family will be spared having to appear at parole hearings for him down the road.
But hate someone just for being a proud and vocal Leftist, enough to celebrate his or her murder? No.
More to the point, though, I and other conservatives strongly push back against the rhetoric from some on the Right that leads down that kind of path, namely, the claim that it is “the Left” that killed Charlie Kirk. It was one man, or what seems more accurate, man-child, who did that, not “the Left.” Vigorous debate and even hostile rhetoric cannot be blamed for the occasional misguided fool who will find in it a convenient reason to unleash his violence. Because people are and must be allowed to express their views and can only be held responsible for their OWN actions.
And I really would appreciate it if the Left would occasionally return the favor: It was not “the Right” who ran down Heather Heyer in Charlottesville and certainly not “the Right” who shot Gabby Giffords.