A Sense of Doubt blog post #3860 - This is How I Feel - RING OF FIRE
Once again, I had to postpone already scheduled though not yet finished blog entries for something more pressing and timely.
Farron of Ring of Fire published this video today and it struck a chord. I share it and my thoughts below.
Like Farron explains in his video, I am also taking some time to evaluate who I am online and how I want to be perceived.
ALSO, THIS:
The Indefensible Use of Political Violence |
On the assassination of Charlie Kirk |
by Lucien Greaves |
While I feel that I should begin with some mention of my own, brief, indirect encounter with Charlie Kirk, I want to make emphatically clear from the start that I in no way mention our oppositional alignments out of any concern for the fear that to do otherwise might contribute to “bad optics” in which condemning his murder makes me suspect in being a bit too agreeable to his ideas. To speak out against violence never requires such justifications. Rather, I point to our contention to directly confront a different knee-jerk predictable response to my condemnation of his killing that insists that I am simply blind to the harm that his words presumably caused, and that from a place of relative privilege I am simply incapable of grasping the threat that Kirk is believed to have presented. I have already seen mob-demented social media bloviators describe his murder as a "symmetrical attack” and a result of violence begetting violence. But if we are to agree with the overbroad categorization that accepts words as violence, we must at least agree that there is a significant difference in degree between hearing offensive ideas and taking a bullet to the fucking head, and a line here was clearly crossed. In 2022, in response to The Satanic Temple’s first SatanCon conference in Scottsdale, AZ, Kirk wrote an op-ed for Newsweek arguing that Satanists should not enjoy First Amendment protections. It was astonishingly hypocritical for the self-styled Free Speech crusader and, it must be said, impossible to reconcile with what I have seen of his typical rhetoric. My offers to debate him on the topic went unanswered, and I can not help but feel that the indefensibility of the position under scrutiny played a role in that silence. If a significant number of people feel that we can be deprived of basic fundamental civil liberties, what other deprivations might they be able to justify? Since then, we have been the target of terroristic attacks, including arson and a bombing attempt on our headquarters. Nonetheless, my first reaction upon hearing that Charlie Kirk has been murdered during a speaking event at a university in Utah is far from some delusion that the world has, in some way, been made a safer place for me and adherents to our Tenets. In fact, beyond the visceral horror and revulsion, it is clear upon any reasonable analysis that the opposite is true. We are all a bit less safe now. Nor do I blame Kirk for death threats I receive or the terrorism against us. Influencers are never these raw thought-dictating svengalis that the outrage mobs they generate— mobs which never fail to elevate the celebrity and perceived importance of those they decry — seem to think. Rather, influencers are almost always at least as influenced by their followers, their audience and subscribers, as their audiences are shaped by them. Regardless of how independent-minded Charlie Kirk may or may not have been, his popularity could only be made possible by a significant popular willingness to accept the message he was propagating. Shooting him does nothing to diminish that willingness, does nothing to make those ideas disappear, and it serves no positive function. You will notice that I am not making an argument for a metaphysical moral position regarding the sanctity of all human life, or even an absolute prohibition against all forms of political violence. Nor is this because I disagree with these positions, but it is because I do not dignify the murder of Charlie Kirk as necessitating them. Such arguments land like stale, scripted absolutes that are impervious to circumstance upon the ears of those who imagine there are benefits to this type of violence that occasionally supersede such lofty moral ideals. But there is no benefit to this barbarism, no greater ends served by unfortunate means, no clearer path forward to a more just and equitable world by Kirk’s brutal slaying. Political violence rests on a justification of liberation, the idea that a movement’s followers are ruled by fear, coercion, and threat of state violence. Tyrants are slain in hopes of breaking free those who exist under such oppression. Kirk had no such coercive force. Even if you argue that Kirk provided the philosophical framework undergirding potential or existing authoritarian oppression, he did so in the realm of debate, in the realm of persuasive influence, where his ideas are better confronted and known than suppressed or extinguished by force. We gain nothing if we silence known arguments prevalently held without challenging the ideas themselves, and the Charlie Kirks of the world allow us the opportunity to do that. The battle here is one for popular support, and shooting Kirk is more likely to make his ideas appear moderate and defensible in contrast to a thoughtless, murderous, and savage opposition. To those who would justify this act of violence, it must be asked, what is the imagined gain here? While I see social media commentary about the perceived delusion of “civil politics,” and its inability to “save us,” the implicit delusion seems to be that the MAGA movement will now cower in fear and ultimately realize its folly after witnessing this assassination. While the notion that we can progress forward by way of debate is denigrated as naive and unrealistic, the deeply unrealistic, even infantile, counter-assumption seems to be that, even in the midst of a Trump administration, this does more to diminish autocratic aspirations than to create an argument for their justification. Even if one is to argue that debate is not working, or somehow not viable, or point to Kirk’s failure to debate me after his Newsweek piece, it is impossible to accept his assassination as any type of acceptable follow-up option. As with those whose cognitive simplicity is such that they can not separate a defense of Free Speech for advocacy of the most odious expressions of opinion that the First Amendment protects, I already see backlash against those who condemn the assassination of Charlie Kirk as some kind of special love for the man and his ideas. (Some asshole on BlueSky already called me Nazi because of it.) No deep analysis of Kirk’s history is needed to condemn his assassination or recognize how counterproductive it is in the fight to preserve democratic norms and advance social equity. To attempt to justify Kirk’s assassination based on commentary he made that presumably argues for political violence is almost laughably self-negating. It is thoughtless and destructive, and it should be recognized as such. Nor is this all about how you should feel about Kirk himself. The important issue is how we feel about this kind of violence, and we should never be ambiguous in our condemnation of it. |
Originally published on September 11, 2025 at luciengreaves.substack.com |
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- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I post Hey Mom blog entries on special occasions. I post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day, and now I have a second count for Days since my Dad died on August 28, 2024. I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of Mom's death, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of her death and sometimes 13:40 EDT for the time of Dad's death. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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