Charlie Kirk, a political commentator, founder of Turning Point USA (a conservative nonprofit that travels the country spewing extreme right wing rhetoric at teenagers), and literal Nazi was killed Wednesday September 10, 2025. He was speaking at a TPUSA event at a university in Utah when Kirk, a staunch supporter of the 2nd amendment, was shot in the neck. He died several hours later.

I want to be very clear here- I WANT to live in a world that lacks violence. I WANT to live in a country that doesn’t value guns over lives. I WANT to live in a country that decided sacrificing school children to gun violence because guns give small men boners was a line we would not cross. I have never lusted or yearned for violence, but I don’t live in that world and I don’t live in that country. I live in a country where one half of the population relishes and revels in the pain they cause and the other sits back and watches them do it. I live in a country where a man like Charlie Kirk can be revered in the first place.

I am seeing a lot about shared humanity and how violence is never the answer and I somewhat understand where those people are coming from. Violence begets violence. But to be more offended by the public’s reaction to an evil man’s death than what the evil man actually did is positively bananas to me. He literally said, out of his own mouth, that gun deaths are worth it to keep the 2nd amendment. The slaughter of children was worth it so that lunatics could bear arms. And sharing his words, in which he explicitly states that deaths like his very own are worth it because it means everyone who wants one can keep their guns, and pointing out the sheer Shakespearean irony of it all is offensive, but him SAYING those words is not? Got it.

Kirk cared absolutely nothing about his shared humanity with trans people. He cared nothing about his shared humanity with Jewish people. He cared nothing about his shared humanity with the women he so scorned. He cared nothing about his shared humanity with the People of Color he incessantly degraded. Why does he deserve the consideration of shared humanity in death when it was not something he reciprocated in life?

I do not mourn the loss of Charlie Kirk, and that is not something I am ever going to feel badly about. I mourn for his children and the trauma they will experience because of this, and that’s about where my empathy ends. I do not mourn for his wife, because she’s an adult woman who decided to hitch her wagon to Kirk’s evil horse. I’m certain she is also a Nazi. But Kirk wouldn’t want my empathy anyway, seeing as Charlie himself has said this, on record: “I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made up new age term, and it does a lot of damage.”

I am no longer seeking the High Road, because the High Road is a dead end. People on both the right and, even more infuriatingly, the left, are victims of their own violent commitment to respectability. We’ve been labeled the party of tolerance, and because of that, we have tolerated abhorrent things being done right in front of our faces because it would be mean to call them out. Because just letting these terrible things happen is easier than confronting these monsters and holding them accountable. Well I’m kind, but I’m not nice. I hold no grace for people who make it their life’s work to inflict harm on marginalized populations, or those who enable that behavior. It’s like how I voted with farmers and immigrants in mind, but many farmers and immigrants did not. So now it’s hard for me to hold sympathy for these people who are facing the horrific consequences of their actions and losing family members and farms, because those people are getting exactly what they voted for. Exactly what they said they were going to do. And in the same vein, I hold absolutely no remorse for Charlie Kirk, because he was a Nazi and a ghoul.

There’s a phenomenon known as the Paradox of Tolerance, and I feel like the following infographics help explain what it is:

Kirk and his ilk broke the social construct when they decided to dedicate their lives sewing hatred and encouraging violence against their neighbors. Can those of you shocked at the violence truly not understand how some of us do not feel empathy for a Nazi? Yes, he was a father and a husband, but so was Osama Bin Laden. Did you feel the same level of sympathy for him and his family when he was killed? Or does that shared humanity only apply to white American men? Bin Laden was objectively evil, right? He may not have ever pulled a trigger, but Kirk inflicted real, serious harm on countless vulnerable groups. It is baffling to me that anyone would expect me to be sad that a man like that can no longer hurt others.

And spare me with the “violence is never the answer” bullshit when so many of you have been completely silent about the horrific violence happening via the genocides in Gaza, in Congo, in Sudan. Spare me the self righteous, morally superior lecture about how a man who incited violence did not deserve to die by it when trans people are taking their own lives in an epidemic of its own as a direct result of his actions. Where was this outrage when he said that Black women pilots were DEI hires and weren’t qualified to do their jobs? When he said that George Floyd (who was also murdered by the way) didn’t deserve our tears and was a “scumbag?” When he insisted he would force his daughters to have babies if they were impregnated AS CHILDREN by incest and rape. When he proclaimed that abortion was worse than the Holocaust? When he exclaimed that Western people and culture were superior to all others in every way? Political violence comes in many forms, not all of which include firing a gun, and Kirk has been inflicting his unique brand of it in every dark, slimy corner of our current political landscape for over a decade. It is my deeply held belief that the world is better without Charlie Kirk in it. I will not apologize for that.

As I saw a good friend state on Facebook tonight, “We will all leave behind a legacy. It is your choice as to what that legacy will be!” And yes, exactly this. I don’t know what happens after death. The afterlife is a very complicated subject for me as an Atheist. I’d like to think there is something after this, but my gut tells me we just cease to exist and that’s that. I can’t control that, but I can control how I move about in this life. When I leave this earthly plain, I hope that people remember me as someone who was kind and generous and reliable and warm and funny. Who used my privilege for the good of others. That people felt better about themselves and their day after having interacted with me. The difference between Charlie Kirk and me is that I actually try to live my life by those standards and he did not. Trans people were no threat to him, and yet he persecuted them mercilessly. He found a successful niche for himself where he could freely spew his vitriol and he chose to laser focus on Black women, all of whom were far more educated and qualified than he was. For him, the cruelty was always the point.

Charlie Kirk was a fascist. I will never mourn the death of a fascist. And I cannot fathom why so many people are tying themselves in knots to rewrite history and pretend like he had some sort of positive impact on this world. He didn’t. Stop worrying more about respectability than you do about what the fascists are doing. It’s super fucking weird.

I made a commitment long ago to speak loudly and boldly about uncomfortable subjects because I, as a middle class white woman, deserve to be a little uncomfortable. It is not worse to talk about and call out racism than it is to experience racism. It is not worse to call out and talk about transphobia than it is to experience transphobia. It is not worse to talk about and call out misogyny and abuse than it is to experience misogyny and abuse. Not mourning Charlie Kirk’s death and pointing out the real harm he did in life is not worse than the real harm he did in life. Your comfort is not my priority. What is my priority, however, is that every POC, trans, queer, disabled, female, Jewish, etcetcetcetc person that comes across my opinions and beliefs knows that I am a safe person. And the only person who can prove that to them is me, by my actions. By you demanding that they feel remorse and empathy and practice decorum for their oppressor, they now know for certain you are not safe That is not something I could live with, but hey, you do you.

I abhor violence. I hate that we live in a country where someone can open their dad’s gun safe, remove a weapon of mass destruction, and walk down the street with it openly with the intent to kill. I hate how desensitized we have become to it. This is my truth. It is also my truth that you who are demanding respectability are trying to gaslight us into believing that because we do not mourn a monster that, in turn, makes us monsters. Two things can be true at the same time. I hate violence. I am not sad that Charlie Kirk is dead. If you can’t multitask just say that.