In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, a peculiar phenomenon has re-emerged: the casket caveat. Instead of simply condemning the dreadful murder of a young man, many eulogies to Kirk are laced with qualifications. Clods of faint praise scattered over a fresh grave. ‘It’s regrettable that he was shot, no matter how much of a bastard he was,’ is the sentiment – or ‘We gather in solemn remembrance of a man who, though admired by many, really had it coming.’
A piece on Kirk’s murder, under the pseudonym ‘Lady Liberty’, drips with insinuations
Such weasel words have proliferated since Kirk’s murder, often tarted up as balanced commentary, but reeking of bad faith. Nowhere is this attitude more evident than in the latest issue of Private Eye. A piece on Kirk’s murder, under the pseudonym ‘Lady Liberty’, drips with insinuations. Nudge nudge, wink wink: Kirk was practically asking for it, wasn’t he? With his punctilious manners, his message of hope, his good-faith debates, and his open invitations for critics to prove him wrong. What a rotter.
‘Within hours of the shooting of MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk, his friends and allies were agitating for revenge against their political enemies’, the piece says, before quoting from Elon Musk and Donald Trump. ‘What a load of bollocks,’ it goes on, telling us that, ‘In America, political violence is a bipartisan pursuit.’
The thing has the air of a pub-corner rant from someone desperately convincing themselves their worldview isn’t nonsense. (My advice to ‘Lady Liberty’ from personal experience is to give that attempt up. You’ll really feel so much better.) Having suggested this is a ‘both sides’ issue, the article pedals furiously to calling Kirk’s views ‘extreme’. The author then draws the apparent conclusion that ‘Many shooters don’t turn out to have any coherent political beliefs at all, just a gun and a grievance.’ So, that’s alright then? What a load of ‘bollocks’, to borrow the author’s own word.
What Private Eye should have realised is that, in a piece about Kirk’s murder, all that is needed is a straightforward condemnation; assassination is wrong, full stop – and, please, no quibbling over the corpse.
I’m thinking now of the public figure I most despise, and I genuinely believe I’d feel only horror if they met Kirk’s fate. Such a killing benefits no one; there are no upsides; there must be no excuses. This isn’t me posturing as a moral exemplar; I would’ve thought it’s basic human decency. Would have thought.
But then, for his less rabid detractors, Kirk himself was a bit gauche, a bit low-status, with his pointing out of the progressive indoctrination on campuses. Perish the thought! The horror! Except, of course, that what he had to say was very obviously true.
The Private Eye rant is another example of critiquing a version of an opponent that the writer would prefer to exist – or in this case, to have existed. (This mania is everywhere; the ludicrous Alice Roberts is currently warning of the threat from ‘Christian nationalism’, something about as pressing an issue as an invasion from Venus.)
Private’s Eye‘s piece is riddled with smears and deliberate mischaracterisations. Portraying Kirk’s opposition to the often disastrous outcomes for black people after the civil rights era as racism is absurd; it’s like claiming vegetarians hate animals because they refuse to eat them.
Yet progressives lap up this rubbish because it fits their worldview. They want to believe it. Hearsay became gospel.
Take Alastair Campbell’s spectacular willingness to accept that Kirk advocated the stoning to death of homosexuals. ‘I remember one clip I saw of him saying…literal reading of the Bible, gay people should be stoned to death,’ Campbell told listeners on The Rest is Politics podcast. He subsequently retracted this claim: ‘Apologies for this. I had seen a clip on social media which did not have the full context, and had seen others making the same claim… Kirk did have views with which I strongly disagree but this was not among them.’ So that’s OK then?
Kirk believed his ideas were correct and wanted to spread them, which is precisely what progressives have done across the Western world for decades. He engaged with his opponents in good faith – trying to convince them, through words, why they were wrong. Progressives might disagree with what Kirk believed, but they should, surely, welcome the way in which he conducted himself?
Trying to reframe Kirk’s murder as a liberal-versus-illiberal or ‘both sides’ problem leaves you on very shaky ground. It’s reassuring to position oneself as sublimely above the fray, but it has the regrettable drawback of being untrue. Not a single riot erupted after Kirk’s murder. Compare that to the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020.
When similar claims are made – ‘They’re cancelling us for words’ or ‘Those bad people are lying’ – it doesn’t mean both sides are equivalent. The same claim can be genuine or false when made by different people.
Yet according to Private Eye, the ‘activist right’ is now putting its energy ‘into trying to cancel anyone who mocked or welcomed the killing’. For years, those in the gender debate have, of course, been ‘cancelled’ for trying to claim that ‘men are not women’ – and where was the outcry in Private Eye? Even now, it’s hard to imagine Ian Hislop’s increasingly unfunny magazine taking a similar tone if a left-wing activist had been murdered by a right-wing lunatic.
The reaction to Kirk’s death from the likes of Oxford Union president George Abaraonye – who wrote ‘Charlie Kirk got shot, let’s go’ in a WhatsApp group – was truly shameful, but these people were at least honest with themselves and with us, revelling in their glee at the murder. Not so ‘Lady Liberty’, at the blunter end of the progressive spectrum with the rest of the leftover liberals and Good People. Private Eye, as usual, just snarks. But then, in our public square it’s their right to snark, and my right to say what awful weasels they are.
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