Patrick’s Politics: Charlie Kirk, the rightwing outrage machine and the myth of unity 

The assassination of conservative political commentator Charlie Kirk shook America. In my lifetime, I can recall few events that generated such discussion as Kirk’s fatal shooting. The bloody, violent murder represents a stain on our country and is frighteningly indicative of our current political culture. The response, too, was dismaying. Some on the left were celebratory, although Democratic officials were in lockstep about calling the shooting a tragedy. But the right was a different story – almost immediately, Republicans blamed the left before they even knew anything about the shooter, accusing Democrats of causing political violence. The rush to react with anger is damaging any attempt at uniting America, and foretells more danger for our country.   

The Republican outrage started from the top down. In a speech shortly after Kirk’s killing, President Donald Trump said the “radical left” was at fault and promised to go after “organizations that funded and supported” political violence, despite the fact that the president himself has aided and abetted events like January 6, where a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol while trying to get lawful election results overturned. Vice President JD Vance echoed the Trump line, claiming the “movement of left-wing extremism” led to Charlie Kirk’s death.  

If you consider those remarks to be inflammatory, however, they are nothing compared to the words of Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Miller called left-wing organizations “a massive domestic terror movement” and vowed to destroy those networks “in Charlie’s name.” The response from conservative and far-right online personalities went even further. Laura Loomer, a prominent far-right activist close to Trump, raged that “The Left are terrorists” and “a national security threat.” Elon Musk, the richest man in the world and a former top Trump ally, argued that Democrats are “the party of murder.” For a party that rushed to decry political violence and heated rhetoric after Kirk’s death, they are setting the temperature at a boiling point.  

Republicans also quickly began the process of painting Kirk as a martyr and railing against any criticism of him. Trump announced that Kirk would posthumously receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and many on the right praised Kirk effusively for being a defender of conservative values. At the same time, resolutions have been put forward in the House of Representatives to strip Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of her committee assignments, after she criticized Kirk’s “past words and actions.” Yet Republicans had a much different reaction when one of their own politicians, Senator Mike Lee, made callous jokes about a Democratic state representative, Melissa Hortman, being shot and killed earlier this year. No consequences of any substance happened to Lee.  

Lee’s reaction to Hortman’s death was instructive to how conservatives have approached shootings in the past. Kirk’s murder ignited on a firestorm on the right where other instances of gun violence, even mass shootings, did not. Why is it that half of the country poured out their anger and sorrow for one man, but was only able to offer “thoughts and prayers” for other major instances of violence and death? On the day that Kirk was shot, two schoolchildren were injured by a shooter at Evergreen High School in Colorado, but that tragedy received piecemeal attention in comparison. The differing reactions have laid bare the fact that America is irreparably divided on how to approach our current epidemic of violence.  

In the same vein as Lee’s comments, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade, a longtime staple of rightwing television, argued that mentally ill homeless people should simply be killed in an on-air segment last Wednesday. He apologized for his shocking rhetoric but faced no consequences from the network. Compare this to MSNBC, where anchor Matthew Dowd was fired because he remarked that “hateful words” lead to “hateful actions” during a discussion about Charlie Kirk’s death. The upshot of this dichotomy is clear: The right can plainly advocate for murder, but the left must remain appropriately reverent and empathetic for Kirk.  

It is all well and good for Democrats and Republicans to call for unity in this time of political strife. Unity is what the country should strive for, to set aside our differences as a nation and be able to recognize that we face a pivotal moment in our history, one better faced together than divided. But how can America unite itself when one side seems determined to place the blame squarely at the feet of the other?  

We must admit that the country is far from being united, and no amount of good-faith comments will get us there. The era of Trump’s hyper-partisan politics has seen to that. America needs to be honest with itself that the reaction to Kirk’s death, even more than the shooting, is unsustainable. If Republicans make good on their promises to target the left in the aftermath, America will break further apart, and our increasingly stretched version of so-called unity will shatter.