Last week I wrote about Charlie Kirk at length. My message was simple- this was a horrible tragedy, this is not a right-left political violence problem, and we’re being over force-fed “us vs. them” info. I went on to talk about how Kirk’s death and the hyper-partisan reactions were playing out locally, and how Jimmy Kimmel’s comments about Kirk fit into the larger war on liberal comedy. For those of you who read me regularly, you know this is a lot of typing for me about Charlie Kirk, who had never once been mentioned on my blog before his death. I don’t talk about really any of the MAGA podcast/influencer folks- not Laura Loomer, Nick Fuentes, not even Tucker Carlson. It’s not so much that they are insignificant to me, I acknowledge they have large audiences and a good deal of influence with MAGA leaders all the way up to Donald Trump. I think talking about them is complicated and takes a lot of nuance that you can’t really have in every post. They are not elected officials or government officials who have direct powers to help or hurt us as a society or individuals. I don’t listen to or read any of them, other than when I come across their tweets and other posts, most of which I don’t agree with (occasionally I do, but even a broken clock is right twice a day). On the other hand, and definitely in part because they are not empowered government officials, I absolutely support their first amendment right to speak whatever they wish, free from any government censorship. On the other hand, if they lie or defame people, they should have to deal with their employers, funders, and civil lawsuits from individuals for their actions. I just kind of think their world is largely none of my business, I’m not one of their consumers.

So all the writing about Kirk does kind of prove a right-wing talking point- Kirk is larger in death than he ever was in life. I didn’t give a shit about him a month ago. Now I’m writing about him. But are my writing about the actual person Charlie Kirk, or whitewashed character that has only marginal ties to the actual person? David A. Graham of the Atlantic writes about this, and concludes that this is literally an affront to the actual person Charlie Kirk was. He writes beautifully about the irony in this mythological version of Charlie Kirk:

Kirk’s commitment to debate was inextricable from his political views; he wasn’t a value-neutral advocate for free speech. Kirk arose as a countercultural figure and deployed the First Amendment as a crucial tool for spreading his ideas: In an environment where they were not welcome, he pointed out that they were protected. Now that Kirk’s political allies hold power, however, many appear eager to suppress ideas they dislike. The Trump administration is vowing to use Kirk’s death as an excuse to crack down on dissent even as it lionizes him for defending it.

Kirk began his career planting Turning Point USA chapters on college campuses. As many conservatives were writing off academia, Kirk was evangelizing, creating a beachhead for right-wing views in traditionally liberal environments. Free speech was an important shield for him, because some of his ideas were bigoted, or articulated abrasively.

Some people now praising Kirk are conflating a commitment to argument with a devotion to civility. Kirk succeeded, in part, by eschewing civility in favor of conflict. He said, for example, that “Joe Biden is a bumbling, dementia-filled—Alzheimer’s—corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.” (In the same radio show, he questioned whether Kamala Harris is Black.) He bused supporters to Washington on January 6, 2021; invoked the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions about the insurrection; and campaigned for pardons for the perpetrators.

Kirk railed against transgender and gay rights. He called George Floyd a “scumbag,” declared the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “mistake,” and claimed that many influential Black figures were in their roles only because of affirmative action. “If I see a Black pilot, I’m going to be like, ‘Boy, I hope he’s qualified,’” he said. He said that if Donald Trump lost in 2024, hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants would be brought to Alabama, where they would “become your masters.” Comparisons to King are especially ironic because King, Kirk said, was “awful. He’s not a good person.”

I hold some inconvenient beliefs sometimes, but central to them is authenticity. Charlie Kirk said exactly what he said, and simply replaying or reprinting his words is not an attack on him, it is an honest rendering. I don’t agree with virtually any of Kirk’s beliefs about civil rights, Joe Biden, women voting, LGBTQIA rights, “DEI,” George Floyd, January 6th, Donald Trump, the 2020 Election, or really anything I can think of, besides his belief that he had a right to say it. I don’t think that people I deem as bad should be shot, ever. I don’t believe the government should try to cancel a television show, ever. Hell, I’ll just be honest and say I don’t think employers should have any absolute right to view your social media, or censor it, even as I acknowledge that isn’t covered by the First Amendment. I think people should have the ability to be their authentic selves, and in fact I think morally it is an imperative. Yes, if you are out in public (I at least on some level don’t consider social media public, particularly if you are protecting your posts from the entire public), saying something really crazy can get you fired. I typically do not think it should.

The truth of the matter is that even dangerously stupid and ignorant speech should be policed through the court of public opinion, and if your response is that this is failing in our current society, my response to that is this is who we actually, truly are. Trying to censor who we are because this “Trump era” makes you uncomfortable, or because you thought these kinds of opinions were supposed to be gone by 2025, is UnAmerican and morally reprehensible. If it bothers you that Charlie Kirk was amassing followers saying the Civil Rights Act was a mistake, or that he hated Barack Obama and Joe Biden, or that he thinks Kamala Harris is a moron, or that Martin Luther King Jr. was a bad man, or that women didn’t vote, or whatever it is you think- just understand that the people listening and agreeing with Kirk also agreed with what he was saying before he had a job saying it. These opinions and thoughts, they always existed in the world, and it’s not society’s formal job to silence people for saying them. You silence these opinions by not listening and not buying from the advertisers. Charlie Kirk should be able to speak to the audience that believes these things, just as Jimmy Kimmel should be allowed to do the same. There is a market of millions of people who agree with them. As long as that exists, they should exist, and we should make authentic judgments about how we feel about them. It’s pretty simple.

Of course, there is only one logical conclusion to this though- I didn’t like Charlie Kirk. I did not listen to him when he was alive, and I wouldn’t now. He told us how he feels about the role of women in our society, how he feels about Civil Rights in our society, that he thinks most Black Americans in the work place are of lower quality and that they are there because of DEI, that he thinks Donald Trump is a good man and Joe Biden is not, that LGBTQIA people are predators, and lots of other things. Charlie Kirk lived authentically and told us who he is. I did not approve of it. While I would not describe myself as a “Jasmine Crockett Stan,” but I think she’s right to question why any Democrats were voting to honor Kirk in the Congress. Do these Democrats agree with him on his beliefs? Did they agree when he was live? Or are they being inauthentic and cowardly, in hopes that this conversation will go away?

Charlie Kirk’s death has been weaponized to do things that some conservatives wanted to do anyway, like cancel Jimmy Kimmel. The conservatives doing it are being as dishonest as the Democrats in Congress voting to honor Kirk. This is all mythology. It’s creating a martyr of a person who was just a person. It’s gross and antithetical to being a health nation with a vibrant First Amendment. It’s creating a false narrative about who we actually are and who we actually want to be as a society.