Turning Point

Charlie Kirk was assassinated on September 10th this year. He was a conservative activist, the founder of the conservative organization Turning Point USA. He went around debating people about hot-button issues, especially on college campuses. The shooter appears to be a pro-trans activist who was angered by Kirk’s right-wing stance about transgenderism.

What does this mean for America?

1. Reactions

What should concern us is not simply that there was a violent extremist who decided to murder someone he disagreed with. That guy is in jail and will probably never be able to kill again; anyway, one person (who doesn’t work in government) can only do so much damage.

What should concern us now is the reaction to the murder. Left-wing social media videos quickly leapt to celebrate the murder without compunction. This really has to be seen; in the following video, watch from 5:04-8:10:

Most of those individuals seem genuinely thrilled, with no sense of shame and no concern that maybe they shouldn’t reveal this about themselves.

That is why I have come to write this explanation of why the murder was bad.

2. The Case Against Murder

2.1. Charlie Kirk as a human being

Charlie Kirk was a human being. Killing human beings is normally wrong. In this case, he was 31, so the murder deprived a human being of perhaps 50 years of life, along with all the goods that he could ever have experienced in that time. His wife was left without a husband, his children without a father. If you have trouble empathizing with him because of his political views, just think about a family member of yours who has conservative views (virtually everyone has one or more such person in their life). Imagine that someone murdered your family member because he was putting forth his political views. Your family member’s views, and his reasons for holding them, are probably pretty similar to Kirk’s, or at least not dramatically superior.

2.2. The propagandistic impact

Still, you might think (as I guess the above video-makers thought) that Charlie Kirk was being so harmful through his activism that the reasons for silencing him outweighed the general wrongness of murder.

One problem is that it is not at all clear what the overall impact of Kirk’s assassination will be on public perception of the issues on which Kirk spoke. It is unclear, in particular, how the cause of trans rights will be affected by this. On the one hand, Kirk can no longer campaign for his views on transgenderism. Perhaps, if he hadn’t died, he would have made much more content, which would have persuaded more people that, e.g., transwomen aren’t really women.

On the other hand, the assassination has put Kirk’s existing videos into the public spotlight. Probably many more people have now watched his content due to hearing about his assassination on the news.

In addition, the assassination obviously makes left-wing people, especially trans activists, look much worse. Most people are not so keen on violence, so the side of a disagreement that appears more violent is usually going to lose sympathy with normal people. That’s why Martin Luther King and Gandhi chose nonviolent protests, and that’s part of why they succeeded.

It’s not implausible that the assassination might help the cause of trans rights, nor is it implausible that the assassination might set back trans rights. In such a situation, even just on consequentialist grounds, you have to rest with the general presumption against murder.

2.3. A Culture of Violence

Left-wing people used to worry about problems like the “cycle of violence”. Basically, this refers to a phenomenon in human interactions, including group interactions, in which violence spirals out of control because each side keeps retaliating for the other side’s last act of violence, and there is a tendency for the retaliation to be more severe than the act that it is retaliating for. This is one theory of how wars start. The left used to be against violence, so they would warn people about the cycle of violence.

In this case, one plausible consequence of the Kirk assassination is greater anger and extremism on the right, which could in turn provoke still greater anger on the left.

Another plausible consequence is increased social acceptance of violence. Human beings are more strongly influenced by perceived social norms than they are by genuine morality. For this reason, if it starts to seem like physically attacking those we disagree with is the sort of thing people in our society do, then more people who are presently peaceful may tip over into violence.

And we’ve had indications that the social norms may be changing in the direction of tolerance for political violence. I am not going to try to measure which side is worse (nor am I thereby declaring that the two are exactly equal, nor am I saying that the left is worse, nor am I saying that the right is worse. The fact that people are focused on that is part of the problem.)

I recall Trump talking about wanting to punch protestors at a rally. Leftists also developed the “punch a Nazi” meme (where “Nazi” can refer to a huge range of people).

We didn’t used to attack people physically for their political views. The last time this sort of thing was prominent was the 1960’s, when there was a great deal of general social unrest. America will get through this time, just as we made it through the 60’s, but there may be a lot more trouble in the meantime.

Bear in mind that what changes social norms is the perception of what the norms are; if people perceive that the norms have changed, then the norms in fact change. For that purpose, it matters a lot more that a bunch of people are openly celebrating a political assassination, without any sense of shame, than that one person committed such an assassination (for which he was arrested and sent to prison). Other people see that, and they conclude that endorsing murder is socially acceptable after all, which it never used to be, and perhaps thence that murder is socially acceptable. There will be some small percentage of people for whom this will give them the little push in the direction of giving in to their violent impulses that leads them to go out and start a riot or kill someone.

By the way, don’t assume that all those people will agree with you politically. Once we have a culture of violence, the violence can come from any direction.

2.4. Disadvantages of violence

The immediate disadvantages of a culture of political violence are obvious (more people hurt, killed, etc.). But the knock-on effects can include a worsening of other institutions. Academics and journalists are afraid to speak about politics, so we all get dumber about politics. Fewer people are willing to serve in public office due to the risks to their safety, so we get lower quality leaders. The people who rise to positions of influence in a violent culture tend not to be the best people; indeed, they tend to be close to the worst people. So there is a risk that everything else gets worse.

People in any society are going to have disputes about how that society should be run. Our tradition has been that these disputes get resolved through debate and democratic process. If we give that up, and we decide that our disputes are to be resolved through violence, everything else that’s good in our society is going to collapse.

We’re not at that point yet, nor am I predicting that that will happen. But if we kept having events like this, and people kept celebrating them, then there is some point, which no one can predict in advance, at which social order would fall apart.

3. What Happened to Us?

We’ve slid from thinking that people with other political views are wrong to thinking they are evil. This is lazy and dumb. If there are two large factions of society, each close to half the population, it is unlikely that one of them is generally evil while the other is generally good. It is unlikely that the mainstream position on an issue is just pure evil, such that anyone who holds that position deserves to die.

Of course, it is possible that the people who disagree with you are evil. But if things often seem that way to you, the more likely explanation is that you are a dogmatic ideologue. That is more plausible than that lots of seemingly ordinary people are pure evil.

In the case of transgenderism, the mainstream position is probably that transwomen are men, not women. There is no need to posit demonic evil or hate to explain why people think this, when the simple explanation is that transwomen were born with penises, which most people grew up thinking was incompatible with womanhood. At the same time, the “arguments” given by trans activists are generally extremely unpersuasive; e.g., “transwomen are women, because if you say otherwise you’ll be hurting their feelings” or “transwomen are women, because people who say otherwise are bigots.” The simplest explanation for someone’s being unpersuaded by these arguments is that they are obviously terrible arguments. Better arguments can be given, but they rarely are, and most people have never heard them.

Still worse is the “argument” that “transwomen are women, because if you say otherwise, we’re going to kill you.” People with this kind of rage leave the rest of us with the impression that they have to resort to violence because they know they can’t win an actual debate.

4. What to Do

What should we do? When a prominent public figure is murdered, act sad. If you aren’t sad, pretend that you are anyway. Or at least shut up. Don’t go on social media bragging about how much schadenfreude you have. Those people are damaging the culture.

More broadly, if someone disagrees with you, start with the presumption that it is a good faith disagreement; they, just like you, want what’s best, despite disagreeing about what that is.