Yesterday afternoon, officials within the State of Utah confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt that the murder of Charlie Kirk was an act of political violence. The facts are as follows: A young man whose ideological views had become increasingly left-wing killed another young man who was famous for his conservatism. That the two men differed in this manner was not incidental to the event, but its cause. In a confession to his lover, the killer submitted that he had “had enough of” the victim’s “hatred,” and wished to end his life so that he could no longer promulgate it. “Some hate,” he wrote, “can’t be negotiated out.”
Some observers have flatly denied that this was the case. Others have conceded the details, but proposed that they do not matter. Both are wrong. Typically, the political preferences of our most notorious villains are, indeed, irrelevant. Here, they are crucial. One can no more understand a politically inspired murder by ignoring its political facts that one can understand a financially inspired murder by ignoring the financial facts. It would be nice if there was no such thing as ideological violence in these United States, but, alas, that has never been the case. As citizens, our responsibility is to accept that and to debate it on its own terms.
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