Acceptable Losses

Whose deaths get to be deemed unacceptable in supremacist America, and whose are deemed necessary? And who does the deeming?

You know who I feel bad for? The kids. Two of them. Perfectly innocent of all this.

They were victims of a school shooting in Colorado, in one of our nation's many, many, many school shootings, a subset of our nation's many many many mass shootings, a subset of our nation's many many many gun deaths. The two victims are in critical condition. The shooter, a young white man who had been "radicalized through an extremist network,” killed himself. Many such cases.

Which kids did you think I meant?

Oh, also on the exact same day as the kids were shot by a radicalized white supremacist, Charlie Kirk was murdered in Orem, Utah. This was also a school shooting. Like I said, they are extremely common. I also feel bad for Kirk's kids, for what it is worth, though I think everyone else already has those bases thoroughly covered. Nevertheless I feel compelled to mention it, because if I don't, then it will be assumed by many that this must mean I am very glad that they watched their father Charlie Kirk be murdered horribly by a gun, as Charlie Kirk warned us might be necessary.

For the record, I am not glad about that.

I should explain what I mean when I say Charlie Kirk warned us his death might be necessary. And for those of you not plugged into the news and for readers from other countries, I should define the terms I'm using for you.

"Charlie Kirk" was a far-right extremist American bigot who spent his career promoting far-right extremist bigotry of many kinds. He focused most especially upon college campuses, where he worked very successfully and lucratively to radicalize young people and to expand the margins of permission as regards bigoted speech and action generally. He would set up camp at a folding table with a microphone next to a sign that said PROVE ME WRONG. And a lot of people would prove him wrong, too, and then Charlie Kirk would prove how extremist right-wing bigots like Charlie Kirk utilize the trappings of debate—not as a way of coming to mutual understanding, but as a tool to normalize extremist ideology, which he would accomplish via the trick of making a big show of refusing to be persuaded by truth no matter how wrong he had just been proved.

And "the Second Amendment" is an article of the U.S. Constitution, which deals with arming well-regulated state militias if you actually read it, but which—if you ask a far-right extremist like for example Charlie Kirk or any of six Republican-appointed Supreme Court judges—codifies guns as an inalienable right of citizens specifically so they can take up arms against a tyrannical government, and if that isn't a call for political violence I don't know what is. But don't take my word for it on that; Charlie Kirk said as much. The Second Amendment is there, God forbid, so that you can defend yourself against a tyrannical government Kirk said, at a faith event (Kirk was a professing christian) hosted by his organization, Turning Point USA, in Salt Lake City in the year 2023.

So there's Utah again.

I'll note that who gets to decide that the government is tyrannical or how sufficient tyranny might be determined is sort of a gray area, but in practice the answer is "whatever any white conservative(s) say(s) it is." You may have noticed the government is pretty tyrannical right now, with the U.S. military and kidnapping squads invading U.S. cities to terrorize civilian populations and abrogate everyone's constitutional rights, and conservatives think that's great, so freedom is a sort of chancy thing with that crowd. I mention all this because I am currently being scolded that political violence is unacceptable, which is odd because—unlike Charlie Kirk and the conservative apparatus of which he was a part—I am not openly advocating for political violence as a core tenet of freedom.

Later in this speech in Utah in 2023, Charlie Kirk gave his now-famous quote: “I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year, so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other god-given rights.” The it in that is worth it here is gun deaths, of which there were 46,728 in 2023. These remarks came in the aftermath of one of our nation's many many many school shootings, this one at The Covenant School in Nashville Tennessee, which had happened about a week prior. Even though Kirk's statement is shocking in that context, I don't think it made a particularly big splash at the time, because this is exactly what any conservative pundit or politician will say after any school shooting; the conservative defense of guns against the threat of preventing future massacres is basically a part of the massacre at this point. We might wonder if Kirk meant that the victims of The Covenant School specifically were acceptable losses to his right to political violence, or if he just meant all 46,728 people who would die that year. I suspect the answer is he didn't give a shit. I say all this because I am being scolded that violence is never the answer, and I can't help but notice that for the conservative political apparatus of which Kirk was a part, violence is not only an answer but the answer, and often the question, too. (Violence? Violence!)

