No Excuses for Political Murder

Beyond the partisan fight, the murder of Charlie Kirk presents a choice: liberty or violence.

(Audio version here)

Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, has been murdered. A young family has lost a father. For anybody with a shred of human empathy, the reaction must be grief for this family and an urgent desire to see the perpetrator brought to justice. For liberals - people on the left, right or centre committed to freedom, pluralism, and the dignity of every human being - there must be unequivocal condemnation for the most egregious manifestation of authoritarianism - political violence and murder.

Charlie Kirk was not a token for anybody’s political agenda. He was a human being who loved and was loved. He also had things to say that people wanted to hear. Whether one agreed with his views or not - I mostly did not - his right to express them, which he did civilly and while facilitating engagement with those who disagreed, should be protected and upheld by everybody who wishes to be able to express their own. This essential liberal principle transcends political divides. The person who took away that right by taking away a young man’s life is the enemy of us all.

It will be tempting now for people to use Charlie as a political token, to play the unprincipled, collectivist game that so often follows political violence and that breeds not unity against such violence but deeper polarisation. It is likely that the murderer was a radical extremist on the political left, though - as always - we must wait for more information before assuming this. Already, illiberal voices on the left are trying to deflect, minimise, or even justify the murder of a man for speaking his views to those who wished to hear them. Meanwhile, some on the right are seizing upon this atrocity as proof that such violence is unique to “the left,” holding all left-leaning people complicit in it.

We can each make a personal decision not to contribute to this.

When they operate in principled ways that uphold the values of our liberal democracies, progressives and conservatives form a vital push-and-pull system of public debate. Progressives are driven by the pursuit of progress, with a focus on society’s most vulnerable: workers, the poorest, and minority groups. Conservatives are driven by the desire to conserve, with a focus on cultural integrity and the protection of institutions, traditions, and social norms they believe have served the majority well. When both are anchored in the principles of individual liberty upon which liberal democracies generally - and America explicitly and constitutionally - were founded, the conflict between progress and conservation becomes immensely productive. As someone once put it neatly on X: “Conservatives ensure progressives don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. Progressives ensure conservatives don’t conserve the dirty water along with the baby.”

Neither the progressive drive nor the conservative one - and, in reality, we nearly all have some degree of both - is inherently authoritarian or violent. Authoritarianism/liberalism is on a different axis to the progressive/conservative spectrum. Both the left and the right can pursue their ends in ways that uphold the right of each individual to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and both can pursue them in ways that deny this. It is the responsibility of each political side to ensure that their own extremists are recognised as such and marginalised from mainstream progressive or conservative thought.

We have been doing badly at this. I, along with other left-wing or progressive liberals, have been trying for a decade now to marginalise left-wing identitarian authoritarianism as found in the Critical Social Justice or “Woke” movement. Right wing or conservative liberals have likewise been trying to address the rise of illiberal, right-wing, identitarian populism and assert traditional conservative values that seek to conserve the Western philosophical tradition of individual liberty. Nevertheless, political polarisation has grown, resulting in an increasingly poor understanding of values and goals across divides and greater support for political violence. It is essential that anybody who cares about this resists attempts by the unscrupulous to use the murder of Charlie Kirk to escalate this alarming trajectory.

If you (like me) are a liberal on the left, it is essential that you do not respond to the murder of a man for expressing his views with ‘whataboutism’ that deflects to incidents of right-wing political violence. This is highly unlikely to make anybody on the right who has been claiming such violence to be the exclusive domain of the left reconsider their view. It will look like what it is - a deflection away from acknowledging left-wing political violence - and reduce confidence in the left’s ability to get its own house in order even further. Instead, criticise strongly those who are claiming that Charlie Kirk’s views were themselves violent and thus attracted violence. Oppose such victim-blaming rationalisations and stress the importance of recognising the difference between ‘views we do not like’ and ‘violence.’ Condemn utterly anybody who expresses pleasure at the murder of a human being. Do not ignore it as the ravings of an deranged extremist with whom you share no values. It is essential that you show that you do not, both to the hateful individuals themselves and to broader society. This is not a time to be acting like a lawyer, defending the character of ‘the left’ using evasive deflection and rhetoric. It is a time to be a principled liberal of the left and utterly condemn this most brutal form of censorship that cost a man his life. It is always that time.

If you are a liberal on the right, resist the temptation to treat this act of appalling political violence and the hateful or evasive responses to it as defining of “the left.” Doing so collapses the vital distinction between the authoritarian/liberal axis and the left/right political spectrum, while undermining liberals on the left who have also been resisting authoritarianism and supporting your fight against it on the right. It is right to address political extremism and violence on the left - very likely what this is - as a problem rooted in ideologies that present themselves as progressive while being nothing of the sort. It is also understandable to feel this impulse if you have yourself been accused of extremism or even fascism for voicing standard conservative positions that endorse neither violence nor hatred. Nevertheless, it will not serve the cause of conserving the liberal principles on which your democracy rests nor the principled rejection of political extremism across the board if you too give in to tribal polarisation.

The murder of Charlie Kirk is a tragedy for his family and friends, and the most brutal assault on the political freedom that protects us all. As human beings, we must condemn this horrific act on the most visceral level. How we respond, as beneficiaries of liberal democracies, will determine whether it deepens our divisions or strengthens our shared commitment to liberal values. The task before us is simple, but not easy. We must be both angry and saddened at the taking of a man’s life without making him a token. We must reject political violence consistently without resorting to tribalism. We must defend, without compromise, the principle that every human being has the right to speak without fear of death. If we can do this - on the left, on the right, and in the centre - we affirm both the freedoms and the humanity of those with whom we disagree and of those with whom we agree and the liberty that must endure for us all.

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