Charlie Kirk Does Not Deserve Your Respect

I worked in academia and media during early periods of Charlie Kirk's first rise and let me tell you, he was a piece of shit. His rhetoric was a very clear threat aimed at academics, a threat to their jobs and safety. His arrival and the arrival of his organization Turning Point in the world of Academia marked a major change in campus politics. He made a name for himself suppressing the speech of others with the implicit threat of violence. Kirk is easily one of the top 5 people responsible for the state of the current GOP and Trump's presidencies. He's terrible, a bad human who went out of his way to excuse shootings and put others in danger. He deserves no honors. He deserves no respect.

This does not mean Kirk deserved to die or that political violence is ever justified. What happened to Kirk is horrifying, and we fear deeply for whatever will happen next. But it is undeniable that Kirk was not just a part of the extremely tense, very dangerous national dialogue, he was an accelerationist force whose work to dehumanize LGBTQ+ people and threaten the free speech of professors, teachers, and school board members around the country has directly put the livelihoods and physical safety of many people in danger. We do no one any favors by ignoring this, even in the immediate aftermath of an assassination like this.