We'd be here all day if I were to recount Kirk's bona fides as a far-right extremist and bigot. As of this writing the Southern Poverty Law Center rightly lists Turning Point USA as a hate group, cheek and jowl with KKK chapters and other hate groups. If you need to be convinced, you can read here or here or here or here. If that fails to convince you I doubt my efforts will succeed, but I wrote my own thoughts about Kirk's legacy here, which amounts to my belief that—against our collective will—we live in a world of normalized gun violence and normalized political violence specifically as the result of the life work of people like Charlie Kirk. None of these links will take you to anyone expressing any sort of belief that Kirk should have been shot, by the way, or that shooting people is good, or that killing somebody is an appropriate way to settle political disagreements, or that violence is the answer. I mention all this because criticizing Charlie Kirk accurately, or even failing to praise him, or even simply publishing his own hateful words for all to see, or even generally being seen as a part of a group that was opposed to him, is being taken as de facto culpability for if not direct participation in his death. This is ironic, because Kirk was a christian, so he must know that the Bible says that "by your words you will be acquitted or condemned." Oh well. There's a lot of irony to go around.

OK. Let me get to the point, which is what the hell going on?

The thing about the murder of Charlie Kirk is that, in the places that are deemed to matter, he is considered a human being, and to varying degrees, the humanity of most of the rest of us is situational and subject to debate by people like Charlie Kirk.

To a supremacist society, most of us are acceptable losses. Charlie Kirk is not.

To a supremacist society, guns are allowed to kill most of us, and the pundits can debate how sad our deaths were after the shooting stops, depending on who we are and who our killer was.

But guns are not allowed to kill Charlie Kirk. Not ever.

You can tell it in how different the reaction to his murder has been, when compared to most other murders.

Let me give you an example. Let's go to the heart of progressive culture.

Let's go to Facebook.

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As an author I keep an author page on Facebook, which is standard author stuff. I woke up yesterday morning and discovered that there is a function on Facebook where someone can unrecomend you. I'm not on Facebook so much, so this sure was news to me. Clicking through to see what had put me in line for such treatment, I saw this:

Pobody's nerfect.

This was novel. It was also interesting, because I have done no such thing.

I clicked into Mr. Poirer's feed to see what sort of chappie I had disappointed so badly. Below I have replicated the very first post in his feed, which he had made mere hours after dubbing me evil for supporting and celebrating killing people over a difference of opinion.

In summary, Jeremy is a land of contrasts.

The second message in that guy's feed was too vile to replicate, but it was a totally unfounded attempt to cast the as-yet-not-apprehended shooter as trans, and to thereby cast all queer people as murderous. More on this very soon, but first I will say that whatever else Jeremy Poirier might be, he is absolutely somebody who is sincerely committed to honoring Charlie Kirk's legacy.

Anyway this was interesting and novel, but it not exactly surprising. As I said, American conservatives tend to cast accurate naming and exposure of what they do and say as a violent threat against them. By not hiding Jeremy Poirer's name to protect him from the consequences of being understood as the sort of person who says the sort of thing he says, I suppose some may even claim I am fomenting violence against him, which I am not.

It seems inconsistent, no? Hypocritical?

But it works.

It works if and only if Jeremy considers himself and Charlie Kirk people but considers liberals not people.

Which is exactly what is happening.

You might well ask so what? Why would I put some Facebook random on blast in my newsletter? I'd agree that a single disturbed individual posting an open call to mass violence back-to-back with a criticism of that exact behavior wouldn't mean much, if only it were merely a single disturbed individual. However, Mr. Poirier's reaction to the Kirk murder represents the clear mainstream view of the conservative political and talking class, and for proof you need go no further than the President of the United States himself, who has been using his office and platforms to vow mass vengeance against the left generally, and to incite violence against his political enemies, and to discount violence on the right as justified for being motivated by a desire to stop crime, with "crime" defined as certain types of people.

Or you could look to former conservative UK prime minister Boris Johnson, or U.S. Representative Nancy Mace. You could look to X founder and famous billionaire melting guy Elon Musk, who took to his pro-Nazi platform to proclaim that "the left is the party of murder," which is as incoherent and disturbing as anything else he says. You could look pretty much anywhere. Coursing through all this narrative was the positive assumption, without proof beyond Kirk's status as a prominent political figure, that Kirk's death was a politically motivated shooting, and the positive assertion, with absolutely no evidence, that the perpetrator or perpetrators were leftists, and probably trans, or gay, or Black, or Muslim, that he had been killed by people who couldn't defeat his ideas, and that this justified amplified political violence against entire populations of people who are already experiencing greatly amplified political violence at conservative hands.

So the American far right, who are easily the most pro-violence people in the country, are out in force, led by their political violence party known as "Republican," fomenting further violence in the name of anti-violence, quashing free speech in the name of free speech, and demolishing democracy in the name of saving democracy.

It seems inconsistent, no? Hypocritical?

But it works. It works if and only if you realize who they believe are people and who you believe are not people, and if you listen to them, they'll tell you.

At the same time, in the halls of power and on the platforms of influence, liberals and centrists and mainstream media have been falling all over themselves to validate the conservative framing around this event, which ignores the political violence that has already been done by Republicans and the political violence being openly planned. You could look to the Washington Post, which declared that Kirk's death represented a new era of political violence. You could look to liberal pundit Ezra Klein, who eulogized Kirk, stating that he "did politics exactly the right way." Or California governor Gavin Newsome, who said "the best way to honor Charlie's memory is to continue his work." Every statement comes with the introductory pre-emptive scolding —violence is never the answer, assassinations are not how we handle disagreements, nobody deserves this—all of which are very respectable sentiments to be sure, couched in terms of peace and civility, but all of which slyly smuggle in unfounded Republican presumptions regarding who the motive and perpetrator must have been, and carry the tacit implication that those presumptions must be true.

I want to ask these pundits: who the hell are you scolding about political violence? The people who after every shooting want to change laws to protect people, or the people who after every shooting demand we change nothing in order to protect guns? The people who are invading U.S. cities or the people being invaded? Who do you think believes violence is a solution? Do you not see who it is that not only believes that actually some people deserve to die, but say so, and then make it happen? Who do you think demands violence as a solution, anyway? Who do you see invading cities, terrorizing our courts and churches and workplaces and streets? Who calls immigrant 'vermin' and talks about extermination and deportation and incarceration and execution? Who do you see cheering it all on? Why say things that shouldn't even need to be said, which are certainly never said when the victim is a schoolchild or a homeless guy instead of an influential and wealthy white supremacist?

But sure enough, in the halls of power, on the platforms of influence, naming hate is considered dangerous uncivil and hateful and out-of-bounds, but actual hateful incitement is not. Opposing instruments of violence is considered violence, but actual escalating ongoing violence is not.

And while this may seem like a contradiction, it is actually represents a very consistent ideology, which was Charlie Kirk's ideology: supremacy.

Again, I feel bad for the kids.

Yes, the kids. Shot in Tennessee the week before Charlie Kirk said their deaths were necessary. Three of them. They were all nine years old, shot dead along with three adults in America, the land of political violence, the home of cowards who insist on political violence as a core tenet of their personal freedom.

Which kids did you think I meant? Charlie Kirk's kids?

I feel bad for them, too. I always did.

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Charlie Kirk's murder was political violence. The death of the 20 kids murdered in the Sandy Hook massacre was not. Nor were the deaths of those killed in the Virginia Tech massacre, or the Uvalde massacre, or the Parkland massacre, or the University of Texas massacre, or the Columbine massacre, or the Enoch Brown High School massacre, or the Santa Fe High massacre, or any of the 574 school shootings that have occurred in the United States since 2000. Those were not political violence; they were Charlie Kirk's acceptable losses, a price he and his gang of far-right extremists were and are willing to pay to secure their personal right to enact political violence at their sole discretion.

None of those victims had family members; not in the way that we're told to understand Charlie Kirk had family members. Nobody was admonished that political violence is never appropriate. No, proclamations of their deaths were opened with thoughts and prayers and closed with nothing else.

It's worth pondering who gets the privilege of having the violence committed against them deemed political violence, and who has to bear the burden of having their existence be deemed political violence.

Homeless people die every day, and that is not considered political violence, even though their circumstances are the direct result of political decisions.

Trans kids commit suicide and that is not political violence.

Black people are murdered by cops and that is not political violence.

People die of diseases they can't afford to treat and that is not political violence.

People die of diseases that could have been prevented by good public health policy, environmental protections, infrastructure, vaccines, and that is not political violence.

Our cities are invaded and that is not political violence. Our neighbors are kidnapped to foreign slave camps and that is not political violence.

Supremacy is the idea that some people's lives matter and the rest don't. If you matter, then violence can be done to you. If you don't matter, than you can only ever threaten violence or be violence. You can't be the victim of violence.

To a supremacist country, a supremacist like Charlie Kirk mattered a lot. Republicans (and many centrists and liberals) are talking about Kirk—who kept a list of leftist professors to target for harassment and discrimination—as if he were a martyr to free speech, and to prove how committed to Charlie Kirk's legacy of free speech are, Republicans are hunting down and firing people who have been critical of Charlie Kirk. They're talking about putting a monument to him in the Capitol building—the same Capitol that was invaded on January 6, 2021 by far-right extremists in a riot of insurrectionists—a riot that grew out of a demonstration that Charlie Kirk bragged about sending eighty busses full of demonstrators to. There have been moments of silence in his honor at sporting events.

To a supremacist society, Charlie Kirk matters. To varying degrees, most of the rest of us don't matter. Or at least its up for debate—which I'm told by Ezra Klein is doing politics exactly—exactly—the right way.

Charlie Kirk is a father. Charlie Kirk is a husband. Charlie Kirk's death is a tragedy and totally unacceptable. The rest of us are potentially, if we are unlucky enough, and depending on who or what kills us, simply the sacrifice the 2nd amendment and Charlie Kirk demands, or the sacrifice the free market demands, or the sacrifice that somebody's comfort demanded. Depending on circumstances, our deaths are not necessarily unacceptable. Depending on our identities, some of our deaths are extremely acceptable.

The violence that Charlie Kirk experienced is unacceptable. The violence everyone else experiences is either entirely justified or a sad but totally unpreventable tragedy, and which it is depends entirely on who we are. The decision tree is as obvious as it is predictable. Charlie Kirk would know; he wrote the script and delivered it professionally. Were you killed by a trans woman or a homeless Black person? Your death was a tragedy, and the killer is emblematic of all trans people and homeless people, who must now be hounded and killed. Were you killed by a white conservative radicalized by Turning Point USA? Well who are you? A white lady? Your death is sad but unpreventable. Homeless Black veteran expelled from a mental institution? Your death is totally justified, the killer is a hero, and this incident should serve as a warning about homeless people and "Black crime."

This is why there was such a mania to assume the name and identity of the shooter. To supremacists, who claim to be against "identity politics," identity is everything, everything, everything.

And yesterday a suspect was apprehended. The alleged killer wasn't trans or gay or an immigrant or Black or a Muslim or a left-wing radical, as was being not only assumed but announced. It was a local white kid. We don't know his ideology yet, but it appears he is from a conservative family.

This was an awkward development. The killer was a human being too. He was the sort of person who gets to make decisions about when political violence is acceptable. It appears that all by himself, without anybody telling him to, he went and made a bit of a freedom-whoopsie.

Suddenly the entire narrative shifted. The stories became not about a scary movement that is running out of control, and a brand new era of political violence, but rather about how such a promising kid could have become so radicalized, how puzzling it all was, what an unsolvable mystery.

We know how this will play out, as well. Charlie Kirk wrote the script and delivered it, after the Trump assassination attempt wound up—after yet another news cycle blaming the left for political violence—to have been perpetrated by a disaffected and radicalized white kid.

What will happen is the same thing that happened then.

There will be no corrections, no apologies, and within a month at most, Republicans and the rest of them will be back to pretending that the perpetrator was a radical trans leftist. "They killed Charlie Kirk" will be the refrain, just as we now hear "they tried to kill Trump." Who is the "they" that tried to kill him? Whoever the "they" needs to be in the moment. Whoever needs to have a violence enacted against them that will never be deemed "political."

So now here he is, Charlie Kirk: 31 years old and dead by the very situation he forced us all to live in. A hero of whatever the fuck, and if you disagree about that, then you must be the one who wants violence, you must be the one who loves the fact that his kids don't have a father now.

And now they'll move on from him, the Republicans, and replace him with the next almost-handsome suit filler that is willing to say horrible things about targeted minorities. Kirk was only ever a tool to them. So is his death, and the legend they are building around it.

But we can know better, if we are willing to observe things that are easily observable, and use our memories.

Charlie Kirk's last moments before the shooting were spent in an attempt to cast blame for gun violence upon Black people and trans people. Do you know how many mass shooters in America have been trans? Kirk was asked. Too many, he answered. The questioner gave him the answer—five—and asked if he knew how many mass shootings there had been in America in the last 10 years. Counting or not counting gang violence? he replied.

You know what?

If they ever erect that monument to him in the Capitol building, put that on the plaque.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries and the essay collection Very Fine People, which are available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. He, ought to see the man Mulcahy.